Chapter 39

Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon.It matters little whether it were Isis, or Ceres, the Kabiria, or again the Kabiri, who taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolizing all the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either amythalong with the others, or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc.—then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, and along with it all the Patriarchs—the Antediluvian and Pre-Atlantean Titans. As has now been discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the God ofpower and generation, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.907Tubal-Cain is a Kabir,“an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”; or—if this will please better—he is one with Hephæstus or Vulcan. Jabal again is taken from the Kabiri, instructors in agriculture,“such as have cattle,”and Jubal is“the father of all those who handle the harp,”he, ortheywho fabricated the harp for Cronus and the trident for Poseidon.908The history or“fables”about the mysterious Telchines—fables echoing each and all the archaic events of our Esoteric Teachings—furnish us with a key to the origin of Cain's genealogy in the third chapter ofGenesis; they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies“the accursed blood”of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines—it is argued—the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the Gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a Deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah?The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteans also. Says Decharme:[pg 409]Like Lemnos and Samothrace, Rhodes, the birth-place of the Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation.909The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like the Samothrace of the Kabiri, it is connected by the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present.But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every Pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs contain, in poetized form, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies of Seth and Cain,910and the further equally futile attempt to show them asreal,historicalmen, has only led to more serious enquiries into the history of the past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposedrevelation. For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Cronus-Saturn is also proved.That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Bryant911concurs with all those who are of opinion that Sydic, or Sadic, was the Patriarch Noah, and also Melchizedek; and that the name by which he is called, Sadic, corresponds with the character given him inGenesis.912He was צדיק, Sadic, ajust man, and perfect in his generation. All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and through his sons transmitted to posterity.913Now it is Sanchuniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchi-zedek). True enough, as this information has descended to us through thePreparatio Evangelica[pg 410]of Eusebius, it may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than likely that he dealt with Sanchuniathon's works as he has with Manetho's Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic, Cronus, or Saturn, with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah's characteristic as ajust man, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek,“king of Salem, and priest of the most high God,”after“his own order”;914and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they became rabbinically and kabalistically.In speaking of Adam, Cain, Mars, etc., aspersonifications, we find the author of theSource of Measuresenunciating our very Esoteric Teachings in his kabalistic researches. Thus he says:Now, Mars was the Lord ofbirth, and ofdeath, ofgenerationand ofdestruction, ofploughing, ofbuilding, ofsculptureor stone-cutting, ofarchitecture, ... in fine, of all comprised under our English wordArts. He was theprimal principle, disintegrating into the modification oftwo opposites for production. Astronomically, too,915he held the birthplace of the day and year,the place of its increase of strength, Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, asbirth, wasGood; asdeath, wasEvil. Asgood, he waslight; asbad, he wasnight. Asgood, he wasman; asbad, he waswoman. He held the cardinal points, and asCain, orVulcan,916orPater Sadic, orMelchizadek, he was lord of theecliptic, orbalance, orline of adjustment, and therefore wasThe Just One. The ancients held to there being seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadic,The Just or Right One, was Lord of the eighth, which wasMater Terra.917This makes their functions, after they had been degraded, plain enough, and establishes the identity.The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead-letter and within the period of biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary, supposition of Bishop Cumberland[pg 411]has but to follow that Deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that:There were two distinct races of Cabiri, the first consisting of Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionusus of Mnaseas; the second, of the children of Shem, who are the Cabiri of Sanchoniatho, while their father Sydyk is consequently the scriptural Shem.918The Kabirim, the“Mighty Ones,”are identical with our primeval Dhyân Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the Rulers and Instructors of the primeval races, who are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the Divine Dynasties.The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged Continents.Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Persia on the other—a country ever at war with the former—there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to admit of such coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every available source, in order to the better compare those of the Magi with the so-called Grecian“fables.”Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fairy tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the history of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel of the history and the pre-historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says as follows:Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one succeeding the other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000, and while the former were still in existence. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but wiser and kinder.Here we recognize the Atlantean Giants and the Âryans, or the Râkshasas of theRâmâyanaand the children of Bharata-varsha, or India; the Ante- and the Post-diluvians of theBible.Gyan (or Gnan, Jnâna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge),[pg 412]also called Gian-ben-Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.919He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic, thesorceryof the Devs. Gian-ben-Gian had reigned 2,000 years when Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being produced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate, or Karma.920They count ten kings in their last metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam. These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given by Berosus.Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to identify them with the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew traditions, for the Jewish myth, though disdaining in its exclusiveness to speak of Pre-Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly inferred, by sending out Cain—one of the only two living men on earth—into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.921Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the 9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on this, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. We read in theCritias:First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsedsince the war of the nations, which lived above and outside the Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this side.In theTimæusPlato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Âryans were 200,000 years old when the first great“Island,”or Continent, was[pg 413]submerged, there seems hardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldæa and Persia through whose exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to posterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week“seven days,”and speaking of a“week of years”when each of its days represents 360 solar years, and the whole“week”is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the present times call an age a“century.”They of Plato's day, the initiated writers, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years; while the Hindûs, more independent than any, have never concealed their chronology. Thus, for 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time—i.e., from the first appearance of the Âryan Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking922and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato's small island of Atlantis—the Âryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yuga, and was the Mahâbhârata, or Great War, so famous in Indian history. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their isolation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era.History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first time through Herodotus, if we do not take into account theBible, and its queer chronology.923And how little Herodotuscouldtell is confessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Saïs, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says:[pg 414]Behind the chapel ... is the tomb of One,whose name I consider it impious to divulge.... In the enclosure stand large obelisks and there is alakenear, surrounded with a stone wall formedin a circle.... In this lake they perform by night, that person's adventures, which the Egyptians callMysteries: on these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the particulars of them,I must observe a discreet silence.924On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations. From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them. Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates, were in every temple—especially in those of Isis and Serapis—each pressing a finger to the lips. And the Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after initiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death.And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our conceptions of Science and the duration of things!The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as some think. But this is not so; they are only transformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call them Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy-two kings of that name.925Three among them reigned for 1,000 years each.926Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was murdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire preserved in the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence—the origin of fire-worship, as some Orientalists think!Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re-discovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also[pg 415]how to make brass-work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work calledEternal Wisdom, and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is built on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend.In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war against the Giants on a twelve-legged Horse, whose birth is attributed to theamoursof a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This“Dodecapod”was found on the“dry island”or new continent; much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his tremendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an enormous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of Damavend.927Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev-bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. Like his grand-sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far more rare and rapid—a bird called Simorgh-Anke. A marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.928What says that Persian Phœnix? It complains of its old age, for it was born cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give us again 840,000 years.929Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the Pre-Adamites, says the“Romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif”!930What says theBook of Numbers? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons—Ka-yin,[pg 416]Habel, and Seth—represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah-Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo-geological key), the Third Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which uncovered the“nakedness”of the Parent Race, and of the“Mindless,”i.e., committed sin.Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh-Kaf or Kaph. He finds there the Peris ill-treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana,931whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the“dry island,”i.e., the new continent of Europe.932After him came Giamschid, who builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his great pride, believes himself immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate punishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of Dhulkarnayn, the“two-horned.”But this epithet has no connection with the“two-horned”gentleman of the cloven foot. The“two-horned”is the epithet given in Asia—which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of the attributes of the Devil—to those conquerors who have subdued the world from the East to the West.Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new Dynasty.Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To begin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf?Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far beyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors of the Parsîs or Farsîs. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the“Fortunate Islands,”wherein, from the beginning of life on earth, bubbles the“Fountain of Life.”933The legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first“dry island”(continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the Mountains of Koh-Kaf,“the stony[pg 417]girdle that surrounds the world.”A journey of seven months' duration will bring him who is possessed of“Soliman's Ring”to that“Fountain,”if he keep on journeying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying, therefore, from PersiastraightNorth, will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one between the sixtieth and forty-fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath, or Taimuraz, upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.934Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow-capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus,there is a great continent now concealed from all; that it is reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve-legged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will twelvewings,935or by those who have the patience to wait for the good pleasure of Simorgh-Anke, who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the“dry island”and its severed parts.936This relates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric Cycle.It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth centurya.d., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first, in a country“beyond the Ocean,”a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldæan. He says:The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky; and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise. During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his posterity now inhabits.937[pg 418]The twelve-legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the“dry island.”The“Christian Topography”of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which has now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a“dry island”beyond the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer.In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the right end938of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is motionless.939The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.940There was eternal spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to-day, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat941reigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the head of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated [begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ... Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was divided by the Water of Life.942It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth's] body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It gets purified [on its return] to her heart—which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man's dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes.943During the First and Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the great[pg 419]Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head-gear [the cap]. She travailed harder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the World.944She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck945downward [to the South-West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn]. Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon's mouth, etc.This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of human life its Root-Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part of the world now known as Asia was only cut off from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters.If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachablemirageto the few arctic travellers who perceived it.During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the“head”from the“neck.”Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most noryhern part of Spitzbergen,946[pg 420]on Mercator's Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin's Bay and the neighbouring islands and promontories.Thereit hardly reached, southward, the seventieth degree of latitude;hereit formed the horseshoe continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the fiftieth degree a little South-West, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared.

