Stanza IV.—Continued.

Stanza IV.—Continued.15.Seven times seven Shadows201of Future Men202(a) were203born, each of his own Colour204and Kind (b). Each205inferior to his Father.206The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their Progeny were Bhûta,207with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ208Race(c).(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the rootman, to think, hence a“thinker.”It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latinmens, Mind, the EgyptianMenes, the“Master-Mind,”the Pythagoreanmonas, or conscious“thinking unit,”mind also, and even ourmanasor mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are calledAmânasa,“Mindless.”With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,209or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.210May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?[pg 096]The Pitris being divided intosevenClasses, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all thePurânasagree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the“Body of Twilight.”Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to theVâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the“Fire Dhyânîs,”which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the“Heart”of the Dhyân-Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototypeabove. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart havefour lowercavities andthree higherdivisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler,“Principles,”or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?Says the Commentary:Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ-Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men.The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not-Gods].[pg 097]“Not-Gods,”for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest“Breaths,”for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body.This is very plainly shown in various texts of theRig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means“spiritual, divine,”and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a“God,”is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the threehighestGods, before Brâhmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.In theZend Avestathe same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the“all-knowing”or“omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows,“the Lord who bestowsIntelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.211Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded assevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the“Lord,”or“Lords”collectively“who bestowIntelligence,”connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.Why these“Gods”refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First-born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.212The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings whorefuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the[pg 098]Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by theorthodoxBrâhmans—and forthwith the former becomeA-Suras. The First- and Mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and arecursedby Brahmâ to beborn as men. They are hurleddown to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into theInfernalRegions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrialillusivelife, the“germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity throughself-consciousefforts; and it is these worshippers offormwho have made Demons of the Angels of Light.Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches thatone-third213of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence,“which is a formless breath, composed ofintellectualnot elementary substances”214—was simplydoomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re-born, or incarnated, on Earth.215Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all thePurânas, re-appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root-Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical[pg 099]and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.The supposed“Rebels,”then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop,had to incarnateanew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegorywithin an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with hisspiritualeye.As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri-Devatâs,i.e., those possessed of thephysical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness.“Man must not be like one of us,”say theCreativeGods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.216Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. Theywouldnot, simply because theycouldnot, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to thepersonal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first,[pg 100]pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity,“of the earth earthy,”was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to haverefusedto create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators,217who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselvesshadowymen, a little less ethereal and spiritual, lessdivineandperfectthan themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with everynegative(nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, theincorruptiblemust grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, andvice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither existsper se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires alowerOrder of Creative Angels to“create”inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their“Creators”occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of[pg 101]mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,218to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in thePhædrus, of a“winged”race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato'sBanquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. InPymander, all the animal kingdom even is double-sexed. Thus it is said:The circuit having been accomplished,the knot was loosened... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, wereuntied[separated]together with man... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.219Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, thePopol Vuh—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race“whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing thedivine knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.(b) These“Shadows”were born“each of his own colour and kind,”each also“inferior to his Father,”or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. InPymander, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the“Heavenly Man,”all partake of the qualities of the Seven“Governors,”or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis.In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular“myths,”as in our Secret[pg 102]Doctrine; and we find them in theVedas, thePurânas, the Mazdean Scriptures and theKabalah. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the“Pillars of the World,”its“Supports,”are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven“Workmen”or Rectors ofPymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not createMan, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.220The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzité tree of thePopol Vuh, out of which the Mexicanthirdrace of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the Western scholars can tell?221Nevertheless, the fruits of all those“Trees,”whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are the“plants of life,”in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developedwithin and underthe great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;222and the mystery is half revealed in theDîrghotamas, where it is said:Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which comespirits who love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels.As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, the“Serpent”dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are itsreflectedparts. The“Tree”is man himself, of course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious[pg 103]Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.Everywhere, it is the same. The“Creating”Powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man withconsciousimmortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which isour Earth, the lowestin its Chain; an“Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life-cycle—in thedarknessof Matter, orwithin animal Man. It pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as theforbiddenfruit, and the“Serpent of Wisdom,”the voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the old Dragon, the Devil!The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the“Jaina Cross”as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the“devil's sign,”we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand-headed Shesha-Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of Time, and becomesInfiniteTime itself, when called Ananta, the great Seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, theEternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of“creation,”or evolution as one should rather say, from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whosegenesis is as unknownto that Science as is that of the All-Deity Itself. The[pg 104]Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the“Worker's Hammer”in the ChaldæanBook of Numbers, the“Hammer,”above referred to, in theBook of Concealed Mystery,“which striketh sparks from the flint”(Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor's Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the Pre-cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the“Storm-hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and suffering in their life-incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel—the Goddess-queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.223Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the“Hammer of Creation,”with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continualmotionand revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in the Cycles of Time of the world's axes and their equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In theSmaragdine Tabletof Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word“Solve,”the left with the word“Coagula.”It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed[pg 105]at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ-Mâyâ, the great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions.How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the“Scrolls of Wisdom,”of which many are lost but some still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner'sAsgard and the Gods, concerning the“Renewal of the World,”which is a prophecy about the Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, andin them their fathers rose again[the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, butunseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters[of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil's cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, asthey used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil's heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them toclimb up higher, torise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.224He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom,[pg 106]though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above.Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The“friction”of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the Sanskrit-speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the“divine artist andcarpenter,”225and is also the Father of the Gods and of“Creative Fire”in theVedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number of such terra-cotta discs, calledfusaïoles, were found by Dr. Schliemannunderthe ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms, [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.(c) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.[pg 107]16.How are the Manushya226born? The Manus with minds, how are they made? (a) The Fathers227called to their help their own Fire,228which is the Fire that burns in Earth. The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire.229These Three230produced in their joint efforts a good Rûpa. It231could stand, walk, run, recline, or fly. Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with no sense. (b) ...(a) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas (Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians. It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says the Commentary,“who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man”—i.e., the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form,i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta232or“phantom.”This“creation”was a failure.(b) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity ofphysicalNature's unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature-Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct athinkingman.“LivingFire”was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are the Animal-Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of man. The first Creators, then, were the[pg 108]Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they failed to animate the statue—intellectually.This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the former is endowed withdivineintelligence, the latter withinstinctualfaculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?Says the Commentary:The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their abode.This shows that not all men became incarnations of the“Divine Rebels,”but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not the“Sons of Mahat,”speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through self-exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure spirit, that we are what we are—self-conscious, thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called“fables.”It explains, to begin with, the statement made inPymander, that the“Heavenly Man,”the“Son of the Father,”who partook of the nature[pg 109]and essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material World,Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the downward-borne nature.233It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many allegorical accounts about the“Wars in Heaven,”including that ofRevelationwith respect to the Christian dogma of the“Fallen Angels.”It explains the“Rebellion”of the oldest and highest Angels, and the meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,i.e., Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as follows:My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war with the powers of evilprecededthe Creation; I now think it followed the account of the Fall.234In the same work,235Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The Tree has seven branches;threeon the man's side,fouron that of the female. These branches are typical of the seven Root-Races, in thethirdof which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the so-called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless, then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each other. As the writer tells us:The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world.236This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, personified, or ratheranimalized; and Tiamat,“the embodiment of the spirit of chaos,”of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the Womb. The“spirit of chaos and disorder”refers to the mental perturbation which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which fascinates and seduces, the ever-living active element which throws the whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George Smith:[pg 110]It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour outuseless prayer, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).237This account is omitted inGenesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments byGenesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.17.The Breath238needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body;239“We gave it our own!”—said the Dhyânîs. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires;240“It has it!”—said the Drainer of Waters.241But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the Universe;“We cannot give that!”—said the Fathers.“I never had it!”—said the Spirit of the Earth.“The Form would be consumed were I to give it mine!”—said the Great Fire.242... Man243remained an empty senseless Bhûta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those who244became Men with Bones in the Third.245As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few remarks will now suffice. The“Father”of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its“Mother,”because of that mysterious power in the Moon,[pg 111]which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The“Wind”or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon earth, is referred to as the“Nurse”;246while“Spiritual Fire”alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.Now what is that“Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds from its Noumenon, the“Dhyân of the First Element.”Hydrogen isgasonly on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen“would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”247and is very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, and is“fire, air and water,”in fact:oneunder three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified it with, the To On, the“One”of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen isnotwater, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these“Fires”was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, thepersonified sacred Fires of the most Occult Powers of Nature. The several branches of the Âryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say[pg 112]seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus may very well stand for thealter egosof the four Kumâras—Sanat-Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori, Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is Brahmâ—or rather, the“Flame of his Wrath,”which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these“Fires”and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of ourfive physical senses, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in thePurânasPratisarga, or“Secondary Creation.”“Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,”says an Occult axiom.The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and their union is Life.In the Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In thePurânasand Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter-natural voice from heaven, revealing to the“chosen people”the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before Judaism, the“Mother of theVedas,”who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath-Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High-Priests.[pg 113]And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity.I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, theLight that radiates within Darkness[Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.248Thus we have to study well the“Primary Creation”before we can understand the Secondary. The first Race had threerudimentaryElements in it; andno Fireas yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so-called Creative Deity himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja,“pregenetic,”and the other names connect him in their descending order more and more with Matter.The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial“Man”or“Spirit,”and mortal physical man:1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its predecessor; as each Root-Race adds the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary“creation”of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be shown further on.Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the[pg 114]First Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is theAll Cause, and cannot be referred to as the“FirstCause,”—which First Cause is called in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, the“Womb of the World,”mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and Second Races, were not physical beings, but merelyrudimentsof the future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi,“origin,”or the“original place whence sprang the Elements.”Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavâpyaya,“the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,”as explained by the Commentator on theVishnu Purâna. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest“created”Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is a Manifested Deity—hence“created,”or limited and conditioned. This is easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.After being called theincognizable, eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Pundarîkâksha,“supreme and imperishable glory,”once that instead of Sadaika-Rûpa,“changeless”or“immutable”Nature, he is addressed as Ekâneka-Rûpa,“both single and manifold,”he, the Cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric order, show the following descending scale:Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses).Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân-Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles;every one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion of their various“Fires”and Elements.[pg 115]

