The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts[pg 396]of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.868Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun-gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is“one as God,”or his“Double”for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the“War in Heaven,”its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the“Dragons”held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the“Sons of the Dragon”and“Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent's Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the“Unavoidable Cycle,”more generally known as the“Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.In De Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this[pg 397]passage was a Snake's hole,“un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a“Son of the Snakes,”or a Serpent.869This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the“Snake's hole”is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the“Sons of the Serpent-god,”or“Sons of the Dragon.”“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,”says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes.“I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,”they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent's Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.870Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of“Builders”or“Architects,”for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them“frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,”as Taliesin says.871De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan.“I am Hivim,”they say.“Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”872Furthermore, the“War in Heaven”is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightenedInner Manhad to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the“Dragon-Slayer,”as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a“Son of the Serpent”and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in anewbody, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.[pg 398]Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply thedark sideof Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon's or Serpent's tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun's (Vikartana's) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King-Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon-serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliestPurânas. The children of Surasâ are the mighty“Dragons.”TheVâyu Purânareplacing the“Dragons”of Surasâ of theVishnu Purânaby the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the“Dragons”and“Serpents”of Wisdom.We have only to compare the Sun-gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in[pg 399]exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun-gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other.Let us take Agni the Fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the“Angel of the Sun,”the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the“Saviour”—and proceed in order.(1) Agni, the Fire-god, is called Vaishvânara in theRig Veda. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant-demon,873whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,874and live in Hiranyapura,“the golden city, floating in the air.”875Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire-god, or Sun (Kashyapa-Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, thesix-facedplanet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin-youth, born of Agni,876for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.877Târaka's Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.878While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent-Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra-han, the“Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu,“Leader of the Celestial Host.”Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is[pg 400]called Târaka-jit,“Vanquisher of Târaka,”879Kumâra Guha, the“mysterious Virgin-youth,”Siddha-sena,“Leader of the Siddhas,”and Shakti-dhara,“Spear-holder.”(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa-Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the“Angel of the Sun,”who is“like,”and“one with, God.”Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be-questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos-Apollo, the“Light of Life and of the World,”880who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun-godpar excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,881and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, thetoo holy and wiseDemon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the“golden star island,”the“earth which floats in the air,”which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt“from all sensual love.”882He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the“red Dragon,”connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the[pg 401]spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of theesotericmeaning of theIliadandOdyssey, he would have understood St. John'sRevelation, and even thePentateuch, better than he does. For the way to theBiblelies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John'sRevelation, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, whocurses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.883This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.The gods have weapons forged for them,884and Merodach [the Archangel Michael inRevelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.885This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.The symbols of the“Dragon”and“War in Heaven”have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In theVedasthis Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the[pg 402]terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the“Slayer of Vritra,”as Michael is called the Conqueror and“Slayer of the Dragon.”Both these“Enemies”are then the“Old Dragon”precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in theVendîdâd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to“invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares886of the Earth”;887which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words:“I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”888The“Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one“of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of thosemanifestedPowers; and“their sons and their flocks”refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.“Amshaspand”is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the“maker of thematerialworld.”Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as“the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”889who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent ofGenesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the“Red Dragon.”He[pg 403]is the Angel of Death, for theTalmudsays that“the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.”He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra.“Simoon is called Atabutos”or—Diabolos, the Devil.Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in theBook of the Dead—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,890whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.891Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their“Slayers”are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods orCreativePowers. In theBook of the Deadthose principles are called the“Sons of Rebellion.”892In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called thedeceiving Serpent... calls the Sons of Rebellion inAir, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.893In the ScandinavianEddasthe“War”of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the“Wolf”who comes out of“Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The“Evil Spirits,”894who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globesince its creation, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.895[pg 404]This is only another version of the Hindû“War in Heaven,”between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves aswiseas the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the“Brotherhood of the Serpent,”have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem ofWisdom, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All-good, not the All-bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. Thedraco volans, the“flying dragon”of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.896The Jews formerly worshipped the latteridolthemselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the“One God.”897The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an“Adversary”(from the[pg 405]verbshatana,“to be adverse,”“to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest“Adversary”of all the other Gods—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the“Adversary”of men. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter ofGenesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first tocreatethat original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the“Lord God”himself, who, saying,“It is not good that the man should be alone,”made woman, and“brought her unto the man.”898If the unpleasant little incident that followedwasand is still to be regarded as the“original sin,”then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either“male and female,”or“alone.”It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the“agent provocateur,”and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel,“the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,”the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity inGenesisin their dead-letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; theyknowhow to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a“blind”purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.899The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters ofGenesisvariously as“God,”the“Lord God,”and“Lord”simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in theKabalah. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv ofGenesis, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed intomankind—male[pg 406]and female, Jah-veh.900The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit,“ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in hisincorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the“boneless”Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the“Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam thedualman, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel,the first natural woman,901and sheds thevirgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv ofGenesis, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that“Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”902and theTalmudadding that“the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”903—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular.There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil.Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—that man may live for ever.Satan represents metaphysically simply thereverseor thepolar oppositeof everything in Nature.904He is the“Adversary,”allegorically, the“Murderer,”and the great Enemy ofall, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called[pg 407]Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and therationaleof certain early Christian sects—calledhereticaland viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of thetreacherousapostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.905They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda-baoth.906This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that“Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes offallenmen—allegorically, andthose men themselves—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni-Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil,“of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.”And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans,[pg 408]simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent ofGenesis, and thus prove the new dogma.