It matters little whether it were Isis, or Ceres, the Kabiria, or again the Kabiri, who taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolizing all the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either amythalong with the others, or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc.—then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, and along with it all the Patriarchs—the Antediluvian and Pre-Atlantean Titans. As has now been discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the God ofpower and generation, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.907Tubal-Cain is a Kabir,“an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”; or—if this will please better—he is one with Hephæstus or Vulcan. Jabal again is taken from the Kabiri, instructors in agriculture,“such as have cattle,”and Jubal is“the father of all those who handle the harp,”he, ortheywho fabricated the harp for Cronus and the trident for Poseidon.908

The history or“fables”about the mysterious Telchines—fables echoing each and all the archaic events of our Esoteric Teachings—furnish us with a key to the origin of Cain's genealogy in the third chapter ofGenesis; they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies“the accursed blood”of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines—it is argued—the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the Gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a Deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah?

The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteans also. Says Decharme:

Like Lemnos and Samothrace, Rhodes, the birth-place of the Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation.909

The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like the Samothrace of the Kabiri, it is connected by the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present.

But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every Pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs contain, in poetized form, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies of Seth and Cain,910and the further equally futile attempt to show them asreal,historicalmen, has only led to more serious enquiries into the history of the past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposedrevelation. For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Cronus-Saturn is also proved.

That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Bryant911concurs with all those who are of opinion that Sydic, or Sadic, was the Patriarch Noah, and also Melchizedek; and that the name by which he is called, Sadic, corresponds with the character given him inGenesis.912

He was צדיק, Sadic, ajust man, and perfect in his generation. All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and through his sons transmitted to posterity.913

Now it is Sanchuniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchi-zedek). True enough, as this information has descended to us through thePreparatio Evangelica[pg 410]of Eusebius, it may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than likely that he dealt with Sanchuniathon's works as he has with Manetho's Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic, Cronus, or Saturn, with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah's characteristic as ajust man, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek,“king of Salem, and priest of the most high God,”after“his own order”;914and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they became rabbinically and kabalistically.

In speaking of Adam, Cain, Mars, etc., aspersonifications, we find the author of theSource of Measuresenunciating our very Esoteric Teachings in his kabalistic researches. Thus he says:

Now, Mars was the Lord ofbirth, and ofdeath, ofgenerationand ofdestruction, ofploughing, ofbuilding, ofsculptureor stone-cutting, ofarchitecture, ... in fine, of all comprised under our English wordArts. He was theprimal principle, disintegrating into the modification oftwo opposites for production. Astronomically, too,915he held the birthplace of the day and year,the place of its increase of strength, Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, asbirth, wasGood; asdeath, wasEvil. Asgood, he waslight; asbad, he wasnight. Asgood, he wasman; asbad, he waswoman. He held the cardinal points, and asCain, orVulcan,916orPater Sadic, orMelchizadek, he was lord of theecliptic, orbalance, orline of adjustment, and therefore wasThe Just One. The ancients held to there being seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadic,The Just or Right One, was Lord of the eighth, which wasMater Terra.917

This makes their functions, after they had been degraded, plain enough, and establishes the identity.