Stanza IV.—Continued.15.Seven times seven Shadows201of Future Men202(a) were203born, each of his own Colour204and Kind (b). Each205inferior to his Father.206The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their Progeny were Bhûta,207with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ208Race(c).(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the rootman, to think, hence a“thinker.”It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latinmens, Mind, the EgyptianMenes, the“Master-Mind,”the Pythagoreanmonas, or conscious“thinking unit,”mind also, and even ourmanasor mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are calledAmânasa,“Mindless.”With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,209or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.210May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?[pg 096]The Pitris being divided intosevenClasses, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all thePurânasagree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the“Body of Twilight.”Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to theVâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the“Fire Dhyânîs,”which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the“Heart”of the Dhyân-Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototypeabove. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart havefour lowercavities andthree higherdivisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler,“Principles,”or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?Says the Commentary:Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ-Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men.The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not-Gods].[pg 097]“Not-Gods,”for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest“Breaths,”for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body.This is very plainly shown in various texts of theRig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means“spiritual, divine,”and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a“God,”is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the threehighestGods, before Brâhmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.In theZend Avestathe same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the“all-knowing”or“omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows,“the Lord who bestowsIntelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.211Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded assevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the“Lord,”or“Lords”collectively“who bestowIntelligence,”connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.Why these“Gods”refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First-born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.212The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings whorefuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the[pg 098]Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by theorthodoxBrâhmans—and forthwith the former becomeA-Suras. The First- and Mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and arecursedby Brahmâ to beborn as men. They are hurleddown to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into theInfernalRegions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrialillusivelife, the“germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity throughself-consciousefforts; and it is these worshippers offormwho have made Demons of the Angels of Light.Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches thatone-third213of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence,“which is a formless breath, composed ofintellectualnot elementary substances”214—was simplydoomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re-born, or incarnated, on Earth.215Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all thePurânas, re-appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root-Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical[pg 099]and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.The supposed“Rebels,”then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop,had to incarnateanew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegorywithin an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with hisspiritualeye.As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri-Devatâs,i.e., those possessed of thephysical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness.“Man must not be like one of us,”say theCreativeGods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.216Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. Theywouldnot, simply because theycouldnot, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to thepersonal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first,[pg 100]pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity,“of the earth earthy,”was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to haverefusedto create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators,217who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselvesshadowymen, a little less ethereal and spiritual, lessdivineandperfectthan themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with everynegative(nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, theincorruptiblemust grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, andvice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither existsper se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires alowerOrder of Creative Angels to“create”inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their“Creators”occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of[pg 101]mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,218to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in thePhædrus, of a“winged”race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato'sBanquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. InPymander, all the animal kingdom even is double-sexed. Thus it is said:The circuit having been accomplished,the knot was loosened... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, wereuntied[separated]together with man... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.219Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, thePopol Vuh—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race“whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing thedivine knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.(b) These“Shadows”were born“each of his own colour and kind,”each also“inferior to his Father,”or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. InPymander, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the“Heavenly Man,”all partake of the qualities of the Seven“Governors,”or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis.In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular“myths,”as in our Secret[pg 102]Doctrine; and we find them in theVedas, thePurânas, the Mazdean Scriptures and theKabalah. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the“Pillars of the World,”its“Supports,”are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven“Workmen”or Rectors ofPymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not createMan, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.220The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzité tree of thePopol Vuh, out of which the Mexicanthirdrace of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the Western scholars can tell?221Nevertheless, the fruits of all those“Trees,”whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are the“plants of life,”in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developedwithin and underthe great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;222and the mystery is half revealed in theDîrghotamas, where it is said:Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which comespirits who love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels.As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, the“Serpent”dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are itsreflectedparts. The“Tree”is man himself, of course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious[pg 103]Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.Everywhere, it is the same. The“Creating”Powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man withconsciousimmortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which isour Earth, the lowestin its Chain; an“Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life-cycle—in thedarknessof Matter, orwithin animal Man. It pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as theforbiddenfruit, and the“Serpent of Wisdom,”the voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the old Dragon, the Devil!The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the“Jaina Cross”as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the“devil's sign,”we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand-headed Shesha-Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of Time, and becomesInfiniteTime itself, when called Ananta, the great Seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, theEternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of“creation,”or evolution as one should rather say, from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whosegenesis is as unknownto that Science as is that of the All-Deity Itself. The[pg 104]Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the“Worker's Hammer”in the ChaldæanBook of Numbers, the“Hammer,”above referred to, in theBook of Concealed Mystery,“which striketh sparks from the flint”(Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor's Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the Pre-cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the“Storm-hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and suffering in their life-incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel—the Goddess-queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.223Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the“Hammer of Creation,”with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continualmotionand revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in the Cycles of Time of the world's axes and their equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In theSmaragdine Tabletof Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word“Solve,”the left with the word“Coagula.”It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed[pg 105]at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ-Mâyâ, the great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions.How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the“Scrolls of Wisdom,”of which many are lost but some still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner'sAsgard and the Gods, concerning the“Renewal of the World,”which is a prophecy about the Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, andin them their fathers rose again[the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, butunseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters[of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil's cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, asthey used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil's heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them toclimb up higher, torise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.224He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom,[pg 106]though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above.Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The“friction”of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the Sanskrit-speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the“divine artist andcarpenter,”225and is also the Father of the Gods and of“Creative Fire”in theVedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number of such terra-cotta discs, calledfusaïoles, were found by Dr. Schliemannunderthe ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms, [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.(c) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.[pg 107]16.How are the Manushya226born? The Manus with minds, how are they made? (a) The Fathers227called to their help their own Fire,228which is the Fire that burns in Earth. The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire.229These Three230produced in their joint efforts a good Rûpa. It231could stand, walk, run, recline, or fly. Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with no sense. (b) ...(a) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas (Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians. It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says the Commentary,“who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man”—i.e., the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form,i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta232or“phantom.”This“creation”was a failure.(b) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity ofphysicalNature's unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature-Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct athinkingman.“LivingFire”was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are the Animal-Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of man. The first Creators, then, were the[pg 108]Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they failed to animate the statue—intellectually.This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the former is endowed withdivineintelligence, the latter withinstinctualfaculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?Says the Commentary:The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their abode.This shows that not all men became incarnations of the“Divine Rebels,”but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not the“Sons of Mahat,”speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through self-exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure spirit, that we are what we are—self-conscious, thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called“fables.”It explains, to begin with, the statement made inPymander, that the“Heavenly Man,”the“Son of the Father,”who partook of the nature[pg 109]and essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material World,Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the downward-borne nature.233It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many allegorical accounts about the“Wars in Heaven,”including that ofRevelationwith respect to the Christian dogma of the“Fallen Angels.”It explains the“Rebellion”of the oldest and highest Angels, and the meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,i.e., Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as follows:My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war with the powers of evilprecededthe Creation; I now think it followed the account of the Fall.234In the same work,235Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The Tree has seven branches;threeon the man's side,fouron that of the female. These branches are typical of the seven Root-Races, in thethirdof which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the so-called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless, then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each other. As the writer tells us:The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world.236This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, personified, or ratheranimalized; and Tiamat,“the embodiment of the spirit of chaos,”of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the Womb. The“spirit of chaos and disorder”refers to the mental perturbation which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which fascinates and seduces, the ever-living active element which throws the whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George Smith:[pg 110]It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour outuseless prayer, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).237This account is omitted inGenesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments byGenesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.17.The Breath238needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body;239“We gave it our own!”—said the Dhyânîs. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires;240“It has it!”—said the Drainer of Waters.241But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the Universe;“We cannot give that!”—said the Fathers.“I never had it!”—said the Spirit of the Earth.“The Form would be consumed were I to give it mine!”—said the Great Fire.242... Man243remained an empty senseless Bhûta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those who244became Men with Bones in the Third.245As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few remarks will now suffice. The“Father”of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its“Mother,”because of that mysterious power in the Moon,[pg 111]which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The“Wind”or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon earth, is referred to as the“Nurse”;246while“Spiritual Fire”alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.Now what is that“Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds from its Noumenon, the“Dhyân of the First Element.”Hydrogen isgasonly on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen“would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”247and is very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, and is“fire, air and water,”in fact:oneunder three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified it with, the To On, the“One”of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen isnotwater, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these“Fires”was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, thepersonified sacred Fires of the most Occult Powers of Nature. The several branches of the Âryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say[pg 112]seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus may very well stand for thealter egosof the four Kumâras—Sanat-Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori, Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is Brahmâ—or rather, the“Flame of his Wrath,”which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these“Fires”and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of ourfive physical senses, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in thePurânasPratisarga, or“Secondary Creation.”“Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,”says an Occult axiom.The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and their union is Life.In the Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In thePurânasand Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter-natural voice from heaven, revealing to the“chosen people”the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before Judaism, the“Mother of theVedas,”who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath-Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High-Priests.[pg 113]And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity.I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, theLight that radiates within Darkness[Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.248Thus we have to study well the“Primary Creation”before we can understand the Secondary. The first Race had threerudimentaryElements in it; andno Fireas yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so-called Creative Deity himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja,“pregenetic,”and the other names connect him in their descending order more and more with Matter.The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial“Man”or“Spirit,”and mortal physical man:1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its predecessor; as each Root-Race adds the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary“creation”of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be shown further on.Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the[pg 114]First Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is theAll Cause, and cannot be referred to as the“FirstCause,”—which First Cause is called in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, the“Womb of the World,”mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and Second Races, were not physical beings, but merelyrudimentsof the future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi,“origin,”or the“original place whence sprang the Elements.”Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavâpyaya,“the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,”as explained by the Commentator on theVishnu Purâna. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest“created”Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is a Manifested Deity—hence“created,”or limited and conditioned. This is easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.After being called theincognizable, eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Pundarîkâksha,“supreme and imperishable glory,”once that instead of Sadaika-Rûpa,“changeless”or“immutable”Nature, he is addressed as Ekâneka-Rûpa,“both single and manifold,”he, the Cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric order, show the following descending scale:Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses).Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân-Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles;every one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion of their various“Fires”and Elements.[pg 115]