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts[pg 396]of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.868Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun-gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is“one as God,”or his“Double”for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the“War in Heaven,”its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the“Dragons”held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the“Sons of the Dragon”and“Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent's Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the“Unavoidable Cycle,”more generally known as the“Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.In De Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this[pg 397]passage was a Snake's hole,“un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a“Son of the Snakes,”or a Serpent.869This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the“Snake's hole”is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the“Sons of the Serpent-god,”or“Sons of the Dragon.”“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,”says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes.“I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,”they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent's Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.870Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of“Builders”or“Architects,”for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them“frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,”as Taliesin says.871De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan.“I am Hivim,”they say.“Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”872Furthermore, the“War in Heaven”is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightenedInner Manhad to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the“Dragon-Slayer,”as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a“Son of the Serpent”and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in anewbody, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.[pg 398]Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply thedark sideof Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon's or Serpent's tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun's (Vikartana's) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King-Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon-serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliestPurânas. The children of Surasâ are the mighty“Dragons.”TheVâyu Purânareplacing the“Dragons”of Surasâ of theVishnu Purânaby the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the“Dragons”and“Serpents”of Wisdom.We have only to compare the Sun-gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in[pg 399]exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun-gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other.Let us take Agni the Fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the“Angel of the Sun,”the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the“Saviour”—and proceed in order.(1) Agni, the Fire-god, is called Vaishvânara in theRig Veda. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant-demon,873whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,874and live in Hiranyapura,“the golden city, floating in the air.”875Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire-god, or Sun (Kashyapa-Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, thesix-facedplanet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin-youth, born of Agni,876for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.877Târaka's Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.878While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent-Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra-han, the“Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu,“Leader of the Celestial Host.”Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is[pg 400]called Târaka-jit,“Vanquisher of Târaka,”879Kumâra Guha, the“mysterious Virgin-youth,”Siddha-sena,“Leader of the Siddhas,”and Shakti-dhara,“Spear-holder.”(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa-Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the“Angel of the Sun,”who is“like,”and“one with, God.”Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be-questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos-Apollo, the“Light of Life and of the World,”880who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun-godpar excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,881and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, thetoo holy and wiseDemon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the“golden star island,”the“earth which floats in the air,”which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt“from all sensual love.”882He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the“red Dragon,”connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the[pg 401]spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of theesotericmeaning of theIliadandOdyssey, he would have understood St. John'sRevelation, and even thePentateuch, better than he does. For the way to theBiblelies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John'sRevelation, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, whocurses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.883This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.The gods have weapons forged for them,884and Merodach [the Archangel Michael inRevelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.885This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.The symbols of the“Dragon”and“War in Heaven”have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In theVedasthis Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the[pg 402]terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the“Slayer of Vritra,”as Michael is called the Conqueror and“Slayer of the Dragon.”Both these“Enemies”are then the“Old Dragon”precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in theVendîdâd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to“invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares886of the Earth”;887which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words:“I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”888The“Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one“of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of thosemanifestedPowers; and“their sons and their flocks”refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.“Amshaspand”is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the“maker of thematerialworld.”Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as“the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”889who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent ofGenesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the“Red Dragon.”He[pg 403]is the Angel of Death, for theTalmudsays that“the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.”He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra.“Simoon is called Atabutos”or—Diabolos, the Devil.Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in theBook of the Dead—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,890whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.891Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their“Slayers”are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods orCreativePowers. In theBook of the Deadthose principles are called the“Sons of Rebellion.”892In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called thedeceiving Serpent... calls the Sons of Rebellion inAir, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.893In the ScandinavianEddasthe“War”of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the“Wolf”who comes out of“Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The“Evil Spirits,”894who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globesince its creation, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.895[pg 404]This is only another version of the Hindû“War in Heaven,”between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves aswiseas the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the“Brotherhood of the Serpent,”have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem ofWisdom, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All-good, not the All-bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. Thedraco volans, the“flying dragon”of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.896The Jews formerly worshipped the latteridolthemselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the“One God.”897The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an“Adversary”(from the[pg 405]verbshatana,“to be adverse,”“to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest“Adversary”of all the other Gods—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the“Adversary”of men. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter ofGenesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first tocreatethat original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the“Lord God”himself, who, saying,“It is not good that the man should be alone,”made woman, and“brought her unto the man.”898If the unpleasant little incident that followedwasand is still to be regarded as the“original sin,”then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either“male and female,”or“alone.”It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the“agent provocateur,”and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel,“the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,”the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity inGenesisin their dead-letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; theyknowhow to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a“blind”purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.899The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters ofGenesisvariously as“God,”the“Lord God,”and“Lord”simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in theKabalah. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv ofGenesis, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed intomankind—male[pg 406]and female, Jah-veh.900The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit,“ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in hisincorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the“boneless”Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the“Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam thedualman, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel,the first natural woman,901and sheds thevirgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv ofGenesis, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that“Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”902and theTalmudadding that“the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”903—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular.There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil.Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—that man may live for ever.Satan represents metaphysically simply thereverseor thepolar oppositeof everything in Nature.904He is the“Adversary,”allegorically, the“Murderer,”and the great Enemy ofall, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called[pg 407]Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and therationaleof certain early Christian sects—calledhereticaland viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of thetreacherousapostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.905They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda-baoth.906This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that“Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes offallenmen—allegorically, andthose men themselves—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni-Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil,“of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.”And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans,[pg 408]simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent ofGenesis, and thus prove the new dogma.