The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead-letter and within the period of biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary, supposition of Bishop Cumberland[pg 411]has but to follow that Deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that:

There were two distinct races of Cabiri, the first consisting of Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionusus of Mnaseas; the second, of the children of Shem, who are the Cabiri of Sanchoniatho, while their father Sydyk is consequently the scriptural Shem.918

The Kabirim, the“Mighty Ones,”are identical with our primeval Dhyân Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the Rulers and Instructors of the primeval races, who are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the Divine Dynasties.

The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged Continents.Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Persia on the other—a country ever at war with the former—there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to admit of such coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every available source, in order to the better compare those of the Magi with the so-called Grecian“fables.”Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fairy tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the history of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel of the history and the pre-historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says as follows:Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one succeeding the other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000, and while the former were still in existence. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but wiser and kinder.Here we recognize the Atlantean Giants and the Âryans, or the Râkshasas of theRâmâyanaand the children of Bharata-varsha, or India; the Ante- and the Post-diluvians of theBible.Gyan (or Gnan, Jnâna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge),[pg 412]also called Gian-ben-Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.919He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic, thesorceryof the Devs. Gian-ben-Gian had reigned 2,000 years when Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being produced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate, or Karma.920They count ten kings in their last metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam. These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given by Berosus.Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to identify them with the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew traditions, for the Jewish myth, though disdaining in its exclusiveness to speak of Pre-Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly inferred, by sending out Cain—one of the only two living men on earth—into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.921Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the 9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on this, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. We read in theCritias:First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsedsince the war of the nations, which lived above and outside the Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this side.In theTimæusPlato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Âryans were 200,000 years old when the first great“Island,”or Continent, was[pg 413]submerged, there seems hardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldæa and Persia through whose exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to posterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week“seven days,”and speaking of a“week of years”when each of its days represents 360 solar years, and the whole“week”is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the present times call an age a“century.”They of Plato's day, the initiated writers, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years; while the Hindûs, more independent than any, have never concealed their chronology. Thus, for 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time—i.e., from the first appearance of the Âryan Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking922and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato's small island of Atlantis—the Âryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yuga, and was the Mahâbhârata, or Great War, so famous in Indian history. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their isolation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era.History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first time through Herodotus, if we do not take into account theBible, and its queer chronology.923And how little Herodotuscouldtell is confessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Saïs, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says:[pg 414]Behind the chapel ... is the tomb of One,whose name I consider it impious to divulge.... In the enclosure stand large obelisks and there is alakenear, surrounded with a stone wall formedin a circle.... In this lake they perform by night, that person's adventures, which the Egyptians callMysteries: on these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the particulars of them,I must observe a discreet silence.924On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations. From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them. Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates, were in every temple—especially in those of Isis and Serapis—each pressing a finger to the lips. And the Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after initiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death.And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our conceptions of Science and the duration of things!The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as some think. But this is not so; they are only transformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call them Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy-two kings of that name.925Three among them reigned for 1,000 years each.926Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was murdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire preserved in the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence—the origin of fire-worship, as some Orientalists think!Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re-discovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also[pg 415]how to make brass-work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work calledEternal Wisdom, and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is built on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend.In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war against the Giants on a twelve-legged Horse, whose birth is attributed to theamoursof a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This“Dodecapod”was found on the“dry island”or new continent; much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his tremendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an enormous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of Damavend.927Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev-bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. Like his grand-sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far more rare and rapid—a bird called Simorgh-Anke. A marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.928What says that Persian Phœnix? It complains of its old age, for it was born cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give us again 840,000 years.929Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the Pre-Adamites, says the“Romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif”!930What says theBook of Numbers? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons—Ka-yin,[pg 416]Habel, and Seth—represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah-Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo-geological key), the Third Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which uncovered the“nakedness”of the Parent Race, and of the“Mindless,”i.e., committed sin.Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh-Kaf or Kaph. He finds there the Peris ill-treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana,931whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the“dry island,”i.e., the new continent of Europe.932After him came Giamschid, who builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his great pride, believes himself immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate punishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of Dhulkarnayn, the“two-horned.”But this epithet has no connection with the“two-horned”gentleman of the cloven foot. The“two-horned”is the epithet given in Asia—which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of the attributes of the Devil—to those conquerors who have subdued the world from the East to the West.Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new Dynasty.Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To begin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf?Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far beyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors of the Parsîs or Farsîs. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the“Fortunate Islands,”wherein, from the beginning of life on earth, bubbles the“Fountain of Life.”933The legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first“dry island”(continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the Mountains of Koh-Kaf,“the stony[pg 417]girdle that surrounds the world.”A journey of seven months' duration will bring him who is possessed of“Soliman's Ring”to that“Fountain,”if he keep on journeying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying, therefore, from PersiastraightNorth, will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one between the sixtieth and forty-fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath, or Taimuraz, upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.934Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow-capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus,there is a great continent now concealed from all; that it is reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve-legged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will twelvewings,935or by those who have the patience to wait for the good pleasure of Simorgh-Anke, who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the“dry island”and its severed parts.936This relates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric Cycle.It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth centurya.d., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first, in a country“beyond the Ocean,”a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldæan. He says:The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky; and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise. During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his posterity now inhabits.937[pg 418]The twelve-legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the“dry island.”The“Christian Topography”of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which has now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a“dry island”beyond the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer.In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the right end938of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is motionless.939The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.940There was eternal spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to-day, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat941reigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the head of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated [begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ... Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was divided by the Water of Life.942It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth's] body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It gets purified [on its return] to her heart—which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man's dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes.943During the First and Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the great[pg 419]Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head-gear [the cap]. She travailed harder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the World.944She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck945downward [to the South-West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn]. Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon's mouth, etc.This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of human life its Root-Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part of the world now known as Asia was only cut off from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters.If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachablemirageto the few arctic travellers who perceived it.During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the“head”from the“neck.”Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most noryhern part of Spitzbergen,946[pg 420]on Mercator's Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin's Bay and the neighbouring islands and promontories.Thereit hardly reached, southward, the seventieth degree of latitude;hereit formed the horseshoe continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the fiftieth degree a little South-West, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared.

Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Persia on the other—a country ever at war with the former—there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to admit of such coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every available source, in order to the better compare those of the Magi with the so-called Grecian“fables.”

Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fairy tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the history of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel of the history and the pre-historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says as follows:

Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one succeeding the other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000, and while the former were still in existence. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but wiser and kinder.

Here we recognize the Atlantean Giants and the Âryans, or the Râkshasas of theRâmâyanaand the children of Bharata-varsha, or India; the Ante- and the Post-diluvians of theBible.

Gyan (or Gnan, Jnâna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge),[pg 412]also called Gian-ben-Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.919He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic, thesorceryof the Devs. Gian-ben-Gian had reigned 2,000 years when Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being produced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate, or Karma.920They count ten kings in their last metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam. These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given by Berosus.

Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to identify them with the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew traditions, for the Jewish myth, though disdaining in its exclusiveness to speak of Pre-Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly inferred, by sending out Cain—one of the only two living men on earth—into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.921

Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the 9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on this, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. We read in theCritias:

First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsedsince the war of the nations, which lived above and outside the Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this side.

In theTimæusPlato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Âryans were 200,000 years old when the first great“Island,”or Continent, was[pg 413]submerged, there seems hardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldæa and Persia through whose exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to posterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week“seven days,”and speaking of a“week of years”when each of its days represents 360 solar years, and the whole“week”is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the present times call an age a“century.”They of Plato's day, the initiated writers, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years; while the Hindûs, more independent than any, have never concealed their chronology. Thus, for 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time—i.e., from the first appearance of the Âryan Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking922and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato's small island of Atlantis—the Âryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yuga, and was the Mahâbhârata, or Great War, so famous in Indian history. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their isolation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era.