Stanza IV.—Continued.15.Seven times seven Shadows201of Future Men202(a) were203born, each of his own Colour204and Kind (b). Each205inferior to his Father.206The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their Progeny were Bhûta,207with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ208Race(c).(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the rootman, to think, hence a“thinker.”It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latinmens, Mind, the EgyptianMenes, the“Master-Mind,”the Pythagoreanmonas, or conscious“thinking unit,”mind also, and even ourmanasor mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are calledAmânasa,“Mindless.”With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,209or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.210May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?[pg 096]The Pitris being divided intosevenClasses, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all thePurânasagree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the“Body of Twilight.”Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to theVâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the“Fire Dhyânîs,”which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the“Heart”of the Dhyân-Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototypeabove. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart havefour lowercavities andthree higherdivisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler,“Principles,”or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?Says the Commentary:Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ-Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men.The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not-Gods].[pg 097]“Not-Gods,”for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest“Breaths,”for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body.This is very plainly shown in various texts of theRig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means“spiritual, divine,”and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a“God,”is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the threehighestGods, before Brâhmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.In theZend Avestathe same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the“all-knowing”or“omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows,“the Lord who bestowsIntelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.211Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded assevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the“Lord,”or“Lords”collectively“who bestowIntelligence,”connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.Why these“Gods”refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First-born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.212The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings whorefuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the[pg 098]Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by theorthodoxBrâhmans—and forthwith the former becomeA-Suras. The First- and Mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and arecursedby Brahmâ to beborn as men. They are hurleddown to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into theInfernalRegions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrialillusivelife, the“germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity throughself-consciousefforts; and it is these worshippers offormwho have made Demons of the Angels of Light.Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches thatone-third213of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence,“which is a formless breath, composed ofintellectualnot elementary substances”214—was simplydoomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re-born, or incarnated, on Earth.215Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all thePurânas, re-appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root-Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical[pg 099]and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.The supposed“Rebels,”then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop,had to incarnateanew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegorywithin an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with hisspiritualeye.As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri-Devatâs,i.e., those possessed of thephysical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness.“Man must not be like one of us,”say theCreativeGods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.216Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. Theywouldnot, simply because theycouldnot, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to thepersonal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first,[pg 100]pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity,“of the earth earthy,”was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to haverefusedto create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators,217who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselvesshadowymen, a little less ethereal and spiritual, lessdivineandperfectthan themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with everynegative(nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, theincorruptiblemust grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, andvice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither existsper se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires alowerOrder of Creative Angels to“create”inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their“Creators”occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of[pg 101]mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,218to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in thePhædrus, of a“winged”race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato'sBanquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. InPymander, all the animal kingdom even is double-sexed. Thus it is said:The circuit having been accomplished,the knot was loosened... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, wereuntied[separated]together with man... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.219Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, thePopol Vuh—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race“whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing thedivine knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.(b) These“Shadows”were born“each of his own colour and kind,”each also“inferior to his Father,”or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. InPymander, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the“Heavenly Man,”all partake of the qualities of the Seven“Governors,”or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis.In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular“myths,”as in our Secret[pg 102]Doctrine; and we find them in theVedas, thePurânas, the Mazdean Scriptures and theKabalah. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the“Pillars of the World,”its“Supports,”are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven“Workmen”or Rectors ofPymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not createMan, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.220The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzité tree of thePopol Vuh, out of which the Mexicanthirdrace of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the Western scholars can tell?221Nevertheless, the fruits of all those“Trees,”whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are the“plants of life,”in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developedwithin and underthe great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;222and the mystery is half revealed in theDîrghotamas, where it is said:Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which comespirits who love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels.As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, the“Serpent”dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are itsreflectedparts. The“Tree”is man himself, of course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious[pg 103]Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.Everywhere, it is the same. The“Creating”Powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man withconsciousimmortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which isour Earth, the lowestin its Chain; an“Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life-cycle—in thedarknessof Matter, orwithin animal Man. It pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as theforbiddenfruit, and the“Serpent of Wisdom,”the voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the old Dragon, the Devil!The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the“Jaina Cross”as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the“devil's sign,”we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand-headed Shesha-Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of Time, and becomesInfiniteTime itself, when called Ananta, the great Seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, theEternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of“creation,”or evolution as one should rather say, from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whosegenesis is as unknownto that Science as is that of the All-Deity Itself. The[pg 104]Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the“Worker's Hammer”in the ChaldæanBook of Numbers, the“Hammer,”above referred to, in theBook of Concealed Mystery,“which striketh sparks from the flint”(Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor's Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the Pre-cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the“Storm-hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and suffering in their life-incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel—the Goddess-queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.223Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the“Hammer of Creation,”with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continualmotionand revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in the Cycles of Time of the world's axes and their equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In theSmaragdine Tabletof Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word“Solve,”the left with the word“Coagula.”It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed[pg 105]at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ-Mâyâ, the great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions.How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the“Scrolls of Wisdom,”of which many are lost but some still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner'sAsgard and the Gods, concerning the“Renewal of the World,”which is a prophecy about the Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, andin them their fathers rose again[the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, butunseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters[of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil's cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, asthey used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil's heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them toclimb up higher, torise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.224He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom,[pg 106]though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above.Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The“friction”of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the Sanskrit-speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the“divine artist andcarpenter,”225and is also the Father of the Gods and of“Creative Fire”in theVedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number of such terra-cotta discs, calledfusaïoles, were found by Dr. Schliemannunderthe ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms, [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.(c) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.[pg 107]16.How are the Manushya226born? The Manus with minds, how are they made? (a) The Fathers227called to their help their own Fire,228which is the Fire that burns in Earth. The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire.229These Three230produced in their joint efforts a good Rûpa. It231could stand, walk, run, recline, or fly. Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with no sense. (b) ...(a) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas (Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians. It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says the Commentary,“who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man”—i.e., the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form,i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta232or“phantom.”This“creation”was a failure.(b) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity ofphysicalNature's unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature-Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct athinkingman.“LivingFire”was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are the Animal-Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of man. The first Creators, then, were the[pg 108]Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they failed to animate the statue—intellectually.This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the former is endowed withdivineintelligence, the latter withinstinctualfaculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?Says the Commentary:The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their abode.This shows that not all men became incarnations of the“Divine Rebels,”but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not the“Sons of Mahat,”speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through self-exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure spirit, that we are what we are—self-conscious, thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called“fables.”It explains, to begin with, the statement made inPymander, that the“Heavenly Man,”the“Son of the Father,”who partook of the nature[pg 109]and essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material World,Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the downward-borne nature.233It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many allegorical accounts about the“Wars in Heaven,”including that ofRevelationwith respect to the Christian dogma of the“Fallen Angels.”It explains the“Rebellion”of the oldest and highest Angels, and the meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,i.e., Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as follows:My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war with the powers of evilprecededthe Creation; I now think it followed the account of the Fall.234In the same work,235Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The Tree has seven branches;threeon the man's side,fouron that of the female. These branches are typical of the seven Root-Races, in thethirdof which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the so-called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless, then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each other. As the writer tells us:The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world.236This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, personified, or ratheranimalized; and Tiamat,“the embodiment of the spirit of chaos,”of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the Womb. The“spirit of chaos and disorder”refers to the mental perturbation which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which fascinates and seduces, the ever-living active element which throws the whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George Smith:[pg 110]It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour outuseless prayer, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).237This account is omitted inGenesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments byGenesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.17.The Breath238needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body;239“We gave it our own!”—said the Dhyânîs. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires;240“It has it!”—said the Drainer of Waters.241But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the Universe;“We cannot give that!”—said the Fathers.“I never had it!”—said the Spirit of the Earth.“The Form would be consumed were I to give it mine!”—said the Great Fire.242... Man243remained an empty senseless Bhûta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those who244became Men with Bones in the Third.245As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few remarks will now suffice. The“Father”of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its“Mother,”because of that mysterious power in the Moon,[pg 111]which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The“Wind”or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon earth, is referred to as the“Nurse”;246while“Spiritual Fire”alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.Now what is that“Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds from its Noumenon, the“Dhyân of the First Element.”Hydrogen isgasonly on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen“would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”247and is very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, and is“fire, air and water,”in fact:oneunder three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified it with, the To On, the“One”of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen isnotwater, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these“Fires”was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, thepersonified sacred Fires of the most Occult Powers of Nature. The several branches of the Âryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say[pg 112]seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus may very well stand for thealter egosof the four Kumâras—Sanat-Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori, Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is Brahmâ—or rather, the“Flame of his Wrath,”which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these“Fires”and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of ourfive physical senses, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in thePurânasPratisarga, or“Secondary Creation.”“Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,”says an Occult axiom.The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and their union is Life.In the Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In thePurânasand Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter-natural voice from heaven, revealing to the“chosen people”the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before Judaism, the“Mother of theVedas,”who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath-Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High-Priests.[pg 113]And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity.I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, theLight that radiates within Darkness[Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.248Thus we have to study well the“Primary Creation”before we can understand the Secondary. The first Race had threerudimentaryElements in it; andno Fireas yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so-called Creative Deity himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja,“pregenetic,”and the other names connect him in their descending order more and more with Matter.The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial“Man”or“Spirit,”and mortal physical man:1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its predecessor; as each Root-Race adds the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary“creation”of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be shown further on.Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the[pg 114]First Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is theAll Cause, and cannot be referred to as the“FirstCause,”—which First Cause is called in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, the“Womb of the World,”mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and Second Races, were not physical beings, but merelyrudimentsof the future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi,“origin,”or the“original place whence sprang the Elements.”Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavâpyaya,“the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,”as explained by the Commentator on theVishnu Purâna. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest“created”Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is a Manifested Deity—hence“created,”or limited and conditioned. This is easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.After being called theincognizable, eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Pundarîkâksha,“supreme and imperishable glory,”once that instead of Sadaika-Rûpa,“changeless”or“immutable”Nature, he is addressed as Ekâneka-Rûpa,“both single and manifold,”he, the Cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric order, show the following descending scale:Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses).Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân-Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles;every one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion of their various“Fires”and Elements.[pg 115]

