Our Divine Instructors.Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell“Maurigasima,”for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their[pg 382]own. Kæmpfer, in hisJapan,821gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy—their“Divine Man”and Demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil—the Creative God and the“Gods of the Ghost-world”; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco-Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either thesevenandtenRishi-Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki-y; ortenandsevenAmshaspands822(six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the“Builders”of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode823and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as“Divine Kings and Rulers.”But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis-Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods,“though they had become princes in human form.”And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:[pg 383]It is said that this prince [Isis-Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.When Abul Feda, in hisHistoria Anteïslamitica,824says that the“Sabæan language”was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In theMelelwa Nahil,825Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,826Agathodæmon is mentioned as a“King of Egypt.”TheCelepas Geraldinusgives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the“Divine Giant.”In hisBook of the Various Names of the Nile, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in theBible; then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris),“the author of thirty books,”was“Sabæan by origin”—i.e., belonged to the Saba,“a Host”:Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.827Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In theBurham i Kati, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.828The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.829But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences fromlatent to active potency,i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.Not only does Herodotus, the“father of history,”tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but[pg 384]the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.As Creuzer shows:It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.830It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260b.c.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them“a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.”As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:All those historians and priests, soveraciouswhen repeating stories ofhumankings and men, suddenly becomeextremely suspiciousno sooner do they go backto their gods.But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or theReigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.831These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the[pg 385]age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes.Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north-east.When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (b) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic.Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at thesamenessof all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and Mortals.832As says Panodorus:Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that theReign of the Seven Godswho rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanitydescendedon Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.833Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs-Piromis—the Arch-prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples,born one from the other, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their firsthumanKing. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number,each of which had its name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus—unless[pg 386]the most truthful of historians, the“father of history,”is now to be accused of fibbing,just in this instance—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of thethreeDynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.834These“three”Dynasties are the three Races.Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans.“Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata-varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) workspar excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.835Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again,the natural good sense and the upright judgmentof the ancient peoples, quite foreign to ourentirely materialideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in themlivingbodies,animatedby spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature....This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.836It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without[pg 387]such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.Occultists believe in“spirits,”because theyfeel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.837Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.838Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in hisŒdipus Ægyptiacus, writes:I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.839As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in hisMeropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting,[pg 388]warrior race, and a pious, meditative race840—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.841The pious“city”wascontinually visited by the Gods: the belligerent“city”was inhabited by various beingsinvulnerableby iron, who could bemortally woundedonly by stone and wood.842De Rougemont treats this as a purefictionof Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:Asupercheriewhich was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; asuppositionwhich yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus,the great transoceanic landsituated beyond that Atlantis and which“is reached,”it said,“by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,”εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but auniversal chimera!843It is certain that, whether“chimera”or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,844a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a“fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of aHolyIsland beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands ofImmortalMen?845Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:[pg 389]If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, whichwe accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of hisLaws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth acertainform of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce thisfableinto a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old,in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; butone never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.846That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,i.e.,a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.847[pg 390]When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.848And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.As say the Commentaries:Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the“Lords of Wisdom,”for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres].Now:The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... Thefirst use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all,the processes by which the various cereals were first developedout of some wild grasses [?]—these are alldiscoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of aneffulgent dawn.849This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruitsunknown to earth, then we may remind the readerthat wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheatseven cubits high.850[pg 391]Says the Egyptian Isis:I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.851Sirius was called the Dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind.The ChineseY-Kingattributes the discovery of agriculture to“the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,852since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.853The“Sons of God”haveexisted anddoexist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind-born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the JewishBible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is“independent criticism”so-called, or“internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter ofGenesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with theZohar.There were giants in the earth in those days;and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].854What does this sentence,“and also after that,”signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earthbefore,i.e., before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race;and also after thatwhen other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the“mighty men ... men of renown,”among whom is placed Nimrod the[pg 392]“mighty hunter before the Lord,”that“God saw that the wickedness of man was great,”nor in the builders of Babel, for this wasafterthe Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who producedmonstra quædam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it:Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.855This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,”as is candidly confessed by Fourmont856—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through theZoharto the Western, and theBook of Dzyanto the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what theZohartells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.857We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the“Adversary,”is included inJobamong the“sons”of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.858But of this later on.Now theZoharsays that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, werenotguilty, but mixedthemselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so.859Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the“Thrones.”860It also explains that the Ischins—“Men-spirits,”viri spirituales861—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not“small men”but“mensmaller(in the sense of inferiority) than men.”Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then,i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.[pg 393]But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is amystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides:There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.862And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says:This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat.863Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence“one separated from God”—the Devil. In theZohar, Azazel is rather the“sacrificial victim”than the“formal adversary of Jehovah,”as Spencer would have it.864The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this“Host”by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his“Host”are simply the Hebrew“Prometheus,”and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. TheZoharshows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these“Spirits”as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the“transgressing”Angels in theBook of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to makeone see what is behind him—viz.,“magic mirrors.”Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.865“These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man”(i.e., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead-letter expresses?It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform theanimalof clay into an immortalGod. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:[pg 394]The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even Angels.On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in theBibleand even in theNew Testamentwhich has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead-letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.Many were the hints thrown out in this direction inIsis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the“bride”of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master“Get thee behind me, Satan”was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent ofGenesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words:“Say we not well thou hast a devil?”[pg 395]Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in theRig Veda, the Occult volumepar excellenceof Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in thePurânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In theRig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In thePurânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the“enemies of the Gods”the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of themilitantHost. Turning to theBible, we find Satan, one of the“Sons of God,”866becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in theKabalah,867Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael,who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the ChaldæanBook of NumbersSamael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higherterrestrialWisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) isinfluencedby Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remainsuninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael-Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