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts[pg 396]of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.868Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun-gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is“one as God,”or his“Double”for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the“War in Heaven,”its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the“Dragons”held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the“Sons of the Dragon”and“Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent's Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the“Unavoidable Cycle,”more generally known as the“Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.In De Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this[pg 397]passage was a Snake's hole,“un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a“Son of the Snakes,”or a Serpent.869This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the“Snake's hole”is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the“Sons of the Serpent-god,”or“Sons of the Dragon.”“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,”says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes.“I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,”they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent's Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.870Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of“Builders”or“Architects,”for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them“frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,”as Taliesin says.871De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan.“I am Hivim,”they say.“Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”872Furthermore, the“War in Heaven”is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightenedInner Manhad to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the“Dragon-Slayer,”as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a“Son of the Serpent”and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in anewbody, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.[pg 398]Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply thedark sideof Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon's or Serpent's tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun's (Vikartana's) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King-Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon-serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliestPurânas. The children of Surasâ are the mighty“Dragons.”TheVâyu Purânareplacing the“Dragons”of Surasâ of theVishnu Purânaby the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the“Dragons”and“Serpents”of Wisdom.We have only to compare the Sun-gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in[pg 399]exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun-gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other.Let us take Agni the Fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the“Angel of the Sun,”the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the“Saviour”—and proceed in order.(1) Agni, the Fire-god, is called Vaishvânara in theRig Veda. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant-demon,873whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,874and live in Hiranyapura,“the golden city, floating in the air.”875Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire-god, or Sun (Kashyapa-Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, thesix-facedplanet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin-youth, born of Agni,876for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.877Târaka's Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.878While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent-Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra-han, the“Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu,“Leader of the Celestial Host.”Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is[pg 400]called Târaka-jit,“Vanquisher of Târaka,”879Kumâra Guha, the“mysterious Virgin-youth,”Siddha-sena,“Leader of the Siddhas,”and Shakti-dhara,“Spear-holder.”(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa-Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the“Angel of the Sun,”who is“like,”and“one with, God.”Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be-questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos-Apollo, the“Light of Life and of the World,”880who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun-godpar excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,881and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, thetoo holy and wiseDemon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the“golden star island,”the“earth which floats in the air,”which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt“from all sensual love.”882He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the“red Dragon,”connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the[pg 401]spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of theesotericmeaning of theIliadandOdyssey, he would have understood St. John'sRevelation, and even thePentateuch, better than he does. For the way to theBiblelies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John'sRevelation, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, whocurses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.883This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.The gods have weapons forged for them,884and Merodach [the Archangel Michael inRevelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.885This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.The symbols of the“Dragon”and“War in Heaven”have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In theVedasthis Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the[pg 402]terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the“Slayer of Vritra,”as Michael is called the Conqueror and“Slayer of the Dragon.”Both these“Enemies”are then the“Old Dragon”precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in theVendîdâd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to“invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares886of the Earth”;887which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words:“I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”888The“Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one“of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of thosemanifestedPowers; and“their sons and their flocks”refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.“Amshaspand”is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the“maker of thematerialworld.”Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as“the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”889who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent ofGenesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the“Red Dragon.”He[pg 403]is the Angel of Death, for theTalmudsays that“the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.”He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra.“Simoon is called Atabutos”or—Diabolos, the Devil.Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in theBook of the Dead—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,890whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.891Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their“Slayers”are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods orCreativePowers. In theBook of the Deadthose principles are called the“Sons of Rebellion.”892In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called thedeceiving Serpent... calls the Sons of Rebellion inAir, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.893In the ScandinavianEddasthe“War”of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the“Wolf”who comes out of“Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The“Evil Spirits,”894who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globesince its creation, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.895[pg 404]This is only another version of the Hindû“War in Heaven,”between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves aswiseas the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the“Brotherhood of the Serpent,”have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem ofWisdom, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All-good, not the All-bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. Thedraco volans, the“flying dragon”of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.896The Jews formerly worshipped the latteridolthemselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the“One God.”897The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an“Adversary”(from the[pg 405]verbshatana,“to be adverse,”“to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest“Adversary”of all the other Gods—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the“Adversary”of men. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter ofGenesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first tocreatethat original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the“Lord God”himself, who, saying,“It is not good that the man should be alone,”made woman, and“brought her unto the man.”898If the unpleasant little incident that followedwasand is still to be regarded as the“original sin,”then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either“male and female,”or“alone.”It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the“agent provocateur,”and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel,“the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,”the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity inGenesisin their dead-letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; theyknowhow to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a“blind”purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.899The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters ofGenesisvariously as“God,”the“Lord God,”and“Lord”simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in theKabalah. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv ofGenesis, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed intomankind—male[pg 406]and female, Jah-veh.900The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit,“ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in hisincorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the“boneless”Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the“Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam thedualman, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel,the first natural woman,901and sheds thevirgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv ofGenesis, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that“Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”902and theTalmudadding that“the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”903—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular.There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil.Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—that man may live for ever.Satan represents metaphysically simply thereverseor thepolar oppositeof everything in Nature.904He is the“Adversary,”allegorically, the“Murderer,”and the great Enemy ofall, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called[pg 407]Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and therationaleof certain early Christian sects—calledhereticaland viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of thetreacherousapostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.905They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda-baoth.906This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that“Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes offallenmen—allegorically, andthose men themselves—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni-Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil,“of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.”And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans,[pg 408]simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent ofGenesis, and thus prove the new dogma.
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts[pg 396]of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.868Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun-gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is“one as God,”or his“Double”for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the“War in Heaven,”its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the“Dragons”held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the“Sons of the Dragon”and“Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent's Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the“Unavoidable Cycle,”more generally known as the“Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.In De Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this[pg 397]passage was a Snake's hole,“un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a“Son of the Snakes,”or a Serpent.869This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the“Snake's hole”is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the“Sons of the Serpent-god,”or“Sons of the Dragon.”“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,”says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes.“I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,”they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent's Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.870Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of“Builders”or“Architects,”for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them“frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,”as Taliesin says.871De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan.“I am Hivim,”they say.“Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”872Furthermore, the“War in Heaven”is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightenedInner Manhad to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the“Dragon-Slayer,”as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a“Son of the Serpent”and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in anewbody, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.[pg 398]Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply thedark sideof Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon's or Serpent's tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun's (Vikartana's) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King-Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon-serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliestPurânas. The children of Surasâ are the mighty“Dragons.”TheVâyu Purânareplacing the“Dragons”of Surasâ of theVishnu Purânaby the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the“Dragons”and“Serpents”of Wisdom.We have only to compare the Sun-gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in[pg 399]exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun-gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other.Let us take Agni the Fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the“Angel of the Sun,”the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the“Saviour”—and proceed in order.(1) Agni, the Fire-god, is called Vaishvânara in theRig Veda. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant-demon,873whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,874and live in Hiranyapura,“the golden city, floating in the air.”875Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire-god, or Sun (Kashyapa-Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, thesix-facedplanet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin-youth, born of Agni,876for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.877Târaka's Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.878While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent-Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra-han, the“Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu,“Leader of the Celestial Host.”Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is[pg 400]called Târaka-jit,“Vanquisher of Târaka,”879Kumâra Guha, the“mysterious Virgin-youth,”Siddha-sena,“Leader of the Siddhas,”and Shakti-dhara,“Spear-holder.”(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa-Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the“Angel of the Sun,”who is“like,”and“one with, God.”Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be-questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos-Apollo, the“Light of Life and of the World,”880who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun-godpar excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,881and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, thetoo holy and wiseDemon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the“golden star island,”the“earth which floats in the air,”which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt“from all sensual love.”882He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the“red Dragon,”connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the[pg 401]spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of theesotericmeaning of theIliadandOdyssey, he would have understood St. John'sRevelation, and even thePentateuch, better than he does. For the way to theBiblelies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John'sRevelation, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, whocurses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.883This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.The gods have weapons forged for them,884and Merodach [the Archangel Michael inRevelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.885This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.The symbols of the“Dragon”and“War in Heaven”have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In theVedasthis Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the[pg 402]terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the“Slayer of Vritra,”as Michael is called the Conqueror and“Slayer of the Dragon.”Both these“Enemies”are then the“Old Dragon”precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in theVendîdâd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to“invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares886of the Earth”;887which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words:“I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”888The“Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one“of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of thosemanifestedPowers; and“their sons and their flocks”refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.“Amshaspand”is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the“maker of thematerialworld.”Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as“the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”889who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent ofGenesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the“Red Dragon.”He[pg 403]is the Angel of Death, for theTalmudsays that“the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.”He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra.“Simoon is called Atabutos”or—Diabolos, the Devil.Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in theBook of the Dead—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,890whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.891Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their“Slayers”are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods orCreativePowers. In theBook of the Deadthose principles are called the“Sons of Rebellion.”892In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called thedeceiving Serpent... calls the Sons of Rebellion inAir, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.893In the ScandinavianEddasthe“War”of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the“Wolf”who comes out of“Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The“Evil Spirits,”894who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globesince its creation, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.895[pg 404]This is only another version of the Hindû“War in Heaven,”between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves aswiseas the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the“Brotherhood of the Serpent,”have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem ofWisdom, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All-good, not the All-bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. Thedraco volans, the“flying dragon”of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.896The Jews formerly worshipped the latteridolthemselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the“One God.”897The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an“Adversary”(from the[pg 405]verbshatana,“to be adverse,”“to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest“Adversary”of all the other Gods—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the“Adversary”of men. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter ofGenesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first tocreatethat original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the“Lord God”himself, who, saying,“It is not good that the man should be alone,”made woman, and“brought her unto the man.”898If the unpleasant little incident that followedwasand is still to be regarded as the“original sin,”then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either“male and female,”or“alone.”It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the“agent provocateur,”and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel,“the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,”the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity inGenesisin their dead-letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; theyknowhow to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a“blind”purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.899The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters ofGenesisvariously as“God,”the“Lord God,”and“Lord”simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in theKabalah. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv ofGenesis, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed intomankind—male[pg 406]and female, Jah-veh.900The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit,“ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in hisincorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the“boneless”Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the“Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam thedualman, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel,the first natural woman,901and sheds thevirgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv ofGenesis, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that“Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”902and theTalmudadding that“the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”903—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular.There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil.Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—that man may live for ever.Satan represents metaphysically simply thereverseor thepolar oppositeof everything in Nature.904He is the“Adversary,”allegorically, the“Murderer,”and the great Enemy ofall, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called[pg 407]Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and therationaleof certain early Christian sects—calledhereticaland viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of thetreacherousapostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.905They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda-baoth.906This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that“Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes offallenmen—allegorically, andthose men themselves—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni-Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil,“of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.”And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans,[pg 408]simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent ofGenesis, and thus prove the new dogma.
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts[pg 396]of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.868Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun-gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is“one as God,”or his“Double”for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the“War in Heaven,”its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the“Dragons”held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the“Sons of the Dragon”and“Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent's Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the“Unavoidable Cycle,”more generally known as the“Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.In De Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this[pg 397]passage was a Snake's hole,“un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a“Son of the Snakes,”or a Serpent.869This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the“Snake's hole”is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the“Sons of the Serpent-god,”or“Sons of the Dragon.”“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,”says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes.“I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,”they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent's Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.870Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of“Builders”or“Architects,”for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them“frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,”as Taliesin says.871De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan.“I am Hivim,”they say.“Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”872Furthermore, the“War in Heaven”is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightenedInner Manhad to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the“Dragon-Slayer,”as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a“Son of the Serpent”and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in anewbody, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.[pg 398]Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply thedark sideof Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon's or Serpent's tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun's (Vikartana's) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King-Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon-serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliestPurânas. The children of Surasâ are the mighty“Dragons.”TheVâyu Purânareplacing the“Dragons”of Surasâ of theVishnu Purânaby the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the“Dragons”and“Serpents”of Wisdom.We have only to compare the Sun-gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in[pg 399]exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun-gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other.Let us take Agni the Fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the“Angel of the Sun,”the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the“Saviour”—and proceed in order.(1) Agni, the Fire-god, is called Vaishvânara in theRig Veda. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant-demon,873whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,874and live in Hiranyapura,“the golden city, floating in the air.”875Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire-god, or Sun (Kashyapa-Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, thesix-facedplanet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin-youth, born of Agni,876for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.877Târaka's Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.878While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent-Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra-han, the“Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu,“Leader of the Celestial Host.”Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is[pg 400]called Târaka-jit,“Vanquisher of Târaka,”879Kumâra Guha, the“mysterious Virgin-youth,”Siddha-sena,“Leader of the Siddhas,”and Shakti-dhara,“Spear-holder.”(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa-Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the“Angel of the Sun,”who is“like,”and“one with, God.”Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be-questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos-Apollo, the“Light of Life and of the World,”880who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun-godpar excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,881and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, thetoo holy and wiseDemon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the“golden star island,”the“earth which floats in the air,”which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt“from all sensual love.”882He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the“red Dragon,”connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the[pg 401]spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of theesotericmeaning of theIliadandOdyssey, he would have understood St. John'sRevelation, and even thePentateuch, better than he does. For the way to theBiblelies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John'sRevelation, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, whocurses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.883This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.The gods have weapons forged for them,884and Merodach [the Archangel Michael inRevelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.885This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.The symbols of the“Dragon”and“War in Heaven”have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In theVedasthis Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the[pg 402]terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the“Slayer of Vritra,”as Michael is called the Conqueror and“Slayer of the Dragon.”Both these“Enemies”are then the“Old Dragon”precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in theVendîdâd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to“invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares886of the Earth”;887which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words:“I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”888The“Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one“of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of thosemanifestedPowers; and“their sons and their flocks”refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.