History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first time through Herodotus, if we do not take into account theBible, and its queer chronology.923And how little Herodotuscouldtell is confessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Saïs, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says:

Behind the chapel ... is the tomb of One,whose name I consider it impious to divulge.... In the enclosure stand large obelisks and there is alakenear, surrounded with a stone wall formedin a circle.... In this lake they perform by night, that person's adventures, which the Egyptians callMysteries: on these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the particulars of them,I must observe a discreet silence.924

On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations. From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them. Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates, were in every temple—especially in those of Isis and Serapis—each pressing a finger to the lips. And the Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after initiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death.

And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our conceptions of Science and the duration of things!

The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as some think. But this is not so; they are only transformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call them Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy-two kings of that name.925Three among them reigned for 1,000 years each.926

Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was murdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire preserved in the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence—the origin of fire-worship, as some Orientalists think!

Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re-discovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also[pg 415]how to make brass-work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work calledEternal Wisdom, and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is built on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend.

In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war against the Giants on a twelve-legged Horse, whose birth is attributed to theamoursof a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This“Dodecapod”was found on the“dry island”or new continent; much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his tremendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an enormous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of Damavend.927

Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev-bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. Like his grand-sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far more rare and rapid—a bird called Simorgh-Anke. A marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.928What says that Persian Phœnix? It complains of its old age, for it was born cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give us again 840,000 years.929Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the Pre-Adamites, says the“Romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif”!930

What says theBook of Numbers? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons—Ka-yin,[pg 416]Habel, and Seth—represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah-Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo-geological key), the Third Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which uncovered the“nakedness”of the Parent Race, and of the“Mindless,”i.e., committed sin.

Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh-Kaf or Kaph. He finds there the Peris ill-treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana,931whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the“dry island,”i.e., the new continent of Europe.932After him came Giamschid, who builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his great pride, believes himself immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate punishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of Dhulkarnayn, the“two-horned.”But this epithet has no connection with the“two-horned”gentleman of the cloven foot. The“two-horned”is the epithet given in Asia—which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of the attributes of the Devil—to those conquerors who have subdued the world from the East to the West.

Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new Dynasty.

Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To begin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf?

Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far beyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors of the Parsîs or Farsîs. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the“Fortunate Islands,”wherein, from the beginning of life on earth, bubbles the“Fountain of Life.”933The legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first“dry island”(continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the Mountains of Koh-Kaf,“the stony[pg 417]girdle that surrounds the world.”A journey of seven months' duration will bring him who is possessed of“Soliman's Ring”to that“Fountain,”if he keep on journeying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying, therefore, from PersiastraightNorth, will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one between the sixtieth and forty-fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath, or Taimuraz, upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.934

Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow-capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus,there is a great continent now concealed from all; that it is reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve-legged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will twelvewings,935or by those who have the patience to wait for the good pleasure of Simorgh-Anke, who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the“dry island”and its severed parts.936This relates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric Cycle.

It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth centurya.d., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first, in a country“beyond the Ocean,”a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldæan. He says:

The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky; and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise. During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his posterity now inhabits.937

The twelve-legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the“dry island.”

The“Christian Topography”of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which has now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a“dry island”beyond the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer.

In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the right end938of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is motionless.939The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.940There was eternal spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to-day, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat941reigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the head of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated [begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ... Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was divided by the Water of Life.942

It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth's] body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It gets purified [on its return] to her heart—which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man's dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes.943During the First and Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the great[pg 419]Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head-gear [the cap]. She travailed harder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the World.944She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck945downward [to the South-West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn]. Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon's mouth, etc.

This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of human life its Root-Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part of the world now known as Asia was only cut off from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters.

If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachablemirageto the few arctic travellers who perceived it.

During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the“head”from the“neck.”Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most noryhern part of Spitzbergen,946[pg 420]on Mercator's Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin's Bay and the neighbouring islands and promontories.Thereit hardly reached, southward, the seventieth degree of latitude;hereit formed the horseshoe continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the fiftieth degree a little South-West, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared.

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