Stanza II.—Continued.

Stanza II.—Continued.8.The Flames came. The Fires with the Sparks; the Night-Fires and the Day-Fires (a). They dried out the turbid dark Waters. With their heat they quenched them. The Lhas136of the High; the Lhamayin137of Below, came (b). They slew the Forms, which were two- and four-faced. They fought the Goat-men, and the Dog-Headed Men, and the Men with fishes' bodies.(a) The“Flames”are a Hierarchy of Spirits parallel to, if not identical with, the“burning”fiery Saraph (Seraphim), mentioned by[pg 067]Isaiah138those who, according to Hebrew Theogony, attend the“Throne of the Almighty.”Melha is the Lord of the“Flames.”When he appears on Earth, he assumes the personality of a Buddha, says a popular legend. He is one of the most ancient and revered Lhas, a Buddhist St. Michael.(b) The word“Below”must not be taken to mean Infernal Regions, but simply a spiritual, or rather ethereal, Being of a lower grade, because nearer to the Earth, or one step higher than our Terrestrial Sphere; while the Lhas are Spirits of the highest Spheres—whence the name of the capital of Tibet, Lha-ssa.Besides a statement of a purely physical nature and belonging to the evolution of life on Earth, there may be another allegorical meaning attached to this shloka, or indeed, as is taught, several. The“Flames,”or“Fires,”represent Spirit, or the male element, and“Water,”Matter, or the opposite element. And here again we find, in the action of the Spirit slaying the purely material form, a reference to the eternal struggle, on the physical and psychic planes, between Spirit and Matter, besides a scientific cosmic fact. For, as said in the next verse:9.Mother-Water, the Great Sea, wept. She arose, she disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.Now what can this mean? Is it not an evident reference to tidal action in the early stage of the history of our Planet in its Fourth Round? Modern research has been busy of late in its speculations on the Palæozoic high-tides. Mr. G. H. Darwin's theory was that not less than 52,000,000 years ago—and probably much more—the Moon originated from the Earth's plastic mass. Starting from the point where research was left by Helmholtz, Ferrel, Sir William Thomson and others, he retraced the course of tidal retardation of the Earth's rotary motions far back into the very night of time, and placed the Moon during the infancy of our Planet at only“a fraction of its present distance.”In short, his theory was that it was the Moon which separated from the Earth. The tidal elevation concurring with the swing of the globular mass—centrifugal tendency being then nearly[pg 068]equal to gravity—the latter was overcome, and the tidally elevated mass could thus separate completely from the Earth.139The Occult teaching is the reverse of this. The Moon is far older than the Earth; and, as explained in Volume I, it is the latter which owes its being to the former, however Astronomy and Geology may explain the fact. Hence, the tides and the attraction to the Moon, as shown by the liquid portion of the Globe ever striving to raise itself towards its parent. This is the meaning of the sentence that the Mother-Water“arose, she disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.”10.When140they were destroyed, Mother Earth remained bare.141She asked to be dried.142The time for the Earth's incrustation had arrived. The waters had separated and the process was started. It was the beginning of a new life. This is what one key divulges to us. Another key teaches the origin of Water, its admixture with Fire—“Liquid Fire”it calls it—and enters upon an Alchemical description of the progeny of the two—solid matters such as minerals and earths. From the“Waters of Space,”the progeny of the male Spirit-Fire and the female (gaseous) Water has become the Oceanic expanse on Earth. Varuna is dragged down from the infinite Space, to reign as Neptune over the finite Seas. As always, the popular fancy is found to be based on a strictly scientific foundation.Water is the symbol of the Female Element everywhere; Mater, from which comes the letter M, is derived pictorially from [Symbol like three mountains, rather like the letter“M”], a water hieroglyph. It is the Universal Matrix or the“Great Deep.”Venus, the great Mother-Virgin, issues forth from the sea-wave, and Cupid or Erôs is her son. But Venus is the later mythological variant of Gæa, Gaia, the Earth, which, in its higher aspect is Prakriti, Nature, and[pg 069]metaphysically Aditi, and even Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Prakriti, or its noumenon.Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Erôs, the Divine Will, or Desire of manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the prototype of Erôs, becomes on Earth the Great Power“Life-Electricity,”or the Spirit of“Life-giving.”Let us remember the Greek Theogony and enter into the spirit of its Philosophy. We are taught by the Greeks that all things, Gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys, the latter being Gæa, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the immeasurable Space—Spirit in Chaos—which, is the Deity; and Tethys is not the Earth, but Primordial Matter in the process of formation. In our case it is no longer Aditi-Gæa who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Âditya among the seven Planetary Gods, but Prakriti, materialized and localized. The Moon, masculine in its theogonic character, is, in its cosmic aspect only, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem thereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every nation.Evolution proceeds on the laws of analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of the smallest Globe. Thus the above, applying to themodus operandiat the time when the Universe was appearing, applies also in the case of our Earth's formation.The Stanza now being commented upon opens by speaking of thirty crores, 300,000,000 of years. We may be asked: What could the ancients know of the duration of geological periods, when no modern Scientist or Mathematician is able to calculate their duration with anything like approximate accuracy? Whether they had or had not better means—and it is maintained that they had them as is evidenced by their Zodiacs—still the chronology of the ancient Brâhmans shall now be given as faithfully as possible.The Chronology of the Brâhmans.No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly insoluble, than the question: How old—even approximately—are the Sun and Moon, the Earth and Man? What does Modern Science know[pg 070]of the duration of the Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods?Nothing; absolutely nothing.If one turns to Science for chronological information, one is told by those who are straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly, the eminent Geologist,“We do not know.”143One will learn that, so far, no trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of the World and Man could be made, and that both Geology and Anthropology are at sea. Yet when a student of Esoteric Philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when reduced to their own physical methods, the greatest Scientists have failed to arrive even at an approximate agreement?It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit into the archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own conflicting speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide them, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender thread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at perfect random? Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to which documentary record extends is now generally regarded by Anthropology as but“the earliest distinctly visible point of the pre-historic period”—in the words of the writer of the article in theEncyclopædia Britannica.At the same time it is confessed that“beyond that period stretches back a vast indefinite series of pre-historic ages.”It is with those specified“ages”that we shall begin. They are“pre-historic”to the naked eye of Matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of the Seer and the Prophet of every race, Ariadne's thread stretches beyond that“historic period”without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into the very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop it, or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as fanciful by the profane; though, indeed, many of them are tacitly accepted by Philosophers and men of great learning, and meet with an unvarying refusal only from the official and collective body oforthodoxScience. And since the latter refuses to give us even[pg 071]an approximate idea of the duration of the geological Ages—save in a few conflicting and contradictory hypotheses—let us see what Âryan Philosophy can teach us.Such computations as are given inManuand thePurânas—save trifling and most evidentlyintentionalexaggerations—are, as already stated, almost identical with those taught in Esoteric Philosophy. This may be seen by comparing the two in any Hindû calendar of recognized orthodoxy.The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched for by the learned Brâhmans of Southern India, is the already mentioned Tamil calendar called theTirukkanda Panchanga, compiled, as we are told, from, and in full accordance with, secret fragments of Asuramaya's data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest Astronomer, so he is whispered to have also been the most powerful“Sorcerer”of the“White Island, which had become Black with sin,”i.e., of the islands of Atlantis.The“White Island”is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived, as in the tradition of theJñâna-bhâskara, in Romaka-pura, in the West; because the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the“Sweat-born”of the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant of the Wise Race,the Race that never dies. Many are the legends concerning this hero, the pupil of Sûrya, the Sun-God, himself, as the Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or another island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr. Weber and others would make him. The fact of Romaka-pura, in the West, being named as the birthplace of this hero of the Archaic Ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching about the Sweat-born Races, the men born from the“pores of their parents.”“Roma-kûpas”mean“hair-pores”in Sanskrit. In theMahâbhârata,144a people named Raumas are said to have been created from the pores of Vîrabhadra, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha's sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third Root-Races.The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a foot-note marks the points of disagreement with the figures of the Ârya Samâj school:[pg 072]I. From the beginning of Cosmic Evolution,145up to the Hindû year Tarana (or 1887), 1,955,884,687 years.II. The (astral), mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to Man, have taken to evolve, 300,000,000 years.146III. Time, from the first appearance of“Humanity”(on our Planetary Chain), 1,664,500,987 years.147IV. The number that elapsed since the Vaivasvata, Manvantara148—or theHumanPeriod—up to the year 1887, is just 18,618,728 years.V. The full period of one Manvantara is 308,448,000 years.VI. Fourteen Manvantaras,plusthe period of one Satya Yuga make one Day of Brahmâ, or a complete Manvantara, or 4,320,000,000 years.Therefore a Mahâ Yuga consists of 4,320,000 years.149The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali Yuga, 4,989 years.[pg 073]To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row, are given from theTheosophistof November, 1885.360 days of mortals make a yearKrita Yuga contains 1,728,000Tretâ Yuga contains 1,296,000Dvâpara Yuga contains 864,000Kali Yuga contains 432,000The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Mahâ Yuga, 4,320,000Seventy-one of such Mahâ Yugas form the period of the reign of one Manu, 306,720,000The reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration of 994 Mahâ Yugas, which is equal to 4,294,080,000Add Sandhis,i.e., intervals between the reign of each Manu, which amount to six Mahâ Yugas, equal to 25,920,000The total of these reigns and interregnums of fourteen Manus, is 1,000 Mahâ Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa,i.e., one Day of Brahmâ, 4,320,000,000As Brahmâ's Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of Brahmâ would contain 8,640,000,000360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmâ equal to 3,110,400,000,000100 such Years constitute the whole period of Brahmâ's Age,i.e., Mahâ Kalpa, 311,040,000,000,000These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter, moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles, never mentioned in Brâhmanical popular writings—one of which, the division of the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are, nevertheless, known to every“Twice-born”(Dvija, or Initiated) Brâhman, and thePurânascontain references to some of them in veiled terms, which no matter-of-fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor could he if he would.These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Nârada and Asuramaya. The latter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. But the Antediluvian Giants—the Gibborim of the Bible—were not all bad or Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist[pg 074]a servant of the Evil One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of“the faithful sons of the Church.”A Torquemada and a Catherine de Médicis certainly did more harm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean Giant or Demigod of antiquity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There weregood“giants”in days of old just as there arebad“pigmies”now; and the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern wars. Nor are they myths.He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from going to, or even talking of, Carnac or Stonehenge.remarks somewhere a modern writer.As the Brâhmanical figures given above are approximately the basic calculations of our Esoteric System, the reader is requested to carefully keep them in mind.In theEncyclopædia Britannicawe find, as the last word of Science, that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretchonly over“tens of thousands of years.”It becomes evident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man in the“pre- or post- glacial drift,”if we are told at the same time that the so-called“Ice Age”is simply a long succession of ages whichShaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the human or recent period ... the overlapping of geological periods having been the rule from the beginning of time.150The latter“rule”only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, information, that:Even to-day man is contemporary with the ice-age in the Alpine valleys and in the Finmark.151Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric Hindûism and its traditions, we should to this day be left to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite“Ages”of one school of Science, the“tens of thousands”of years of the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one[pg 075]of the several reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such questions of pre-historic antiquity.Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views. But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing's assurances that:In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and later formations, there is notheory, they are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error either way.152Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is very much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preëminence for correctness over Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the admissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author:In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the Silurian period153when the present order of things was fairly inaugurated, are approximate [truly so]factsand nottheories, while the astronomical conclusions aretheoriesbased ondataso uncertain, that while in some cases they give results incredibly short, ... in others they give results almost incredibly long.154After which, the reader is advised that the“safest course”Seems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100 millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar system, of which our earth is a small planet now passing through the habitable phase.155Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt that, once called upon to answer“the absurd unscientific and preposterous claims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Âryan chronology,”the Scientist of the“results incredibly short,”i.e., only 15,000,000 years, and the Scientist, who“would require 600,000,000 years,”together with those who accept Mr. Huxley's figures of 1,000,000,000156“since sedimentation began in Europe,”would all be as dogmatic the one as the[pg 076]other. Nor would they fail to remind the Occultist and the Brâhman, that it is the modern men of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to fight“inaccuracy”and“superstition.”The Earth is passing through the“habitable phase”only for thepresent orderof things, and as far as our present mankind is concerned with its actual“coats of skin”and phosphorus for bones and brain.We are ready to concede the 100 millions of years offered by Geology, since we are taught that our present physical mankind—or the Vaivasvata Humanity—began only eighteen millions of years ago. But Geology has no facts to give us for the duration of geological periods, as we have shown, no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter from Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says:It is at present, and perhaps always will be,impossibleto reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even into millenniums.And having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than thepresent form—what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or strata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian. When it has, in the same way, traced man down to his primordial protoplasmic form, then we will admit that it may know something of primordial man. If it is not very material to“the bearings of modern scientific discovery on modern thought,”whetherMan has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for the last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the last 500,000 years of a period of 150 millions,157as Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of the Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is apossibility, if not a perfect certainty, that man lived eighteen millions of years ago, theSecret Doctrinemight as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must, therefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern Geologists and men of Science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in the Third Part of this Volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact that Hindû Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a fiction based on no“actual”computation,158but simply a“childish boasting,”it is nevertheless often twisted out of recognition to make it yield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures have ever been more meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by cyphers, of the Yugas and Mahâ Yugas.[pg 077]As the whole Cycle of pre-historic events, such as the evolution and transformation of Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the said Chronology, it becomes extremely important to check it by other existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology is rejected, we shall at least have the consolation of proving that no other—whether in the figures of Science or of the Churches—is one whit more reliable. As Professor Max Müller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a thing is not as to show what it may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the fallacies of both Christian and Scientific computations—by allowing them a fair chance of comparison with our Chronology—neither of these will have a reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the Esoteric figures less reliable than its own.We may here refer the reader to our earlier work,Isis Unveiled,159for some remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.To-day a few more facts may be added to the information there given, which is already known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of 4,320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which compose it, taken separately or joined in various combinations, are each and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, whether one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making 7, or again the three, 4, 3, 2, added together and yielding 9, all these numbers have their application in the most sacred and Occult matters, and record the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and reäction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic agencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives and breathes on it, from the one end to the other of any Manvantara. Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric and“endexoteric,”so to say.InIsis Unveiledwe wrote that which we now repeat:We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state. Plato divides the intellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile[pg 078]and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the Divine Nature, he says;“but their parts,”owing to a too close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the earthly (which is Matter, and therefore the realm of evil),“are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to (Divine) Nature.”When those circulations—which Éliphas Lévi calls“currents of the Astral Light”—in the universal Ether which contains in itself every element, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, our Earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the“superior natures,”and the Divine Soul of man is in perfect intelligence with these“inferior”ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone“philosophizes.”And philosophizing alone, how can it understand the“Soul Doctrine”?In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give some striking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part II, proceeding meanwhile with our explanations of Geological and Racial Cycles.