Stanza IV.—Continued.15.Seven times seven Shadows201of Future Men202(a) were203born, each of his own Colour204and Kind (b). Each205inferior to his Father.206The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their Progeny were Bhûta,207with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ208Race(c).(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the rootman, to think, hence a“thinker.”It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latinmens, Mind, the EgyptianMenes, the“Master-Mind,”the Pythagoreanmonas, or conscious“thinking unit,”mind also, and even ourmanasor mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are calledAmânasa,“Mindless.”With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,209or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.210May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?[pg 096]The Pitris being divided intosevenClasses, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all thePurânasagree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the“Body of Twilight.”Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to theVâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the“Fire Dhyânîs,”which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the“Heart”of the Dhyân-Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototypeabove. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart havefour lowercavities andthree higherdivisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler,“Principles,”or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?Says the Commentary:Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ-Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men.The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not-Gods].[pg 097]“Not-Gods,”for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest“Breaths,”for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body.This is very plainly shown in various texts of theRig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means“spiritual, divine,”and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a“God,”is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the threehighestGods, before Brâhmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.In theZend Avestathe same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the“all-knowing”or“omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows,“the Lord who bestowsIntelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.211Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded assevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the“Lord,”or“Lords”collectively“who bestowIntelligence,”connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.Why these“Gods”refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First-born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.212The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings whorefuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the[pg 098]Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by theorthodoxBrâhmans—and forthwith the former becomeA-Suras. The First- and Mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and arecursedby Brahmâ to beborn as men. They are hurleddown to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into theInfernalRegions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrialillusivelife, the“germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity throughself-consciousefforts; and it is these worshippers offormwho have made Demons of the Angels of Light.Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches thatone-third213of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence,“which is a formless breath, composed ofintellectualnot elementary substances”214—was simplydoomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re-born, or incarnated, on Earth.215Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all thePurânas, re-appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root-Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical[pg 099]and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.The supposed“Rebels,”then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop,had to incarnateanew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegorywithin an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with hisspiritualeye.As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri-Devatâs,i.e., those possessed of thephysical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness.“Man must not be like one of us,”say theCreativeGods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.216Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. Theywouldnot, simply because theycouldnot, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to thepersonal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first,[pg 100]pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity,“of the earth earthy,”was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to haverefusedto create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators,217who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselvesshadowymen, a little less ethereal and spiritual, lessdivineandperfectthan themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with everynegative(nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, theincorruptiblemust grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, andvice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither existsper se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires alowerOrder of Creative Angels to“create”inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their“Creators”occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of[pg 101]mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,218to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in thePhædrus, of a“winged”race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato'sBanquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. InPymander, all the animal kingdom even is double-sexed. Thus it is said:The circuit having been accomplished,the knot was loosened... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, wereuntied[separated]together with man... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.219Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, thePopol Vuh—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race“whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing thedivine knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.(b) These“Shadows”were born“each of his own colour and kind,”each also“inferior to his Father,”or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. InPymander, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the“Heavenly Man,”all partake of the qualities of the Seven“Governors,”or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis.In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular“myths,”as in our Secret[pg 102]Doctrine; and we find them in theVedas, thePurânas, the Mazdean Scriptures and theKabalah. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the“Pillars of the World,”its“Supports,”are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven“Workmen”or Rectors ofPymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not createMan, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.220The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzité tree of thePopol Vuh, out of which the Mexicanthirdrace of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the Western scholars can tell?221Nevertheless, the fruits of all those“Trees,”whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are the“plants of life,”in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developedwithin and underthe great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;222and the mystery is half revealed in theDîrghotamas, where it is said:Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which comespirits who love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels.As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, the“Serpent”dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are itsreflectedparts. The“Tree”is man himself, of course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious[pg 103]Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.Everywhere, it is the same. The“Creating”Powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man withconsciousimmortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which isour Earth, the lowestin its Chain; an“Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life-cycle—in thedarknessof Matter, orwithin animal Man. It pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as theforbiddenfruit, and the“Serpent of Wisdom,”the voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the old Dragon, the Devil!The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the“Jaina Cross”as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the“devil's sign,”we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand-headed Shesha-Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of Time, and becomesInfiniteTime itself, when called Ananta, the great Seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, theEternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of“creation,”or evolution as one should rather say, from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whosegenesis is as unknownto that Science as is that of the All-Deity Itself. The[pg 104]Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the“Worker's Hammer”in the ChaldæanBook of Numbers, the“Hammer,”above referred to, in theBook of Concealed Mystery,“which striketh sparks from the flint”(Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor's Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the Pre-cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the“Storm-hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and suffering in their life-incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel—the Goddess-queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.223Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the“Hammer of Creation,”with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continualmotionand revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in the Cycles of Time of the world's axes and their equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In theSmaragdine Tabletof Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word“Solve,”the left with the word“Coagula.”It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed[pg 105]at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ-Mâyâ, the great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions.How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the“Scrolls of Wisdom,”of which many are lost but some still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner'sAsgard and the Gods, concerning the“Renewal of the World,”which is a prophecy about the Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, andin them their fathers rose again[the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, butunseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters[of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil's cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, asthey used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil's heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them toclimb up higher, torise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.224He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom,[pg 106]though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above.Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The“friction”of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the Sanskrit-speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the“divine artist andcarpenter,”225and is also the Father of the Gods and of“Creative Fire”in theVedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number of such terra-cotta discs, calledfusaïoles, were found by Dr. Schliemannunderthe ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms, [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.(c) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.[pg 107]16.How are the Manushya226born? The Manus with minds, how are they made? (a) The Fathers227called to their help their own Fire,228which is the Fire that burns in Earth. The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire.229These Three230produced in their joint efforts a good Rûpa. It231could stand, walk, run, recline, or fly. Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with no sense. (b) ...(a) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas (Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians. It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says the Commentary,“who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man”—i.e., the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form,i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta232or“phantom.”This“creation”was a failure.(b) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity ofphysicalNature's unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature-Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct athinkingman.“LivingFire”was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are the Animal-Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of man. The first Creators, then, were the[pg 108]Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they failed to animate the statue—intellectually.This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the former is endowed withdivineintelligence, the latter withinstinctualfaculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?Says the Commentary:The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their abode.This shows that not all men became incarnations of the“Divine Rebels,”but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not the“Sons of Mahat,”speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through self-exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure spirit, that we are what we are—self-conscious, thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called“fables.”It explains, to begin with, the statement made inPymander, that the“Heavenly Man,”the“Son of the Father,”who partook of the nature[pg 109]and essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material World,Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the downward-borne nature.233It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many allegorical accounts about the“Wars in Heaven,”including that ofRevelationwith respect to the Christian dogma of the“Fallen Angels.”It explains the“Rebellion”of the oldest and highest Angels, and the meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,i.e., Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as follows:My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war with the powers of evilprecededthe Creation; I now think it followed the account of the Fall.234In the same work,235Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The Tree has seven branches;threeon the man's side,fouron that of the female. These branches are typical of the seven Root-Races, in thethirdof which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the so-called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless, then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each other. As the writer tells us:The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world.236This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, personified, or ratheranimalized; and Tiamat,“the embodiment of the spirit of chaos,”of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the Womb. The“spirit of chaos and disorder”refers to the mental perturbation which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which fascinates and seduces, the ever-living active element which throws the whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George Smith:[pg 110]It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour outuseless prayer, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).237This account is omitted inGenesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments byGenesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.17.The Breath238needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body;239“We gave it our own!”—said the Dhyânîs. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires;240“It has it!”—said the Drainer of Waters.241But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the Universe;“We cannot give that!”—said the Fathers.“I never had it!”—said the Spirit of the Earth.“The Form would be consumed were I to give it mine!”—said the Great Fire.242... Man243remained an empty senseless Bhûta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those who244became Men with Bones in the Third.245As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few remarks will now suffice. The“Father”of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its“Mother,”because of that mysterious power in the Moon,[pg 111]which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The“Wind”or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon earth, is referred to as the“Nurse”;246while“Spiritual Fire”alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.Now what is that“Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds from its Noumenon, the“Dhyân of the First Element.”Hydrogen isgasonly on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen“would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”247and is very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, and is“fire, air and water,”in fact:oneunder three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified it with, the To On, the“One”of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen isnotwater, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these“Fires”was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, thepersonified sacred Fires of the most Occult Powers of Nature. The several branches of the Âryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say[pg 112]seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus may very well stand for thealter egosof the four Kumâras—Sanat-Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori, Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is Brahmâ—or rather, the“Flame of his Wrath,”which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these“Fires”and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of ourfive physical senses, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in thePurânasPratisarga, or“Secondary Creation.”“Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,”says an Occult axiom.The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and their union is Life.In the Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In thePurânasand Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter-natural voice from heaven, revealing to the“chosen people”the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before Judaism, the“Mother of theVedas,”who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath-Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High-Priests.[pg 113]And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity.I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, theLight that radiates within Darkness[Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.248Thus we have to study well the“Primary Creation”before we can understand the Secondary. The first Race had threerudimentaryElements in it; andno Fireas yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so-called Creative Deity himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja,“pregenetic,”and the other names connect him in their descending order more and more with Matter.The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial“Man”or“Spirit,”and mortal physical man:1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its predecessor; as each Root-Race adds the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary“creation”of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be shown further on.Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the[pg 114]First Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is theAll Cause, and cannot be referred to as the“FirstCause,”—which First Cause is called in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, the“Womb of the World,”mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and Second Races, were not physical beings, but merelyrudimentsof the future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi,“origin,”or the“original place whence sprang the Elements.”Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavâpyaya,“the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,”as explained by the Commentator on theVishnu Purâna. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest“created”Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is a Manifested Deity—hence“created,”or limited and conditioned. This is easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.After being called theincognizable, eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Pundarîkâksha,“supreme and imperishable glory,”once that instead of Sadaika-Rûpa,“changeless”or“immutable”Nature, he is addressed as Ekâneka-Rûpa,“both single and manifold,”he, the Cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric order, show the following descending scale:Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses).Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân-Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles;every one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion of their various“Fires”and Elements.[pg 115]