Our Divine Instructors.Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell“Maurigasima,”for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their[pg 382]own. Kæmpfer, in hisJapan,821gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy—their“Divine Man”and Demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil—the Creative God and the“Gods of the Ghost-world”; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco-Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either thesevenandtenRishi-Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki-y; ortenandsevenAmshaspands822(six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the“Builders”of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode823and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as“Divine Kings and Rulers.”But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis-Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods,“though they had become princes in human form.”And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:[pg 383]It is said that this prince [Isis-Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.When Abul Feda, in hisHistoria Anteïslamitica,824says that the“Sabæan language”was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In theMelelwa Nahil,825Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,826Agathodæmon is mentioned as a“King of Egypt.”TheCelepas Geraldinusgives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the“Divine Giant.”In hisBook of the Various Names of the Nile, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in theBible; then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris),“the author of thirty books,”was“Sabæan by origin”—i.e., belonged to the Saba,“a Host”:Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.827Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In theBurham i Kati, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.828The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.829But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences fromlatent to active potency,i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.Not only does Herodotus, the“father of history,”tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but[pg 384]the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.As Creuzer shows:It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.830It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260b.c.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them“a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.”As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:All those historians and priests, soveraciouswhen repeating stories ofhumankings and men, suddenly becomeextremely suspiciousno sooner do they go backto their gods.But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or theReigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.831These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the[pg 385]age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes.Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north-east.When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (b) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic.Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at thesamenessof all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and Mortals.832As says Panodorus:Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that theReign of the Seven Godswho rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanitydescendedon Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.833Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs-Piromis—the Arch-prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples,born one from the other, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their firsthumanKing. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number,each of which had its name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus—unless[pg 386]the most truthful of historians, the“father of history,”is now to be accused of fibbing,just in this instance—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of thethreeDynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.834These“three”Dynasties are the three Races.Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans.“Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata-varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) workspar excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.835Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again,the natural good sense and the upright judgmentof the ancient peoples, quite foreign to ourentirely materialideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in themlivingbodies,animatedby spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature....This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.836It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without[pg 387]such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.Occultists believe in“spirits,”because theyfeel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.837Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.838Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in hisŒdipus Ægyptiacus, writes:I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.839As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in hisMeropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting,[pg 388]warrior race, and a pious, meditative race840—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.841The pious“city”wascontinually visited by the Gods: the belligerent“city”was inhabited by various beingsinvulnerableby iron, who could bemortally woundedonly by stone and wood.842De Rougemont treats this as a purefictionof Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:Asupercheriewhich was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; asuppositionwhich yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus,the great transoceanic landsituated beyond that Atlantis and which“is reached,”it said,“by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,”εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but auniversal chimera!843It is certain that, whether“chimera”or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,844a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a“fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of aHolyIsland beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands ofImmortalMen?845Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:[pg 389]If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, whichwe accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of hisLaws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth acertainform of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce thisfableinto a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old,in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; butone never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.846That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,i.e.,a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.847[pg 390]When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.848And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.As say the Commentaries:Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the“Lords of Wisdom,”for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres].Now:The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... Thefirst use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all,the processes by which the various cereals were first developedout of some wild grasses [?]—these are alldiscoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of aneffulgent dawn.849This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruitsunknown to earth, then we may remind the readerthat wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheatseven cubits high.850[pg 391]Says the Egyptian Isis:I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.851Sirius was called the Dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind.The ChineseY-Kingattributes the discovery of agriculture to“the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,852since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.853The“Sons of God”haveexisted anddoexist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind-born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the JewishBible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is“independent criticism”so-called, or“internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter ofGenesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with theZohar.There were giants in the earth in those days;and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].854What does this sentence,“and also after that,”signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earthbefore,i.e., before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race;and also after thatwhen other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the“mighty men ... men of renown,”among whom is placed Nimrod the[pg 392]“mighty hunter before the Lord,”that“God saw that the wickedness of man was great,”nor in the builders of Babel, for this wasafterthe Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who producedmonstra quædam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it:Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.855This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,”as is candidly confessed by Fourmont856—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through theZoharto the Western, and theBook of Dzyanto the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what theZohartells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.857We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the“Adversary,”is included inJobamong the“sons”of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.858But of this later on.Now theZoharsays that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, werenotguilty, but mixedthemselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so.859Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the“Thrones.”860It also explains that the Ischins—“Men-spirits,”viri spirituales861—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not“small men”but“mensmaller(in the sense of inferiority) than men.”Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then,i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.