8.The Flames came. The Fires with the Sparks; the Night-Fires and the Day-Fires (a). They dried out the turbid dark Waters. With their heat they quenched them. The Lhas136of the High; the Lhamayin137of Below, came (b). They slew the Forms, which were two- and four-faced. They fought the Goat-men, and the Dog-Headed Men, and the Men with fishes' bodies.

(a) The“Flames”are a Hierarchy of Spirits parallel to, if not identical with, the“burning”fiery Saraph (Seraphim), mentioned by[pg 067]Isaiah138those who, according to Hebrew Theogony, attend the“Throne of the Almighty.”Melha is the Lord of the“Flames.”When he appears on Earth, he assumes the personality of a Buddha, says a popular legend. He is one of the most ancient and revered Lhas, a Buddhist St. Michael.

(b) The word“Below”must not be taken to mean Infernal Regions, but simply a spiritual, or rather ethereal, Being of a lower grade, because nearer to the Earth, or one step higher than our Terrestrial Sphere; while the Lhas are Spirits of the highest Spheres—whence the name of the capital of Tibet, Lha-ssa.

Besides a statement of a purely physical nature and belonging to the evolution of life on Earth, there may be another allegorical meaning attached to this shloka, or indeed, as is taught, several. The“Flames,”or“Fires,”represent Spirit, or the male element, and“Water,”Matter, or the opposite element. And here again we find, in the action of the Spirit slaying the purely material form, a reference to the eternal struggle, on the physical and psychic planes, between Spirit and Matter, besides a scientific cosmic fact. For, as said in the next verse:

9.Mother-Water, the Great Sea, wept. She arose, she disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.

Now what can this mean? Is it not an evident reference to tidal action in the early stage of the history of our Planet in its Fourth Round? Modern research has been busy of late in its speculations on the Palæozoic high-tides. Mr. G. H. Darwin's theory was that not less than 52,000,000 years ago—and probably much more—the Moon originated from the Earth's plastic mass. Starting from the point where research was left by Helmholtz, Ferrel, Sir William Thomson and others, he retraced the course of tidal retardation of the Earth's rotary motions far back into the very night of time, and placed the Moon during the infancy of our Planet at only“a fraction of its present distance.”In short, his theory was that it was the Moon which separated from the Earth. The tidal elevation concurring with the swing of the globular mass—centrifugal tendency being then nearly[pg 068]equal to gravity—the latter was overcome, and the tidally elevated mass could thus separate completely from the Earth.139

The Occult teaching is the reverse of this. The Moon is far older than the Earth; and, as explained in Volume I, it is the latter which owes its being to the former, however Astronomy and Geology may explain the fact. Hence, the tides and the attraction to the Moon, as shown by the liquid portion of the Globe ever striving to raise itself towards its parent. This is the meaning of the sentence that the Mother-Water“arose, she disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.”

10.When140they were destroyed, Mother Earth remained bare.141She asked to be dried.142

The time for the Earth's incrustation had arrived. The waters had separated and the process was started. It was the beginning of a new life. This is what one key divulges to us. Another key teaches the origin of Water, its admixture with Fire—“Liquid Fire”it calls it—and enters upon an Alchemical description of the progeny of the two—solid matters such as minerals and earths. From the“Waters of Space,”the progeny of the male Spirit-Fire and the female (gaseous) Water has become the Oceanic expanse on Earth. Varuna is dragged down from the infinite Space, to reign as Neptune over the finite Seas. As always, the popular fancy is found to be based on a strictly scientific foundation.

Water is the symbol of the Female Element everywhere; Mater, from which comes the letter M, is derived pictorially from [Symbol like three mountains, rather like the letter“M”], a water hieroglyph. It is the Universal Matrix or the“Great Deep.”Venus, the great Mother-Virgin, issues forth from the sea-wave, and Cupid or Erôs is her son. But Venus is the later mythological variant of Gæa, Gaia, the Earth, which, in its higher aspect is Prakriti, Nature, and[pg 069]metaphysically Aditi, and even Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Prakriti, or its noumenon.

Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Erôs, the Divine Will, or Desire of manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the prototype of Erôs, becomes on Earth the Great Power“Life-Electricity,”or the Spirit of“Life-giving.”Let us remember the Greek Theogony and enter into the spirit of its Philosophy. We are taught by the Greeks that all things, Gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys, the latter being Gæa, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the immeasurable Space—Spirit in Chaos—which, is the Deity; and Tethys is not the Earth, but Primordial Matter in the process of formation. In our case it is no longer Aditi-Gæa who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Âditya among the seven Planetary Gods, but Prakriti, materialized and localized. The Moon, masculine in its theogonic character, is, in its cosmic aspect only, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem thereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every nation.

Evolution proceeds on the laws of analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of the smallest Globe. Thus the above, applying to themodus operandiat the time when the Universe was appearing, applies also in the case of our Earth's formation.

The Stanza now being commented upon opens by speaking of thirty crores, 300,000,000 of years. We may be asked: What could the ancients know of the duration of geological periods, when no modern Scientist or Mathematician is able to calculate their duration with anything like approximate accuracy? Whether they had or had not better means—and it is maintained that they had them as is evidenced by their Zodiacs—still the chronology of the ancient Brâhmans shall now be given as faithfully as possible.