Stanza IV.—Continued.15.Seven times seven Shadows201of Future Men202(a) were203born, each of his own Colour204and Kind (b). Each205inferior to his Father.206The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their Progeny were Bhûta,207with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ208Race(c).(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the rootman, to think, hence a“thinker.”It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latinmens, Mind, the EgyptianMenes, the“Master-Mind,”the Pythagoreanmonas, or conscious“thinking unit,”mind also, and even ourmanasor mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are calledAmânasa,“Mindless.”With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,209or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.210May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?[pg 096]The Pitris being divided intosevenClasses, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all thePurânasagree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the“Body of Twilight.”Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to theVâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the“Fire Dhyânîs,”which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the“Heart”of the Dhyân-Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototypeabove. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart havefour lowercavities andthree higherdivisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler,“Principles,”or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?Says the Commentary:Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ-Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men.The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not-Gods].[pg 097]“Not-Gods,”for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest“Breaths,”for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body.This is very plainly shown in various texts of theRig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means“spiritual, divine,”and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a“God,”is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the threehighestGods, before Brâhmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.In theZend Avestathe same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the“all-knowing”or“omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows,“the Lord who bestowsIntelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.211Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded assevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the“Lord,”or“Lords”collectively“who bestowIntelligence,”connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.Why these“Gods”refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First-born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.212The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings whorefuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the[pg 098]Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by theorthodoxBrâhmans—and forthwith the former becomeA-Suras. The First- and Mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and arecursedby Brahmâ to beborn as men. They are hurleddown to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into theInfernalRegions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrialillusivelife, the“germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity throughself-consciousefforts; and it is these worshippers offormwho have made Demons of the Angels of Light.Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches thatone-third213of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence,“which is a formless breath, composed ofintellectualnot elementary substances”214—was simplydoomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re-born, or incarnated, on Earth.215Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all thePurânas, re-appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root-Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical[pg 099]and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.The supposed“Rebels,”then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop,had to incarnateanew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegorywithin an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with hisspiritualeye.As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri-Devatâs,i.e., those possessed of thephysical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness.“Man must not be like one of us,”say theCreativeGods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.216Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. Theywouldnot, simply because theycouldnot, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to thepersonal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first,[pg 100]pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity,“of the earth earthy,”was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to haverefusedto create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators,217who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselvesshadowymen, a little less ethereal and spiritual, lessdivineandperfectthan themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with everynegative(nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, theincorruptiblemust grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, andvice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither existsper se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires alowerOrder of Creative Angels to“create”inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their“Creators”occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of[pg 101]mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,218to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in thePhædrus, of a“winged”race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato'sBanquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. InPymander, all the animal kingdom even is double-sexed. Thus it is said:The circuit having been accomplished,the knot was loosened... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, wereuntied[separated]together with man... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.219Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, thePopol Vuh—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race“whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing thedivine knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.(b) These“Shadows”were born“each of his own colour and kind,”each also“inferior to his Father,”or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. InPymander, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the“Heavenly Man,”all partake of the qualities of the Seven“Governors,”or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis.In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular“myths,”as in our Secret[pg 102]Doctrine; and we find them in theVedas, thePurânas, the Mazdean Scriptures and theKabalah. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the“Pillars of the World,”its“Supports,”are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven“Workmen”or Rectors ofPymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not createMan, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.220The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzité tree of thePopol Vuh, out of which the Mexicanthirdrace of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the Western scholars can tell?221Nevertheless, the fruits of all those“Trees,”whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are the“plants of life,”in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developedwithin and underthe great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;222and the mystery is half revealed in theDîrghotamas, where it is said:Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which comespirits who love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels.As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, the“Serpent”dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are itsreflectedparts. The“Tree”is man himself, of course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious[pg 103]Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.Everywhere, it is the same. The“Creating”Powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man withconsciousimmortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which isour Earth, the lowestin its Chain; an“Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life-cycle—in thedarknessof Matter, orwithin animal Man. It pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as theforbiddenfruit, and the“Serpent of Wisdom,”the voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the old Dragon, the Devil!The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the“Jaina Cross”as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the“devil's sign,”we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand-headed Shesha-Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of Time, and becomesInfiniteTime itself, when called Ananta, the great Seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, theEternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of“creation,”or evolution as one should rather say, from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whosegenesis is as unknownto that Science as is that of the All-Deity Itself. The[pg 104]Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the“Worker's Hammer”in the ChaldæanBook of Numbers, the“Hammer,”above referred to, in theBook of Concealed Mystery,“which striketh sparks from the flint”(Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor's Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the Pre-cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the“Storm-hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and suffering in their life-incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel—the Goddess-queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.223Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the“Hammer of Creation,”with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continualmotionand revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in the Cycles of Time of the world's axes and their equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In theSmaragdine Tabletof Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word“Solve,”the left with the word“Coagula.”It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed[pg 105]at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ-Mâyâ, the great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions.How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the“Scrolls of Wisdom,”of which many are lost but some still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner'sAsgard and the Gods, concerning the“Renewal of the World,”which is a prophecy about the Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, andin them their fathers rose again[the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, butunseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters[of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil's cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, asthey used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil's heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them toclimb up higher, torise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.224He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom,[pg 106]though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above.Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The“friction”of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the Sanskrit-speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the“divine artist andcarpenter,”225and is also the Father of the Gods and of“Creative Fire”in theVedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number of such terra-cotta discs, calledfusaïoles, were found by Dr. Schliemannunderthe ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms, [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.(c) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.[pg 107]16.How are the Manushya226born? The Manus with minds, how are they made? (a) The Fathers227called to their help their own Fire,228which is the Fire that burns in Earth. The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire.229These Three230produced in their joint efforts a good Rûpa. It231could stand, walk, run, recline, or fly. Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with no sense. (b) ...(a) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas (Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians. It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says the Commentary,“who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man”—i.e., the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form,i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta232or“phantom.”This“creation”was a failure.(b) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity ofphysicalNature's unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature-Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct athinkingman.“LivingFire”was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are the Animal-Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of man. The first Creators, then, were the[pg 108]Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they failed to animate the statue—intellectually.This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the former is endowed withdivineintelligence, the latter withinstinctualfaculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?Says the Commentary:The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their abode.This shows that not all men became incarnations of the“Divine Rebels,”but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not the“Sons of Mahat,”speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through self-exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure spirit, that we are what we are—self-conscious, thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called“fables.”It explains, to begin with, the statement made inPymander, that the“Heavenly Man,”the“Son of the Father,”who partook of the nature[pg 109]and essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material World,Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the downward-borne nature.233It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many allegorical accounts about the“Wars in Heaven,”including that ofRevelationwith respect to the Christian dogma of the“Fallen Angels.”It explains the“Rebellion”of the oldest and highest Angels, and the meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,i.e., Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as follows:My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war with the powers of evilprecededthe Creation; I now think it followed the account of the Fall.234In the same work,235Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The Tree has seven branches;threeon the man's side,fouron that of the female. These branches are typical of the seven Root-Races, in thethirdof which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the so-called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless, then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each other. As the writer tells us:The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world.236This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, personified, or ratheranimalized; and Tiamat,“the embodiment of the spirit of chaos,”of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the Womb. The“spirit of chaos and disorder”refers to the mental perturbation which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which fascinates and seduces, the ever-living active element which throws the whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George Smith:[pg 110]It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour outuseless prayer, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).237This account is omitted inGenesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments byGenesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.17.The Breath238needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body;239“We gave it our own!”—said the Dhyânîs. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires;240“It has it!”—said the Drainer of Waters.241But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the Universe;“We cannot give that!”—said the Fathers.“I never had it!”—said the Spirit of the Earth.“The Form would be consumed were I to give it mine!”—said the Great Fire.242... Man243remained an empty senseless Bhûta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those who244became Men with Bones in the Third.245As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few remarks will now suffice. The“Father”of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its“Mother,”because of that mysterious power in the Moon,[pg 111]which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The“Wind”or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon earth, is referred to as the“Nurse”;246while“Spiritual Fire”alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.Now what is that“Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds from its Noumenon, the“Dhyân of the First Element.”Hydrogen isgasonly on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen“would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”247and is very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, and is“fire, air and water,”in fact:oneunder three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified it with, the To On, the“One”of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen isnotwater, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these“Fires”was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, thepersonified sacred Fires of the most Occult Powers of Nature. The several branches of the Âryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say[pg 112]seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus may very well stand for thealter egosof the four Kumâras—Sanat-Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori, Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is Brahmâ—or rather, the“Flame of his Wrath,”which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these“Fires”and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of ourfive physical senses, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in thePurânasPratisarga, or“Secondary Creation.”“Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,”says an Occult axiom.The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and their union is Life.In the Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In thePurânasand Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter-natural voice from heaven, revealing to the“chosen people”the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before Judaism, the“Mother of theVedas,”who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath-Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High-Priests.[pg 113]And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity.I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, theLight that radiates within Darkness[Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.248Thus we have to study well the“Primary Creation”before we can understand the Secondary. The first Race had threerudimentaryElements in it; andno Fireas yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so-called Creative Deity himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja,“pregenetic,”and the other names connect him in their descending order more and more with Matter.The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial“Man”or“Spirit,”and mortal physical man:1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its predecessor; as each Root-Race adds the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary“creation”of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be shown further on.Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the[pg 114]First Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is theAll Cause, and cannot be referred to as the“FirstCause,”—which First Cause is called in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, the“Womb of the World,”mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and Second Races, were not physical beings, but merelyrudimentsof the future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi,“origin,”or the“original place whence sprang the Elements.”Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavâpyaya,“the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,”as explained by the Commentator on theVishnu Purâna. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest“created”Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is a Manifested Deity—hence“created,”or limited and conditioned. This is easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.After being called theincognizable, eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Pundarîkâksha,“supreme and imperishable glory,”once that instead of Sadaika-Rûpa,“changeless”or“immutable”Nature, he is addressed as Ekâneka-Rûpa,“both single and manifold,”he, the Cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric order, show the following descending scale:Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses).Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân-Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles;every one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion of their various“Fires”and Elements.