“Amshaspand”is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the“maker of thematerialworld.”Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as“the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”889who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent ofGenesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the“Red Dragon.”He[pg 403]is the Angel of Death, for theTalmudsays that“the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.”He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra.“Simoon is called Atabutos”or—Diabolos, the Devil.Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in theBook of the Dead—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,890whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.891Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their“Slayers”are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods orCreativePowers. In theBook of the Deadthose principles are called the“Sons of Rebellion.”892In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called thedeceiving Serpent... calls the Sons of Rebellion inAir, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.893In the ScandinavianEddasthe“War”of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the“Wolf”who comes out of“Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The“Evil Spirits,”894who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globesince its creation, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.895[pg 404]This is only another version of the Hindû“War in Heaven,”between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves aswiseas the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the“Brotherhood of the Serpent,”have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem ofWisdom, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All-good, not the All-bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. Thedraco volans, the“flying dragon”of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.896The Jews formerly worshipped the latteridolthemselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the“One God.”897The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an“Adversary”(from the[pg 405]verbshatana,“to be adverse,”“to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest“Adversary”of all the other Gods—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the“Adversary”of men. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter ofGenesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first tocreatethat original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the“Lord God”himself, who, saying,“It is not good that the man should be alone,”made woman, and“brought her unto the man.”898If the unpleasant little incident that followedwasand is still to be regarded as the“original sin,”then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either“male and female,”or“alone.”It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the“agent provocateur,”and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel,“the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,”the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity inGenesisin their dead-letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; theyknowhow to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a“blind”purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.899The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters ofGenesisvariously as“God,”the“Lord God,”and“Lord”simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in theKabalah. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv ofGenesis, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed intomankind—male[pg 406]and female, Jah-veh.900The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit,“ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in hisincorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the“boneless”Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the“Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam thedualman, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel,the first natural woman,901and sheds thevirgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv ofGenesis, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that“Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”902and theTalmudadding that“the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”903—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular.There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil.Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—that man may live for ever.Satan represents metaphysically simply thereverseor thepolar oppositeof everything in Nature.904He is the“Adversary,”allegorically, the“Murderer,”and the great Enemy ofall, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called[pg 407]Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and therationaleof certain early Christian sects—calledhereticaland viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of thetreacherousapostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.905They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda-baoth.906This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that“Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes offallenmen—allegorically, andthose men themselves—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni-Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil,“of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.”And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans,[pg 408]simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent ofGenesis, and thus prove the new dogma.
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts[pg 396]of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.868Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun-gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is“one as God,”or his“Double”for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the“War in Heaven,”its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the“Dragons”held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the“Sons of the Dragon”and“Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent's Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the“Unavoidable Cycle,”more generally known as the“Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.In De Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this[pg 397]passage was a Snake's hole,“un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a“Son of the Snakes,”or a Serpent.869This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the“Snake's hole”is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the“Sons of the Serpent-god,”or“Sons of the Dragon.”“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,”says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes.“I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,”they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent's Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.870Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of“Builders”or“Architects,”for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them“frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,”as Taliesin says.871De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan.“I am Hivim,”they say.“Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”872Furthermore, the“War in Heaven”is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightenedInner Manhad to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the“Dragon-Slayer,”as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a“Son of the Serpent”and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in anewbody, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.[pg 398]Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply thedark sideof Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon's or Serpent's tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun's (Vikartana's) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King-Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon-serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliestPurânas. The children of Surasâ are the mighty“Dragons.”TheVâyu Purânareplacing the“Dragons”of Surasâ of theVishnu Purânaby the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the“Dragons”and“Serpents”of Wisdom.We have only to compare the Sun-gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in[pg 399]exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun-gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other.Let us take Agni the Fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the“Angel of the Sun,”the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the“Saviour”—and proceed in order.(1) Agni, the Fire-god, is called Vaishvânara in theRig Veda. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant-demon,873whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,874and live in Hiranyapura,“the golden city, floating in the air.”875Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire-god, or Sun (Kashyapa-Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, thesix-facedplanet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin-youth, born of Agni,876for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.877Târaka's Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.878While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent-Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra-han, the“Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu,“Leader of the Celestial Host.”Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is[pg 400]called Târaka-jit,“Vanquisher of Târaka,”879Kumâra Guha, the“mysterious Virgin-youth,”Siddha-sena,“Leader of the Siddhas,”and Shakti-dhara,“Spear-holder.”(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa-Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the“Angel of the Sun,”who is“like,”and“one with, God.”Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be-questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos-Apollo, the“Light of Life and of the World,”880who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun-godpar excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,881and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, thetoo holy and wiseDemon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the“golden star island,”the“earth which floats in the air,”which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt“from all sensual love.”882He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the“red Dragon,”connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the[pg 401]spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of theesotericmeaning of theIliadandOdyssey, he would have understood St. John'sRevelation, and even thePentateuch, better than he does. For the way to theBiblelies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John'sRevelation, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, whocurses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.883This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.The gods have weapons forged for them,884and Merodach [the Archangel Michael inRevelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.885This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.The symbols of the“Dragon”and“War in Heaven”have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In theVedasthis Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the[pg 402]terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the“Slayer of Vritra,”as Michael is called the Conqueror and“Slayer of the Dragon.”Both these“Enemies”are then the“Old Dragon”precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in theVendîdâd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to“invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares886of the Earth”;887which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words:“I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”888The“Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one“of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of thosemanifestedPowers; and“their sons and their flocks”refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.“Amshaspand”is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the“maker of thematerialworld.”Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as“the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”889who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent ofGenesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the“Red Dragon.”He[pg 403]is the Angel of Death, for theTalmudsays that“the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.”He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra.“Simoon is called Atabutos”or—Diabolos, the Devil.Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in theBook of the Dead—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,890whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.891Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their“Slayers”are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods orCreativePowers. In theBook of the Deadthose principles are called the“Sons of Rebellion.”892In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called thedeceiving Serpent... calls the Sons of Rebellion inAir, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.893In the ScandinavianEddasthe“War”of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the“Wolf”who comes out of“Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The“Evil Spirits,”894who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globesince its creation, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.895[pg 404]This is only another version of the Hindû“War in Heaven,”between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves aswiseas the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the“Brotherhood of the Serpent,”have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem ofWisdom, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All-good, not the All-bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. Thedraco volans, the“flying dragon”of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.896The Jews formerly worshipped the latteridolthemselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the“One God.”897The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an“Adversary”(from the[pg 405]verbshatana,“to be adverse,”“to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest“Adversary”of all the other Gods—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the“Adversary”of men. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter ofGenesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first tocreatethat original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the“Lord God”himself, who, saying,“It is not good that the man should be alone,”made woman, and“brought her unto the man.”898If the unpleasant little incident that followedwasand is still to be regarded as the“original sin,”then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either“male and female,”or“alone.”It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the“agent provocateur,”and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel,“the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,”the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity inGenesisin their dead-letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; theyknowhow to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a“blind”purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.899The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters ofGenesisvariously as“God,”the“Lord God,”and“Lord”simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in theKabalah. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv ofGenesis, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed intomankind—male[pg 406]and female, Jah-veh.900The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit,“ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in hisincorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the“boneless”Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the“Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam thedualman, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel,the first natural woman,901and sheds thevirgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv ofGenesis, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that“Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”902and theTalmudadding that“the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”903—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular.There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil.Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—that man may live for ever.Satan represents metaphysically simply thereverseor thepolar oppositeof everything in Nature.904He is the“Adversary,”allegorically, the“Murderer,”and the great Enemy ofall, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called[pg 407]Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and therationaleof certain early Christian sects—calledhereticaland viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of thetreacherousapostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.905They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda-baoth.906This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that“Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes offallenmen—allegorically, andthose men themselves—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni-Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil,“of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.”And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans,[pg 408]simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent ofGenesis, and thus prove the new dogma.
Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts[pg 396]of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,
Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.868
Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.868
Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun-gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is“one as God,”or his“Double”for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the“War in Heaven,”its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the“Dragons”held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the“Sons of the Dragon”and“Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.
There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent's Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the“Unavoidable Cycle,”more generally known as the“Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.
In De Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this[pg 397]passage was a Snake's hole,“un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a“Son of the Snakes,”or a Serpent.869
This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the“Snake's hole”is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the“Sons of the Serpent-god,”or“Sons of the Dragon.”
“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,”says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes.“I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,”they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent's Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.870Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of“Builders”or“Architects,”for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them“frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,”as Taliesin says.871
De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan.“I am Hivim,”they say.“Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”872
Furthermore, the“War in Heaven”is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightenedInner Manhad to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the“Dragon-Slayer,”as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a“Son of the Serpent”and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in anewbody, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.
Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply thedark sideof Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.
Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon's or Serpent's tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun's (Vikartana's) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.