The Chronology of the Brâhmans.No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly insoluble, than the question: How old—even approximately—are the Sun and Moon, the Earth and Man? What does Modern Science know[pg 070]of the duration of the Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods?Nothing; absolutely nothing.If one turns to Science for chronological information, one is told by those who are straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly, the eminent Geologist,“We do not know.”143One will learn that, so far, no trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of the World and Man could be made, and that both Geology and Anthropology are at sea. Yet when a student of Esoteric Philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when reduced to their own physical methods, the greatest Scientists have failed to arrive even at an approximate agreement?It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit into the archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own conflicting speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide them, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender thread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at perfect random? Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to which documentary record extends is now generally regarded by Anthropology as but“the earliest distinctly visible point of the pre-historic period”—in the words of the writer of the article in theEncyclopædia Britannica.At the same time it is confessed that“beyond that period stretches back a vast indefinite series of pre-historic ages.”It is with those specified“ages”that we shall begin. They are“pre-historic”to the naked eye of Matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of the Seer and the Prophet of every race, Ariadne's thread stretches beyond that“historic period”without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into the very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop it, or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as fanciful by the profane; though, indeed, many of them are tacitly accepted by Philosophers and men of great learning, and meet with an unvarying refusal only from the official and collective body oforthodoxScience. And since the latter refuses to give us even[pg 071]an approximate idea of the duration of the geological Ages—save in a few conflicting and contradictory hypotheses—let us see what Âryan Philosophy can teach us.Such computations as are given inManuand thePurânas—save trifling and most evidentlyintentionalexaggerations—are, as already stated, almost identical with those taught in Esoteric Philosophy. This may be seen by comparing the two in any Hindû calendar of recognized orthodoxy.The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched for by the learned Brâhmans of Southern India, is the already mentioned Tamil calendar called theTirukkanda Panchanga, compiled, as we are told, from, and in full accordance with, secret fragments of Asuramaya's data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest Astronomer, so he is whispered to have also been the most powerful“Sorcerer”of the“White Island, which had become Black with sin,”i.e., of the islands of Atlantis.The“White Island”is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived, as in the tradition of theJñâna-bhâskara, in Romaka-pura, in the West; because the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the“Sweat-born”of the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant of the Wise Race,the Race that never dies. Many are the legends concerning this hero, the pupil of Sûrya, the Sun-God, himself, as the Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or another island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr. Weber and others would make him. The fact of Romaka-pura, in the West, being named as the birthplace of this hero of the Archaic Ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching about the Sweat-born Races, the men born from the“pores of their parents.”“Roma-kûpas”mean“hair-pores”in Sanskrit. In theMahâbhârata,144a people named Raumas are said to have been created from the pores of Vîrabhadra, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha's sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third Root-Races.The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a foot-note marks the points of disagreement with the figures of the Ârya Samâj school:[pg 072]I. From the beginning of Cosmic Evolution,145up to the Hindû year Tarana (or 1887), 1,955,884,687 years.II. The (astral), mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to Man, have taken to evolve, 300,000,000 years.146III. Time, from the first appearance of“Humanity”(on our Planetary Chain), 1,664,500,987 years.147IV. The number that elapsed since the Vaivasvata, Manvantara148—or theHumanPeriod—up to the year 1887, is just 18,618,728 years.V. The full period of one Manvantara is 308,448,000 years.VI. Fourteen Manvantaras,plusthe period of one Satya Yuga make one Day of Brahmâ, or a complete Manvantara, or 4,320,000,000 years.Therefore a Mahâ Yuga consists of 4,320,000 years.149The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali Yuga, 4,989 years.[pg 073]To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row, are given from theTheosophistof November, 1885.360 days of mortals make a yearKrita Yuga contains 1,728,000Tretâ Yuga contains 1,296,000Dvâpara Yuga contains 864,000Kali Yuga contains 432,000The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Mahâ Yuga, 4,320,000Seventy-one of such Mahâ Yugas form the period of the reign of one Manu, 306,720,000The reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration of 994 Mahâ Yugas, which is equal to 4,294,080,000Add Sandhis,i.e., intervals between the reign of each Manu, which amount to six Mahâ Yugas, equal to 25,920,000The total of these reigns and interregnums of fourteen Manus, is 1,000 Mahâ Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa,i.e., one Day of Brahmâ, 4,320,000,000As Brahmâ's Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of Brahmâ would contain 8,640,000,000360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmâ equal to 3,110,400,000,000100 such Years constitute the whole period of Brahmâ's Age,i.e., Mahâ Kalpa, 311,040,000,000,000These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter, moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles, never mentioned in Brâhmanical popular writings—one of which, the division of the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are, nevertheless, known to every“Twice-born”(Dvija, or Initiated) Brâhman, and thePurânascontain references to some of them in veiled terms, which no matter-of-fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor could he if he would.These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Nârada and Asuramaya. The latter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. But the Antediluvian Giants—the Gibborim of the Bible—were not all bad or Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist[pg 074]a servant of the Evil One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of“the faithful sons of the Church.”A Torquemada and a Catherine de Médicis certainly did more harm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean Giant or Demigod of antiquity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There weregood“giants”in days of old just as there arebad“pigmies”now; and the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern wars. Nor are they myths.He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from going to, or even talking of, Carnac or Stonehenge.remarks somewhere a modern writer.As the Brâhmanical figures given above are approximately the basic calculations of our Esoteric System, the reader is requested to carefully keep them in mind.In theEncyclopædia Britannicawe find, as the last word of Science, that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretchonly over“tens of thousands of years.”It becomes evident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man in the“pre- or post- glacial drift,”if we are told at the same time that the so-called“Ice Age”is simply a long succession of ages whichShaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the human or recent period ... the overlapping of geological periods having been the rule from the beginning of time.150The latter“rule”only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, information, that:Even to-day man is contemporary with the ice-age in the Alpine valleys and in the Finmark.151Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric Hindûism and its traditions, we should to this day be left to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite“Ages”of one school of Science, the“tens of thousands”of years of the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one[pg 075]of the several reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such questions of pre-historic antiquity.Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views. But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing's assurances that:In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and later formations, there is notheory, they are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error either way.152Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is very much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preëminence for correctness over Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the admissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author:In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the Silurian period153when the present order of things was fairly inaugurated, are approximate [truly so]factsand nottheories, while the astronomical conclusions aretheoriesbased ondataso uncertain, that while in some cases they give results incredibly short, ... in others they give results almost incredibly long.154After which, the reader is advised that the“safest course”Seems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100 millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar system, of which our earth is a small planet now passing through the habitable phase.155Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt that, once called upon to answer“the absurd unscientific and preposterous claims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Âryan chronology,”the Scientist of the“results incredibly short,”i.e., only 15,000,000 years, and the Scientist, who“would require 600,000,000 years,”together with those who accept Mr. Huxley's figures of 1,000,000,000156“since sedimentation began in Europe,”would all be as dogmatic the one as the[pg 076]other. Nor would they fail to remind the Occultist and the Brâhman, that it is the modern men of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to fight“inaccuracy”and“superstition.”The Earth is passing through the“habitable phase”only for thepresent orderof things, and as far as our present mankind is concerned with its actual“coats of skin”and phosphorus for bones and brain.We are ready to concede the 100 millions of years offered by Geology, since we are taught that our present physical mankind—or the Vaivasvata Humanity—began only eighteen millions of years ago. But Geology has no facts to give us for the duration of geological periods, as we have shown, no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter from Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says:It is at present, and perhaps always will be,impossibleto reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even into millenniums.And having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than thepresent form—what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or strata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian. When it has, in the same way, traced man down to his primordial protoplasmic form, then we will admit that it may know something of primordial man. If it is not very material to“the bearings of modern scientific discovery on modern thought,”whetherMan has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for the last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the last 500,000 years of a period of 150 millions,157as Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of the Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is apossibility, if not a perfect certainty, that man lived eighteen millions of years ago, theSecret Doctrinemight as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must, therefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern Geologists and men of Science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in the Third Part of this Volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact that Hindû Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a fiction based on no“actual”computation,158but simply a“childish boasting,”it is nevertheless often twisted out of recognition to make it yield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures have ever been more meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by cyphers, of the Yugas and Mahâ Yugas.[pg 077]As the whole Cycle of pre-historic events, such as the evolution and transformation of Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the said Chronology, it becomes extremely important to check it by other existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology is rejected, we shall at least have the consolation of proving that no other—whether in the figures of Science or of the Churches—is one whit more reliable. As Professor Max Müller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a thing is not as to show what it may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the fallacies of both Christian and Scientific computations—by allowing them a fair chance of comparison with our Chronology—neither of these will have a reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the Esoteric figures less reliable than its own.We may here refer the reader to our earlier work,Isis Unveiled,159for some remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.To-day a few more facts may be added to the information there given, which is already known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of 4,320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which compose it, taken separately or joined in various combinations, are each and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, whether one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making 7, or again the three, 4, 3, 2, added together and yielding 9, all these numbers have their application in the most sacred and Occult matters, and record the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and reäction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic agencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives and breathes on it, from the one end to the other of any Manvantara. Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric and“endexoteric,”so to say.InIsis Unveiledwe wrote that which we now repeat:We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state. Plato divides the intellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile[pg 078]and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the Divine Nature, he says;“but their parts,”owing to a too close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the earthly (which is Matter, and therefore the realm of evil),“are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to (Divine) Nature.”When those circulations—which Éliphas Lévi calls“currents of the Astral Light”—in the universal Ether which contains in itself every element, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, our Earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the“superior natures,”and the Divine Soul of man is in perfect intelligence with these“inferior”ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone“philosophizes.”And philosophizing alone, how can it understand the“Soul Doctrine”?In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give some striking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part II, proceeding meanwhile with our explanations of Geological and Racial Cycles.