[pg 393]But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is amystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides:There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.862And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says:This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat.863Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence“one separated from God”—the Devil. In theZohar, Azazel is rather the“sacrificial victim”than the“formal adversary of Jehovah,”as Spencer would have it.864The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this“Host”by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his“Host”are simply the Hebrew“Prometheus,”and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. TheZoharshows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these“Spirits”as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the“transgressing”Angels in theBook of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to makeone see what is behind him—viz.,“magic mirrors.”Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.865“These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man”(i.e., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead-letter expresses?It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform theanimalof clay into an immortalGod. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:[pg 394]The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even Angels.On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in theBibleand even in theNew Testamentwhich has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead-letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.Many were the hints thrown out in this direction inIsis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the“bride”of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master“Get thee behind me, Satan”was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent ofGenesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words:“Say we not well thou hast a devil?”[pg 395]Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in theRig Veda, the Occult volumepar excellenceof Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in thePurânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In theRig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In thePurânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the“enemies of the Gods”the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of themilitantHost. Turning to theBible, we find Satan, one of the“Sons of God,”866becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in theKabalah,867Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael,who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the ChaldæanBook of NumbersSamael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higherterrestrialWisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) isinfluencedby Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remainsuninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael-Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
Our Divine Instructors.Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell“Maurigasima,”for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their[pg 382]own. Kæmpfer, in hisJapan,821gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy—their“Divine Man”and Demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil—the Creative God and the“Gods of the Ghost-world”; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco-Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either thesevenandtenRishi-Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki-y; ortenandsevenAmshaspands822(six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the“Builders”of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode823and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as“Divine Kings and Rulers.”But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis-Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods,“though they had become princes in human form.”And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:[pg 383]It is said that this prince [Isis-Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.When Abul Feda, in hisHistoria Anteïslamitica,824says that the“Sabæan language”was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In theMelelwa Nahil,825Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,826Agathodæmon is mentioned as a“King of Egypt.”TheCelepas Geraldinusgives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the“Divine Giant.”In hisBook of the Various Names of the Nile, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in theBible; then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris),“the author of thirty books,”was“Sabæan by origin”—i.e., belonged to the Saba,“a Host”:Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.827Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In theBurham i Kati, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.828The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.829But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences fromlatent to active potency,i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.Not only does Herodotus, the“father of history,”tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but[pg 384]the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.As Creuzer shows:It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.830It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260b.c.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them“a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.”As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:All those historians and priests, soveraciouswhen repeating stories ofhumankings and men, suddenly becomeextremely suspiciousno sooner do they go backto their gods.But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or theReigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.831These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the[pg 385]age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes.Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north-east.When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (b) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic.Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at thesamenessof all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and Mortals.832As says Panodorus:Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that theReign of the Seven Godswho rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanitydescendedon Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.833Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs-Piromis—the Arch-prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples,born one from the other, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their firsthumanKing. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number,each of which had its name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus—unless[pg 386]the most truthful of historians, the“father of history,”is now to be accused of fibbing,just in this instance—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of thethreeDynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.834These“three”Dynasties are the three Races.Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans.“Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata-varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) workspar excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.835Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again,the natural good sense and the upright judgmentof the ancient peoples, quite foreign to ourentirely materialideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in themlivingbodies,animatedby spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature....This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.836It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without[pg 387]such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.Occultists believe in“spirits,”because theyfeel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.837Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.838Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in hisŒdipus Ægyptiacus, writes:I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.839As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in hisMeropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting,[pg 388]warrior race, and a pious, meditative race840—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.841The pious“city”wascontinually visited by the Gods: the belligerent“city”was inhabited by various beingsinvulnerableby iron, who could bemortally woundedonly by stone and wood.842De Rougemont treats this as a purefictionof Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:Asupercheriewhich was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; asuppositionwhich yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus,the great transoceanic landsituated beyond that Atlantis and which“is reached,”it said,“by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,”εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but auniversal chimera!843It is certain that, whether“chimera”or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,844a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a“fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of aHolyIsland beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands ofImmortalMen?845Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:[pg 389]If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, whichwe accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of hisLaws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth acertainform of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce thisfableinto a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old,in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; butone never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.846That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,i.e.,a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.847[pg 390]When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.848And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.As say the Commentaries:Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the“Lords of Wisdom,”for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres].Now:The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... Thefirst use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all,the processes by which the various cereals were first developedout of some wild grasses [?]—these are alldiscoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of aneffulgent dawn.849This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruitsunknown to earth, then we may remind the readerthat wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheatseven cubits high.850[pg 391]Says the Egyptian Isis:I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.851Sirius was called the Dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind.The ChineseY-Kingattributes the discovery of agriculture to“the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,852since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.853The“Sons of God”haveexisted anddoexist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind-born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the JewishBible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is“independent criticism”so-called, or“internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter ofGenesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with theZohar.There were giants in the earth in those days;and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].854What does this sentence,“and also after that,”signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earthbefore,i.e., before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race;and also after thatwhen other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the“mighty men ... men of renown,”among whom is placed Nimrod the[pg 392]“mighty hunter before the Lord,”that“God saw that the wickedness of man was great,”nor in the builders of Babel, for this wasafterthe Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who producedmonstra quædam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it:Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.855This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,”as is candidly confessed by Fourmont856—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through theZoharto the Western, and theBook of Dzyanto the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what theZohartells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.857We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the“Adversary,”is included inJobamong the“sons”of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.858But of this later on.Now theZoharsays that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, werenotguilty, but mixedthemselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so.859Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the“Thrones.”860It also explains that the Ischins—“Men-spirits,”viri spirituales861—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not“small men”but“mensmaller(in the sense of inferiority) than men.”Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then,i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.[pg 393]But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is amystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides:There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.862And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says:This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat.863Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence“one separated from God”—the Devil. In theZohar, Azazel is rather the“sacrificial victim”than the“formal adversary of Jehovah,”as Spencer would have it.864The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this“Host”by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his“Host”are simply the Hebrew“Prometheus,”and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. TheZoharshows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these“Spirits”as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the“transgressing”Angels in theBook of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to makeone see what is behind him—viz.,“magic mirrors.”Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.865“These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man”(i.e., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead-letter expresses?It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform theanimalof clay into an immortalGod. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:[pg 394]The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even Angels.On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in theBibleand even in theNew Testamentwhich has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead-letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.Many were the hints thrown out in this direction inIsis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the“bride”of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master“Get thee behind me, Satan”was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent ofGenesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words:“Say we not well thou hast a devil?”[pg 395]Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in theRig Veda, the Occult volumepar excellenceof Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in thePurânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In theRig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In thePurânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the“enemies of the Gods”the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of themilitantHost. Turning to theBible, we find Satan, one of the“Sons of God,”866becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in theKabalah,867Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael,who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the ChaldæanBook of NumbersSamael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higherterrestrialWisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) isinfluencedby Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remainsuninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael-Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
Our Divine Instructors.Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell“Maurigasima,”for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their[pg 382]own. Kæmpfer, in hisJapan,821gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy—their“Divine Man”and Demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil—the Creative God and the“Gods of the Ghost-world”; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco-Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either thesevenandtenRishi-Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki-y; ortenandsevenAmshaspands822(six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the“Builders”of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode823and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as“Divine Kings and Rulers.”But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis-Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods,“though they had become princes in human form.”And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:[pg 383]It is said that this prince [Isis-Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.When Abul Feda, in hisHistoria Anteïslamitica,824says that the“Sabæan language”was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In theMelelwa Nahil,825Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,826Agathodæmon is mentioned as a“King of Egypt.”TheCelepas Geraldinusgives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the“Divine Giant.”In hisBook of the Various Names of the Nile, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in theBible; then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris),“the author of thirty books,”was“Sabæan by origin”—i.e., belonged to the Saba,“a Host”:Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.827Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In theBurham i Kati, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.828The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.829But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences fromlatent to active potency,i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.Not only does Herodotus, the“father of history,”tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but[pg 384]the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.As Creuzer shows:It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.830It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260b.c.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them“a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.”As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:All those historians and priests, soveraciouswhen repeating stories ofhumankings and men, suddenly becomeextremely suspiciousno sooner do they go backto their gods.But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or theReigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.831These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the[pg 385]age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes.Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north-east.When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (b) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic.Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at thesamenessof all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and Mortals.832As says Panodorus:Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that theReign of the Seven Godswho rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanitydescendedon Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.833Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs-Piromis—the Arch-prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples,born one from the other, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their firsthumanKing. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number,each of which had its name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus—unless[pg 386]the most truthful of historians, the“father of history,”is now to be accused of fibbing,just in this instance—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of thethreeDynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.834These“three”Dynasties are the three Races.Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans.“Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata-varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) workspar excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.835Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again,the natural good sense and the upright judgmentof the ancient peoples, quite foreign to ourentirely materialideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in themlivingbodies,animatedby spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature....This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.836It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without[pg 387]such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.Occultists believe in“spirits,”because theyfeel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.837Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.838Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in hisŒdipus Ægyptiacus, writes:I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.839As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in hisMeropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting,[pg 388]warrior race, and a pious, meditative race840—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.841The pious“city”wascontinually visited by the Gods: the belligerent“city”was inhabited by various beingsinvulnerableby iron, who could bemortally woundedonly by stone and wood.842De Rougemont treats this as a purefictionof Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:Asupercheriewhich was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; asuppositionwhich yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus,the great transoceanic landsituated beyond that Atlantis and which“is reached,”it said,“by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,”εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but auniversal chimera!843It is certain that, whether“chimera”or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,844a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a“fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of aHolyIsland beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands ofImmortalMen?845Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:[pg 389]If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, whichwe accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of hisLaws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth acertainform of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce thisfableinto a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old,in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; butone never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.846That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,i.e.,a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.847[pg 390]When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.848And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.As say the Commentaries:Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the“Lords of Wisdom,”for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres].Now:The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... Thefirst use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all,the processes by which the various cereals were first developedout of some wild grasses [?]