The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King-Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon-serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliestPurânas. The children of Surasâ are the mighty“Dragons.”TheVâyu Purânareplacing the“Dragons”of Surasâ of theVishnu Purânaby the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the“Dragons”and“Serpents”of Wisdom.
We have only to compare the Sun-gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in[pg 399]exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun-gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other.
Let us take Agni the Fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the“Angel of the Sun,”the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the“Saviour”—and proceed in order.
(1) Agni, the Fire-god, is called Vaishvânara in theRig Veda. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant-demon,873whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,874and live in Hiranyapura,“the golden city, floating in the air.”875Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire-god, or Sun (Kashyapa-Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, thesix-facedplanet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin-youth, born of Agni,876for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.877Târaka's Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.878While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent-Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra-han, the“Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu,“Leader of the Celestial Host.”Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is[pg 400]called Târaka-jit,“Vanquisher of Târaka,”879Kumâra Guha, the“mysterious Virgin-youth,”Siddha-sena,“Leader of the Siddhas,”and Shakti-dhara,“Spear-holder.”
(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa-Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the“Angel of the Sun,”who is“like,”and“one with, God.”Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be-questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.
Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos-Apollo, the“Light of Life and of the World,”880who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun-godpar excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,881and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, thetoo holy and wiseDemon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the“golden star island,”the“earth which floats in the air,”which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt“from all sensual love.”882He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the“red Dragon,”connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the[pg 401]spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of theesotericmeaning of theIliadandOdyssey, he would have understood St. John'sRevelation, and even thePentateuch, better than he does. For the way to theBiblelies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.
(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John'sRevelation, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:
Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, whocurses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.883This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.The gods have weapons forged for them,884and Merodach [the Archangel Michael inRevelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.885
Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, whocurses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.883
This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.
The gods have weapons forged for them,884and Merodach [the Archangel Michael inRevelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.885
This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.
The symbols of the“Dragon”and“War in Heaven”have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In theVedasthis Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the[pg 402]terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the“Slayer of Vritra,”as Michael is called the Conqueror and“Slayer of the Dragon.”Both these“Enemies”are then the“Old Dragon”precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.
The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in theVendîdâd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to“invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares886of the Earth”;887which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words:“I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”888The“Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one“of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of thosemanifestedPowers; and“their sons and their flocks”refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.“Amshaspand”is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the“maker of thematerialworld.”Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as“the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”889who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.
Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent ofGenesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the“Red Dragon.”He[pg 403]is the Angel of Death, for theTalmudsays that“the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.”He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra.“Simoon is called Atabutos”or—Diabolos, the Devil.
Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in theBook of the Dead—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,890whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.891
Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their“Slayers”are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods orCreativePowers. In theBook of the Deadthose principles are called the“Sons of Rebellion.”892
In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called thedeceiving Serpent... calls the Sons of Rebellion inAir, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.893
In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called thedeceiving Serpent... calls the Sons of Rebellion inAir, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.893
In the ScandinavianEddasthe“War”of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the“Wolf”who comes out of“Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The“Evil Spirits,”894who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globesince its creation, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:
The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.895
The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.895
This is only another version of the Hindû“War in Heaven,”between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.
It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves aswiseas the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the“Brotherhood of the Serpent,”have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem ofWisdom, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All-good, not the All-bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. Thedraco volans, the“flying dragon”of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.896The Jews formerly worshipped the latteridolthemselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the“One God.”897
The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an“Adversary”(from the[pg 405]verbshatana,“to be adverse,”“to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest“Adversary”of all the other Gods—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the“Adversary”of men. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter ofGenesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first tocreatethat original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the“Lord God”himself, who, saying,“It is not good that the man should be alone,”made woman, and“brought her unto the man.”898If the unpleasant little incident that followedwasand is still to be regarded as the“original sin,”then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either“male and female,”or“alone.”It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the“agent provocateur,”and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel,“the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,”the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity inGenesisin their dead-letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; theyknowhow to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.
There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a“blind”purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.899The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters ofGenesisvariously as“God,”the“Lord God,”and“Lord”simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in theKabalah. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv ofGenesis, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed intomankind—male[pg 406]and female, Jah-veh.900The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit,“ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in hisincorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the“boneless”Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the“Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam thedualman, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel,the first natural woman,901and sheds thevirgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv ofGenesis, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that“Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”902and theTalmudadding that“the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”903—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular.There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil.Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—that man may live for ever.
Satan represents metaphysically simply thereverseor thepolar oppositeof everything in Nature.904He is the“Adversary,”allegorically, the“Murderer,”and the great Enemy ofall, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called[pg 407]Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and therationaleof certain early Christian sects—calledhereticaland viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of thetreacherousapostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.
As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.905They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda-baoth.906This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that“Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”
The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes offallenmen—allegorically, andthose men themselves—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni-Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil,“of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.”And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans,[pg 408]simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent ofGenesis, and thus prove the new dogma.