No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly insoluble, than the question: How old—even approximately—are the Sun and Moon, the Earth and Man? What does Modern Science know[pg 070]of the duration of the Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods?

Nothing; absolutely nothing.

If one turns to Science for chronological information, one is told by those who are straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly, the eminent Geologist,“We do not know.”143One will learn that, so far, no trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of the World and Man could be made, and that both Geology and Anthropology are at sea. Yet when a student of Esoteric Philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when reduced to their own physical methods, the greatest Scientists have failed to arrive even at an approximate agreement?

It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit into the archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own conflicting speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide them, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender thread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at perfect random? Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to which documentary record extends is now generally regarded by Anthropology as but“the earliest distinctly visible point of the pre-historic period”—in the words of the writer of the article in theEncyclopædia Britannica.

At the same time it is confessed that“beyond that period stretches back a vast indefinite series of pre-historic ages.”

It is with those specified“ages”that we shall begin. They are“pre-historic”to the naked eye of Matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of the Seer and the Prophet of every race, Ariadne's thread stretches beyond that“historic period”without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into the very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop it, or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as fanciful by the profane; though, indeed, many of them are tacitly accepted by Philosophers and men of great learning, and meet with an unvarying refusal only from the official and collective body oforthodoxScience. And since the latter refuses to give us even[pg 071]an approximate idea of the duration of the geological Ages—save in a few conflicting and contradictory hypotheses—let us see what Âryan Philosophy can teach us.

Such computations as are given inManuand thePurânas—save trifling and most evidentlyintentionalexaggerations—are, as already stated, almost identical with those taught in Esoteric Philosophy. This may be seen by comparing the two in any Hindû calendar of recognized orthodoxy.

The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched for by the learned Brâhmans of Southern India, is the already mentioned Tamil calendar called theTirukkanda Panchanga, compiled, as we are told, from, and in full accordance with, secret fragments of Asuramaya's data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest Astronomer, so he is whispered to have also been the most powerful“Sorcerer”of the“White Island, which had become Black with sin,”i.e., of the islands of Atlantis.

The“White Island”is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived, as in the tradition of theJñâna-bhâskara, in Romaka-pura, in the West; because the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the“Sweat-born”of the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant of the Wise Race,the Race that never dies. Many are the legends concerning this hero, the pupil of Sûrya, the Sun-God, himself, as the Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or another island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr. Weber and others would make him. The fact of Romaka-pura, in the West, being named as the birthplace of this hero of the Archaic Ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching about the Sweat-born Races, the men born from the“pores of their parents.”“Roma-kûpas”mean“hair-pores”in Sanskrit. In theMahâbhârata,144a people named Raumas are said to have been created from the pores of Vîrabhadra, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha's sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third Root-Races.

The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a foot-note marks the points of disagreement with the figures of the Ârya Samâj school:

I. From the beginning of Cosmic Evolution,145up to the Hindû year Tarana (or 1887), 1,955,884,687 years.

II. The (astral), mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to Man, have taken to evolve, 300,000,000 years.146

III. Time, from the first appearance of“Humanity”(on our Planetary Chain), 1,664,500,987 years.147

IV. The number that elapsed since the Vaivasvata, Manvantara148—or theHumanPeriod—up to the year 1887, is just 18,618,728 years.

V. The full period of one Manvantara is 308,448,000 years.

VI. Fourteen Manvantaras,plusthe period of one Satya Yuga make one Day of Brahmâ, or a complete Manvantara, or 4,320,000,000 years.

Therefore a Mahâ Yuga consists of 4,320,000 years.149

The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali Yuga, 4,989 years.

To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row, are given from theTheosophistof November, 1885.

360 days of mortals make a yearKrita Yuga contains 1,728,000Tretâ Yuga contains 1,296,000Dvâpara Yuga contains 864,000Kali Yuga contains 432,000The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Mahâ Yuga, 4,320,000Seventy-one of such Mahâ Yugas form the period of the reign of one Manu, 306,720,000The reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration of 994 Mahâ Yugas, which is equal to 4,294,080,000Add Sandhis,i.e., intervals between the reign of each Manu, which amount to six Mahâ Yugas, equal to 25,920,000The total of these reigns and interregnums of fourteen Manus, is 1,000 Mahâ Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa,i.e., one Day of Brahmâ, 4,320,000,000As Brahmâ's Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of Brahmâ would contain 8,640,000,000360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmâ equal to 3,110,400,000,000100 such Years constitute the whole period of Brahmâ's Age,i.e., Mahâ Kalpa, 311,040,000,000,000

360 days of mortals make a year

Krita Yuga contains 1,728,000

Tretâ Yuga contains 1,296,000

Dvâpara Yuga contains 864,000

Kali Yuga contains 432,000

The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Mahâ Yuga, 4,320,000

Seventy-one of such Mahâ Yugas form the period of the reign of one Manu, 306,720,000

The reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration of 994 Mahâ Yugas, which is equal to 4,294,080,000

Add Sandhis,i.e., intervals between the reign of each Manu, which amount to six Mahâ Yugas, equal to 25,920,000

The total of these reigns and interregnums of fourteen Manus, is 1,000 Mahâ Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa,i.e., one Day of Brahmâ, 4,320,000,000

As Brahmâ's Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of Brahmâ would contain 8,640,000,000

360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmâ equal to 3,110,400,000,000

100 such Years constitute the whole period of Brahmâ's Age,i.e., Mahâ Kalpa, 311,040,000,000,000

These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter, moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles, never mentioned in Brâhmanical popular writings—one of which, the division of the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are, nevertheless, known to every“Twice-born”(Dvija, or Initiated) Brâhman, and thePurânascontain references to some of them in veiled terms, which no matter-of-fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor could he if he would.