—these are alldiscoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of aneffulgent dawn.849This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruitsunknown to earth, then we may remind the readerthat wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheatseven cubits high.850[pg 391]Says the Egyptian Isis:I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.851Sirius was called the Dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind.The ChineseY-Kingattributes the discovery of agriculture to“the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,852since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.853The“Sons of God”haveexisted anddoexist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind-born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the JewishBible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is“independent criticism”so-called, or“internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter ofGenesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with theZohar.There were giants in the earth in those days;and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].854What does this sentence,“and also after that,”signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earthbefore,i.e., before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race;and also after thatwhen other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the“mighty men ... men of renown,”among whom is placed Nimrod the[pg 392]“mighty hunter before the Lord,”that“God saw that the wickedness of man was great,”nor in the builders of Babel, for this wasafterthe Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who producedmonstra quædam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it:Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.855This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,”as is candidly confessed by Fourmont856—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through theZoharto the Western, and theBook of Dzyanto the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what theZohartells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.857We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the“Adversary,”is included inJobamong the“sons”of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.858But of this later on.Now theZoharsays that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, werenotguilty, but mixedthemselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so.859Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the“Thrones.”860It also explains that the Ischins—“Men-spirits,”viri spirituales861—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not“small men”but“mensmaller(in the sense of inferiority) than men.”Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then,i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.[pg 393]But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is amystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides:There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.862And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says:This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat.863Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence“one separated from God”—the Devil. In theZohar, Azazel is rather the“sacrificial victim”than the“formal adversary of Jehovah,”as Spencer would have it.864The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this“Host”by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his“Host”are simply the Hebrew“Prometheus,”and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. TheZoharshows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these“Spirits”as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the“transgressing”Angels in theBook of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to makeone see what is behind him—viz.,“magic mirrors.”Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.865“These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man”(i.e., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead-letter expresses?It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform theanimalof clay into an immortalGod. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:[pg 394]The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even Angels.On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in theBibleand even in theNew Testamentwhich has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead-letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.Many were the hints thrown out in this direction inIsis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the“bride”of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master“Get thee behind me, Satan”was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent ofGenesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words:“Say we not well thou hast a devil?”[pg 395]Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in theRig Veda, the Occult volumepar excellenceof Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in thePurânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In theRig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In thePurânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the“enemies of the Gods”the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of themilitantHost. Turning to theBible, we find Satan, one of the“Sons of God,”866becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in theKabalah,867Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael,who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the ChaldæanBook of NumbersSamael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higherterrestrialWisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) isinfluencedby Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remainsuninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael-Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
Our Divine Instructors.Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell“Maurigasima,”for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their[pg 382]own. Kæmpfer, in hisJapan,821gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy—their“Divine Man”and Demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil—the Creative God and the“Gods of the Ghost-world”; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco-Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either thesevenandtenRishi-Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki-y; ortenandsevenAmshaspands822(six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the“Builders”of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode823and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as“Divine Kings and Rulers.”But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis-Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods,“though they had become princes in human form.”And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:[pg 383]It is said that this prince [Isis-Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.When Abul Feda, in hisHistoria Anteïslamitica,824says that the“Sabæan language”was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In theMelelwa Nahil,825Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,826Agathodæmon is mentioned as a“King of Egypt.”TheCelepas Geraldinusgives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the“Divine Giant.”In hisBook of the Various Names of the Nile, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in theBible; then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris),“the author of thirty books,”was“Sabæan by origin”—i.e., belonged to the Saba,“a Host”:Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.827Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In theBurham i Kati, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.828The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.829But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences fromlatent to active potency,i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.Not only does Herodotus, the“father of history,”tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but[pg 384]the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.As Creuzer shows:It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.830It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260b.c.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them“a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.”As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:All those historians and priests, soveraciouswhen repeating stories ofhumankings and men, suddenly becomeextremely suspiciousno sooner do they go backto their gods.But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or theReigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.831These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the[pg 385]age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes.Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north-east.When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (b) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic.Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at thesamenessof all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and Mortals.832As says Panodorus:Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that theReign of the Seven Godswho rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanitydescendedon Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.833Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs-Piromis—the Arch-prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples,born one from the other, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their firsthumanKing. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number,each of which had its name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus—unless[pg 386]the most truthful of historians, the“father of history,”is now to be accused of fibbing,just in this instance—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of thethreeDynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.834These“three”Dynasties are the three Races.Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans.“Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata-varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) workspar excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.835Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again,the natural good sense and the upright judgmentof the ancient peoples, quite foreign to ourentirely materialideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in themlivingbodies,animatedby spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature....This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.836It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without[pg 387]such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.Occultists believe in“spirits,”because theyfeel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.837Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.838Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in hisŒdipus Ægyptiacus, writes:I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.839As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in hisMeropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting,[pg 388]warrior race, and a pious, meditative race840—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.841The pious“city”wascontinually visited by the Gods: the belligerent“city”was inhabited by various beingsinvulnerableby iron, who could bemortally woundedonly by stone and wood.842De Rougemont treats this as a purefictionof Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:Asupercheriewhich was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; asuppositionwhich yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus,the great transoceanic landsituated beyond that Atlantis and which“is reached,”it said,“by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,”εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but auniversal chimera!843It is certain that, whether“chimera”or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,844a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a“fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of aHolyIsland beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands ofImmortalMen?845Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:[pg 389]If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, whichwe accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of hisLaws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth acertainform of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce thisfableinto a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old,in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; butone never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.846That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,i.e.,a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.847[pg 390]When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.848And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.As say the Commentaries:Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the“Lords of Wisdom,”for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres].Now:The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... Thefirst use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all,the processes by which the various cereals were first developedout of some wild grasses [?]