15.Seven times seven Shadows201of Future Men202(a) were203born, each of his own Colour204and Kind (b). Each205inferior to his Father.206The Fathers, the Boneless, could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their Progeny were Bhûta,207with neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ208Race(c).

(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the rootman, to think, hence a“thinker.”It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latinmens, Mind, the EgyptianMenes, the“Master-Mind,”the Pythagoreanmonas, or conscious“thinking unit,”mind also, and even ourmanasor mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are calledAmânasa,“Mindless.”

With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,209or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.210

May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?

The Pitris being divided intosevenClasses, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all thePurânasagree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the“Body of Twilight.”Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to theVâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.

Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the“Fire Dhyânîs,”which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the“Heart”of the Dhyân-Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototypeabove. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart havefour lowercavities andthree higherdivisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler,“Principles,”or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?

Says the Commentary:

Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ-Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men.

The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not-Gods].

“Not-Gods,”for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest“Breaths,”for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body.

This is very plainly shown in various texts of theRig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means“spiritual, divine,”and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a“God,”is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the threehighestGods, before Brâhmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.

In theZend Avestathe same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the“all-knowing”or“omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows,“the Lord who bestowsIntelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.211Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded assevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the“Lord,”or“Lords”collectively“who bestowIntelligence,”connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.

Why these“Gods”refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First-born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.212

The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings whorefuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the[pg 098]Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by theorthodoxBrâhmans—and forthwith the former becomeA-Suras. The First- and Mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and arecursedby Brahmâ to beborn as men. They are hurleddown to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into theInfernalRegions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrialillusivelife, the“germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity throughself-consciousefforts; and it is these worshippers offormwho have made Demons of the Angels of Light.

Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches thatone-third213of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence,“which is a formless breath, composed ofintellectualnot elementary substances”214—was simplydoomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re-born, or incarnated, on Earth.215Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all thePurânas, re-appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root-Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical[pg 099]and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.

The supposed“Rebels,”then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop,had to incarnateanew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegorywithin an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with hisspiritualeye.

As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri-Devatâs,i.e., those possessed of thephysical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness.“Man must not be like one of us,”say theCreativeGods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.216Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. Theywouldnot, simply because theycouldnot, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.

Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to thepersonal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first,[pg 100]pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity,“of the earth earthy,”was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to haverefusedto create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators,217who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselvesshadowymen, a little less ethereal and spiritual, lessdivineandperfectthan themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with everynegative(nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, theincorruptiblemust grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, andvice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither existsper se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.

Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires alowerOrder of Creative Angels to“create”inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their“Creators”occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of[pg 101]mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,218to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.

Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in thePhædrus, of a“winged”race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato'sBanquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. InPymander, all the animal kingdom even is double-sexed. Thus it is said:

The circuit having been accomplished,the knot was loosened... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, wereuntied[separated]together with man... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.219

The circuit having been accomplished,the knot was loosened... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, wereuntied[separated]together with man... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.219

Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, thePopol Vuh—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race“whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing thedivine knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.

(b) These“Shadows”were born“each of his own colour and kind,”each also“inferior to his Father,”or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. InPymander, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the“Heavenly Man,”all partake of the qualities of the Seven“Governors,”or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis.