These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Nârada and Asuramaya. The latter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. But the Antediluvian Giants—the Gibborim of the Bible—were not all bad or Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist[pg 074]a servant of the Evil One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of“the faithful sons of the Church.”A Torquemada and a Catherine de Médicis certainly did more harm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean Giant or Demigod of antiquity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There weregood“giants”in days of old just as there arebad“pigmies”now; and the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern wars. Nor are they myths.

He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from going to, or even talking of, Carnac or Stonehenge.

remarks somewhere a modern writer.

As the Brâhmanical figures given above are approximately the basic calculations of our Esoteric System, the reader is requested to carefully keep them in mind.

In theEncyclopædia Britannicawe find, as the last word of Science, that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretchonly over“tens of thousands of years.”It becomes evident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man in the“pre- or post- glacial drift,”if we are told at the same time that the so-called“Ice Age”is simply a long succession of ages which

Shaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the human or recent period ... the overlapping of geological periods having been the rule from the beginning of time.150

The latter“rule”only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, information, that:

Even to-day man is contemporary with the ice-age in the Alpine valleys and in the Finmark.151

Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric Hindûism and its traditions, we should to this day be left to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite“Ages”of one school of Science, the“tens of thousands”of years of the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one[pg 075]of the several reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such questions of pre-historic antiquity.

Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views. But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing's assurances that:

In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and later formations, there is notheory, they are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error either way.152

Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is very much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preëminence for correctness over Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the admissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author:

In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the Silurian period153when the present order of things was fairly inaugurated, are approximate [truly so]factsand nottheories, while the astronomical conclusions aretheoriesbased ondataso uncertain, that while in some cases they give results incredibly short, ... in others they give results almost incredibly long.154

After which, the reader is advised that the“safest course”

Seems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100 millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar system, of which our earth is a small planet now passing through the habitable phase.155

Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt that, once called upon to answer“the absurd unscientific and preposterous claims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Âryan chronology,”the Scientist of the“results incredibly short,”i.e., only 15,000,000 years, and the Scientist, who“would require 600,000,000 years,”together with those who accept Mr. Huxley's figures of 1,000,000,000156“since sedimentation began in Europe,”would all be as dogmatic the one as the[pg 076]other. Nor would they fail to remind the Occultist and the Brâhman, that it is the modern men of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to fight“inaccuracy”and“superstition.”

The Earth is passing through the“habitable phase”only for thepresent orderof things, and as far as our present mankind is concerned with its actual“coats of skin”and phosphorus for bones and brain.

We are ready to concede the 100 millions of years offered by Geology, since we are taught that our present physical mankind—or the Vaivasvata Humanity—began only eighteen millions of years ago. But Geology has no facts to give us for the duration of geological periods, as we have shown, no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter from Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says:

It is at present, and perhaps always will be,impossibleto reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even into millenniums.

And having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than thepresent form—what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or strata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian. When it has, in the same way, traced man down to his primordial protoplasmic form, then we will admit that it may know something of primordial man. If it is not very material to“the bearings of modern scientific discovery on modern thought,”whether

Man has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for the last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the last 500,000 years of a period of 150 millions,157

as Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of the Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is apossibility, if not a perfect certainty, that man lived eighteen millions of years ago, theSecret Doctrinemight as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must, therefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern Geologists and men of Science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in the Third Part of this Volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact that Hindû Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a fiction based on no“actual”computation,158but simply a“childish boasting,”it is nevertheless often twisted out of recognition to make it yield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures have ever been more meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by cyphers, of the Yugas and Mahâ Yugas.

As the whole Cycle of pre-historic events, such as the evolution and transformation of Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the said Chronology, it becomes extremely important to check it by other existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology is rejected, we shall at least have the consolation of proving that no other—whether in the figures of Science or of the Churches—is one whit more reliable. As Professor Max Müller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a thing is not as to show what it may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the fallacies of both Christian and Scientific computations—by allowing them a fair chance of comparison with our Chronology—neither of these will have a reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the Esoteric figures less reliable than its own.

We may here refer the reader to our earlier work,Isis Unveiled,159for some remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.

To-day a few more facts may be added to the information there given, which is already known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of 4,320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which compose it, taken separately or joined in various combinations, are each and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, whether one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making 7, or again the three, 4, 3, 2, added together and yielding 9, all these numbers have their application in the most sacred and Occult matters, and record the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and reäction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic agencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives and breathes on it, from the one end to the other of any Manvantara. Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric and“endexoteric,”so to say.

InIsis Unveiledwe wrote that which we now repeat:We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state. Plato divides the intellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile[pg 078]and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the Divine Nature, he says;“but their parts,”owing to a too close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the earthly (which is Matter, and therefore the realm of evil),“are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to (Divine) Nature.”When those circulations—which Éliphas Lévi calls“currents of the Astral Light”—in the universal Ether which contains in itself every element, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, our Earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the“superior natures,”and the Divine Soul of man is in perfect intelligence with these“inferior”ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone“philosophizes.”And philosophizing alone, how can it understand the“Soul Doctrine”?

In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give some striking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part II, proceeding meanwhile with our explanations of Geological and Racial Cycles.

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