—these are alldiscoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of aneffulgent dawn.849This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruitsunknown to earth, then we may remind the readerthat wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheatseven cubits high.850[pg 391]Says the Egyptian Isis:I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.851Sirius was called the Dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind.The ChineseY-Kingattributes the discovery of agriculture to“the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,852since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.853The“Sons of God”haveexisted anddoexist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind-born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the JewishBible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is“independent criticism”so-called, or“internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter ofGenesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with theZohar.There were giants in the earth in those days;and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].854What does this sentence,“and also after that,”signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earthbefore,i.e., before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race;and also after thatwhen other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the“mighty men ... men of renown,”among whom is placed Nimrod the[pg 392]“mighty hunter before the Lord,”that“God saw that the wickedness of man was great,”nor in the builders of Babel, for this wasafterthe Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who producedmonstra quædam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it:Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.855This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,”as is candidly confessed by Fourmont856—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through theZoharto the Western, and theBook of Dzyanto the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what theZohartells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.857We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the“Adversary,”is included inJobamong the“sons”of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.858But of this later on.Now theZoharsays that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, werenotguilty, but mixedthemselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so.859Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the“Thrones.”860It also explains that the Ischins—“Men-spirits,”viri spirituales861—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not“small men”but“mensmaller(in the sense of inferiority) than men.”Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then,i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.[pg 393]But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is amystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides:There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.862And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says:This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat.863Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence“one separated from God”—the Devil. In theZohar, Azazel is rather the“sacrificial victim”than the“formal adversary of Jehovah,”as Spencer would have it.864The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this“Host”by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his“Host”are simply the Hebrew“Prometheus,”and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. TheZoharshows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these“Spirits”as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the“transgressing”Angels in theBook of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to makeone see what is behind him—viz.,“magic mirrors.”Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.865“These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man”(i.e., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead-letter expresses?It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform theanimalof clay into an immortalGod. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:[pg 394]The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even Angels.On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in theBibleand even in theNew Testamentwhich has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead-letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.Many were the hints thrown out in this direction inIsis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the“bride”of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master“Get thee behind me, Satan”was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent ofGenesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words:“Say we not well thou hast a devil?”[pg 395]Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in theRig Veda, the Occult volumepar excellenceof Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in thePurânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In theRig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In thePurânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the“enemies of the Gods”the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of themilitantHost. Turning to theBible, we find Satan, one of the“Sons of God,”866becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in theKabalah,867Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael,who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the ChaldæanBook of NumbersSamael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higherterrestrialWisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) isinfluencedby Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remainsuninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael-Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
Our Divine Instructors.Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell“Maurigasima,”for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their[pg 382]own. Kæmpfer, in hisJapan,821gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy—their“Divine Man”and Demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil—the Creative God and the“Gods of the Ghost-world”; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco-Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either thesevenandtenRishi-Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki-y; ortenandsevenAmshaspands822(six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the“Builders”of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode823and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as“Divine Kings and Rulers.”But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis-Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods,“though they had become princes in human form.”And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:[pg 383]It is said that this prince [Isis-Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.When Abul Feda, in hisHistoria Anteïslamitica,824says that the“Sabæan language”was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In theMelelwa Nahil,825Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,826Agathodæmon is mentioned as a“King of Egypt.”TheCelepas Geraldinusgives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the“Divine Giant.”In hisBook of the Various Names of the Nile, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in theBible; then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris),“the author of thirty books,”was“Sabæan by origin”—i.e., belonged to the Saba,“a Host”:Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.827Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In theBurham i Kati, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.828The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.829But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences fromlatent to active potency,i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.Not only does Herodotus, the“father of history,”tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but[pg 384]the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.As Creuzer shows:It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.830It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260b.c.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them“a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.”As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:All those historians and priests, soveraciouswhen repeating stories ofhumankings and men, suddenly becomeextremely suspiciousno sooner do they go backto their gods.But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or theReigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.831These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the[pg 385]age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes.Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north-east.When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (b) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic.Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at thesamenessof all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and Mortals.832As says Panodorus:Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that theReign of the Seven Godswho rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanitydescendedon Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.833Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs-Piromis—the Arch-prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples,born one from the other, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their firsthumanKing. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number,each of which had its name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus—unless[pg 386]the most truthful of historians, the“father of history,”is now to be accused of fibbing,just in this instance—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of thethreeDynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.834These“three”Dynasties are the three Races.Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans.“Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata-varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) workspar excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.835Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again,the natural good sense and the upright judgmentof the ancient peoples, quite foreign to ourentirely materialideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in themlivingbodies,animatedby spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature....This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.836It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without[pg 387]such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.Occultists believe in“spirits,”because theyfeel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.837Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.838Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in hisŒdipus Ægyptiacus, writes:I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.839As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in hisMeropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting,[pg 388]warrior race, and a pious, meditative race840—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.841The pious“city”wascontinually visited by the Gods: the belligerent“city”was inhabited by various beingsinvulnerableby iron, who could bemortally woundedonly by stone and wood.842De Rougemont treats this as a purefictionof Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:Asupercheriewhich was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; asuppositionwhich yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus,the great transoceanic landsituated beyond that Atlantis and which“is reached,”it said,“by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,”εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but auniversal chimera!843It is certain that, whether“chimera”or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,844a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a“fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of aHolyIsland beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands ofImmortalMen?845Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:[pg 389]If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, whichwe accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of hisLaws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth acertainform of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce thisfableinto a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old,in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; butone never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.846That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,i.e.,a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.847[pg 390]When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.848And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.As say the Commentaries:Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the“Lords of Wisdom,”for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres].Now:The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... Thefirst use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all,the processes by which the various cereals were first developedout of some wild grasses [?]—these are alldiscoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of aneffulgent dawn.849This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruitsunknown to earth, then we may remind the readerthat wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheatseven cubits high.850[pg 391]Says the Egyptian Isis:I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.851Sirius was called the Dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind.The ChineseY-Kingattributes the discovery of agriculture to“the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,852since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.853The“Sons of God”haveexisted anddoexist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind-born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the JewishBible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is“independent criticism”so-called, or“internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter ofGenesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with theZohar.There were giants in the earth in those days;and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].854What does this sentence,“and also after that,”signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earthbefore,i.e., before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race;and also after thatwhen other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the“mighty men ... men of renown,”among whom is placed Nimrod the[pg 392]“mighty hunter before the Lord,”that“God saw that the wickedness of man was great,”nor in the builders of Babel, for this wasafterthe Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who producedmonstra quædam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it:Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.855This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,”as is candidly confessed by Fourmont856—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through theZoharto the Western, and theBook of Dzyanto the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what theZohartells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.857We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the“Adversary,”is included inJobamong the“sons”of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.858But of this later on.Now theZoharsays that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, werenotguilty, but mixedthemselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so.859Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the“Thrones.”860It also explains that the Ischins—“Men-spirits,”viri spirituales861—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not“small men”but“mensmaller(in the sense of inferiority) than men.”Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then,i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.[pg 393]But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is amystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides:There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.862And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says:This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat.863Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence“one separated from God”—the Devil. In theZohar, Azazel is rather the“sacrificial victim”than the“formal adversary of Jehovah,”as Spencer would have it.864The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this“Host”by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his“Host”are simply the Hebrew“Prometheus,”and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. TheZoharshows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these“Spirits”as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the“transgressing”Angels in theBook of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to makeone see what is behind him—viz.,“magic mirrors.”Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.865“These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man”(i.e., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead-letter expresses?It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform theanimalof clay into an immortalGod. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:[pg 394]The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even Angels.On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in theBibleand even in theNew Testamentwhich has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead-letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.Many were the hints thrown out in this direction inIsis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the“bride”of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master“Get thee behind me, Satan”was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent ofGenesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words:“Say we not well thou hast a devil?”[pg 395]Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in theRig Veda, the Occult volumepar excellenceof Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in thePurânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In theRig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In thePurânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the“enemies of the Gods”the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of themilitantHost. Turning to theBible, we find Satan, one of the“Sons of God,”866becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in theKabalah,867Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael,who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the ChaldæanBook of NumbersSamael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higherterrestrialWisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) isinfluencedby Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remainsuninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael-Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell“Maurigasima,”for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their[pg 382]own. Kæmpfer, in hisJapan,821gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.
At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.
Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy—their“Divine Man”and Demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil—the Creative God and the“Gods of the Ghost-world”; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco-Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either thesevenandtenRishi-Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki-y; ortenandsevenAmshaspands822(six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the“Builders”of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode823and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as“Divine Kings and Rulers.”But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis-Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods,“though they had become princes in human form.”And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:
It is said that this prince [Isis-Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.
It is said that this prince [Isis-Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.
When Abul Feda, in hisHistoria Anteïslamitica,824says that the“Sabæan language”was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In theMelelwa Nahil,825Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,826Agathodæmon is mentioned as a“King of Egypt.”TheCelepas Geraldinusgives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the“Divine Giant.”In hisBook of the Various Names of the Nile, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in theBible; then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris),“the author of thirty books,”was“Sabæan by origin”—i.e., belonged to the Saba,“a Host”:
Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.827
Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.827
Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In theBurham i Kati, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.828The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.829But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences fromlatent to active potency,i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.
Not only does Herodotus, the“father of history,”tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but[pg 384]the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.
As Creuzer shows:
It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.830
It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.830
It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260b.c.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them“a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.”As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:
All those historians and priests, soveraciouswhen repeating stories ofhumankings and men, suddenly becomeextremely suspiciousno sooner do they go backto their gods.
All those historians and priests, soveraciouswhen repeating stories ofhumankings and men, suddenly becomeextremely suspiciousno sooner do they go backto their gods.
But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:
Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or theReigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.831
Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or theReigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.831
These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the[pg 385]age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes.
Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north-east.
When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (b) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic.
Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at thesamenessof all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:
What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and Mortals.832
What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and Mortals.832
As says Panodorus:
Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that theReign of the Seven Godswho rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanitydescendedon Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.833
Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that theReign of the Seven Godswho rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanitydescendedon Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.833
Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs-Piromis—the Arch-prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples,born one from the other, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their firsthumanKing. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number,each of which had its name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus—unless[pg 386]the most truthful of historians, the“father of history,”is now to be accused of fibbing,just in this instance—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of thethreeDynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.834These“three”Dynasties are the three Races.
Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans.“Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata-varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) workspar excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.835
Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:
We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again,the natural good sense and the upright judgmentof the ancient peoples, quite foreign to ourentirely materialideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in themlivingbodies,animatedby spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature....This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.836
We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again,the natural good sense and the upright judgmentof the ancient peoples, quite foreign to ourentirely materialideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in themlivingbodies,animatedby spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature....This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.836
It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without[pg 387]such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.
Occultists believe in“spirits,”because theyfeel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.837Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.838
Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in hisŒdipus Ægyptiacus, writes:
I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.839
I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.839
As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in hisMeropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting,[pg 388]warrior race, and a pious, meditative race840—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.841The pious“city”wascontinually visited by the Gods: the belligerent“city”was inhabited by various beingsinvulnerableby iron, who could bemortally woundedonly by stone and wood.842De Rougemont treats this as a purefictionof Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:
Asupercheriewhich was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; asuppositionwhich yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus,the great transoceanic landsituated beyond that Atlantis and which“is reached,”it said,“by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,”εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but auniversal chimera!843
Asupercheriewhich was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; asuppositionwhich yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus,the great transoceanic landsituated beyond that Atlantis and which“is reached,”it said,“by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,”εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but auniversal chimera!843
It is certain that, whether“chimera”or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,844a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a“fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of aHolyIsland beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands ofImmortalMen?845Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?
As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:
If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, whichwe accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of hisLaws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth acertainform of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce thisfableinto a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old,in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; butone never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.846
If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, whichwe accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of hisLaws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth acertainform of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce thisfableinto a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old,in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; butone never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.846
That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,i.e.,a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”
It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.847[pg 390]When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.848
And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.
As say the Commentaries:
Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the“Lords of Wisdom,”for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres].
Now:
The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... Thefirst use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all,the processes by which the various cereals were first developedout of some wild grasses [?]—these are alldiscoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of aneffulgent dawn.849
The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... Thefirst use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all,the processes by which the various cereals were first developedout of some wild grasses [?]—these are alldiscoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of aneffulgent dawn.849
This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruitsunknown to earth, then we may remind the readerthat wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheatseven cubits high.850
Says the Egyptian Isis:
I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.851
I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.851
Sirius was called the Dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind.
The ChineseY-Kingattributes the discovery of agriculture to“the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”
Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,852since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.853
Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,852since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.853
The“Sons of God”haveexisted anddoexist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind-born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the JewishBible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is“independent criticism”so-called, or“internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter ofGenesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with theZohar.
There were giants in the earth in those days;and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].854
There were giants in the earth in those days;and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].854
What does this sentence,“and also after that,”signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earthbefore,i.e., before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race;and also after thatwhen other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the“mighty men ... men of renown,”among whom is placed Nimrod the[pg 392]“mighty hunter before the Lord,”that“God saw that the wickedness of man was great,”nor in the builders of Babel, for this wasafterthe Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who producedmonstra quædam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.
And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it:
Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.855
Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.855
This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,”as is candidly confessed by Fourmont856—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through theZoharto the Western, and theBook of Dzyanto the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what theZohartells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.857
We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the“Adversary,”is included inJobamong the“sons”of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.858But of this later on.
Now theZoharsays that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, werenotguilty, but mixedthemselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so.859Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the“Thrones.”860It also explains that the Ischins—“Men-spirits,”viri spirituales861—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not“small men”but“mensmaller(in the sense of inferiority) than men.”Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then,i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.
But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is amystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides:
There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.862
There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.862
And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says:
This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat.863
This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat.863
Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence“one separated from God”—the Devil. In theZohar, Azazel is rather the“sacrificial victim”than the“formal adversary of Jehovah,”as Spencer would have it.864
The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this“Host”by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his“Host”are simply the Hebrew“Prometheus,”and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. TheZoharshows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these“Spirits”as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the“transgressing”Angels in theBook of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to makeone see what is behind him—viz.,“magic mirrors.”Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.865“These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man”(i.e., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead-letter expresses?
It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform theanimalof clay into an immortalGod. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:
The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even Angels.
The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God, is above even Angels.
On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.
Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in theBibleand even in theNew Testamentwhich has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead-letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.
Many were the hints thrown out in this direction inIsis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the“bride”of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master“Get thee behind me, Satan”was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent ofGenesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words:“Say we not well thou hast a devil?”
Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in theRig Veda, the Occult volumepar excellenceof Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in thePurânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In theRig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In thePurânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the“enemies of the Gods”the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of themilitantHost. Turning to theBible, we find Satan, one of the“Sons of God,”866becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in theKabalah,867Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael,who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the ChaldæanBook of NumbersSamael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higherterrestrialWisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) isinfluencedby Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remainsuninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael-Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!