In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular“myths,”as in our Secret[pg 102]Doctrine; and we find them in theVedas, thePurânas, the Mazdean Scriptures and theKabalah. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the“Pillars of the World,”its“Supports,”are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven“Workmen”or Rectors ofPymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not createMan, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.220The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzité tree of thePopol Vuh, out of which the Mexicanthirdrace of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the Western scholars can tell?221Nevertheless, the fruits of all those“Trees,”whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are the“plants of life,”in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developedwithin and underthe great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;222and the mystery is half revealed in theDîrghotamas, where it is said:

Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which comespirits who love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels.

Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which comespirits who love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels.

As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, the“Serpent”dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are itsreflectedparts. The“Tree”is man himself, of course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious[pg 103]Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.

Everywhere, it is the same. The“Creating”Powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man withconsciousimmortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which isour Earth, the lowestin its Chain; an“Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life-cycle—in thedarknessof Matter, orwithin animal Man. It pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as theforbiddenfruit, and the“Serpent of Wisdom,”the voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the old Dragon, the Devil!

The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the“Jaina Cross”as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the“devil's sign,”we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand-headed Shesha-Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of Time, and becomesInfiniteTime itself, when called Ananta, the great Seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, theEternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of“creation,”or evolution as one should rather say, from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whosegenesis is as unknownto that Science as is that of the All-Deity Itself. The[pg 104]Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the“Worker's Hammer”in the ChaldæanBook of Numbers, the“Hammer,”above referred to, in theBook of Concealed Mystery,“which striketh sparks from the flint”(Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor's Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the Pre-cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the“Storm-hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and suffering in their life-incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel—the Goddess-queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.

Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.223

Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.223

Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the“Hammer of Creation,”with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continualmotionand revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in the Cycles of Time of the world's axes and their equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In theSmaragdine Tabletof Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word“Solve,”the left with the word“Coagula.”It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed[pg 105]at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ-Mâyâ, the great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions.

How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the“Scrolls of Wisdom,”of which many are lost but some still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner'sAsgard and the Gods, concerning the“Renewal of the World,”which is a prophecy about the Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.

The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:

On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, andin them their fathers rose again[the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, butunseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters[of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil's cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, asthey used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil's heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them toclimb up higher, torise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.224

On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, andin them their fathers rose again[the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, butunseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters[of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil's cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, asthey used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil's heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them toclimb up higher, torise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.224

He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom,[pg 106]though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above.

Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The“friction”of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the Sanskrit-speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the“divine artist andcarpenter,”225and is also the Father of the Gods and of“Creative Fire”in theVedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number of such terra-cotta discs, calledfusaïoles, were found by Dr. Schliemannunderthe ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms, [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.

(c) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.

16.How are the Manushya226born? The Manus with minds, how are they made? (a) The Fathers227called to their help their own Fire,228which is the Fire that burns in Earth. The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire.229These Three230produced in their joint efforts a good Rûpa. It231could stand, walk, run, recline, or fly. Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with no sense. (b) ...

(a) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas (Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians. It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says the Commentary,“who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man”—i.e., the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form,i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta232or“phantom.”This“creation”was a failure.

(b) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity ofphysicalNature's unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature-Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct athinkingman.“LivingFire”was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self-perception and self-consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are the Animal-Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of man. The first Creators, then, were the[pg 108]Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they failed to animate the statue—intellectually.

This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the former is endowed withdivineintelligence, the latter withinstinctualfaculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?

Says the Commentary:

The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their abode.

This shows that not all men became incarnations of the“Divine Rebels,”but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not the“Sons of Mahat,”speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through self-exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure spirit, that we are what we are—self-conscious, thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self-conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called“fables.”

It explains, to begin with, the statement made inPymander, that the“Heavenly Man,”the“Son of the Father,”who partook of the nature[pg 109]and essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material World,

Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the downward-borne nature.233

Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the downward-borne nature.233

It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many allegorical accounts about the“Wars in Heaven,”including that ofRevelationwith respect to the Christian dogma of the“Fallen Angels.”It explains the“Rebellion”of the oldest and highest Angels, and the meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,i.e., Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as follows:

My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war with the powers of evilprecededthe Creation; I now think it followed the account of the Fall.234

My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war with the powers of evilprecededthe Creation; I now think it followed the account of the Fall.234

In the same work,235Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The Tree has seven branches;threeon the man's side,fouron that of the female. These branches are typical of the seven Root-Races, in thethirdof which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the so-called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless, then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each other. As the writer tells us:

The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world.236

The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world.236

This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, personified, or ratheranimalized; and Tiamat,“the embodiment of the spirit of chaos,”of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the Womb. The“spirit of chaos and disorder”refers to the mental perturbation which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which fascinates and seduces, the ever-living active element which throws the whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George Smith:

It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour outuseless prayer, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).237

It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour outuseless prayer, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).237

This account is omitted inGenesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments byGenesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.

17.The Breath238needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of its Body;239“We gave it our own!”—said the Dhyânîs. The Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires;240“It has it!”—said the Drainer of Waters.241But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the Universe;“We cannot give that!”—said the Fathers.“I never had it!”—said the Spirit of the Earth.“The Form would be consumed were I to give it mine!”—said the Great Fire.242... Man243remained an empty senseless Bhûta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those who244became Men with Bones in the Third.245

As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few remarks will now suffice. The“Father”of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its“Mother,”because of that mysterious power in the Moon,[pg 111]which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The“Wind”or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon earth, is referred to as the“Nurse”;246while“Spiritual Fire”alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.

Now what is that“Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds from its Noumenon, the“Dhyân of the First Element.”Hydrogen isgasonly on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen“would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”247and is very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, and is“fire, air and water,”in fact:oneunder three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified it with, the To On, the“One”of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen isnotwater, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.

If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these“Fires”was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, thepersonified sacred Fires of the most Occult Powers of Nature. The several branches of the Âryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say[pg 112]seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus may very well stand for thealter egosof the four Kumâras—Sanat-Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori, Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is Brahmâ—or rather, the“Flame of his Wrath,”which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these“Fires”and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.

The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of ourfive physical senses, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in thePurânasPratisarga, or“Secondary Creation.”“Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,”says an Occult axiom.

The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and their union is Life.

In the Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In thePurânasand Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter-natural voice from heaven, revealing to the“chosen people”the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before Judaism, the“Mother of theVedas,”who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath-Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High-Priests.[pg 113]And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity.

I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, theLight that radiates within Darkness[Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.248

I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, theLight that radiates within Darkness[Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.248

Thus we have to study well the“Primary Creation”before we can understand the Secondary. The first Race had threerudimentaryElements in it; andno Fireas yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so-called Creative Deity himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja,“pregenetic,”and the other names connect him in their descending order more and more with Matter.

The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial“Man”or“Spirit,”and mortal physical man:

1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.

1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.

2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.

3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.

4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.

5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.

As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its predecessor; as each Root-Race adds the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary“creation”of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be shown further on.

Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the[pg 114]First Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is theAll Cause, and cannot be referred to as the“FirstCause,”—which First Cause is called in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, the“Womb of the World,”mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and Second Races, were not physical beings, but merelyrudimentsof the future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi,“origin,”or the“original place whence sprang the Elements.”Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavâpyaya,“the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,”as explained by the Commentator on theVishnu Purâna. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest“created”Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is a Manifested Deity—hence“created,”or limited and conditioned. This is easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.

After being called theincognizable, eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Pundarîkâksha,“supreme and imperishable glory,”once that instead of Sadaika-Rûpa,“changeless”or“immutable”Nature, he is addressed as Ekâneka-Rûpa,“both single and manifold,”he, the Cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric order, show the following descending scale:

Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses).Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.

Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.

Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.

Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses).

Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.

Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.

Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.

The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.

It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân-Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles;every one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion of their various“Fires”and Elements.

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