EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN - HP Blavatsky
Other Theosophy Trust Books-1
Meditation and Self-Study
by Raghavan Iyer
The Origins of Self-Consciousness
in The Secret Doctrine
by H.P. Blavatsky
compiled by The Editorial Board of Theosophy Trust
Wisdom in Action
Essays on the Spiritual Life
Raghavan Iyer
The Dawning of Wisdom
Essays on Walking the Path
Raghavan Iyer
Teachers of the Eternal Doctrine
From Tsong-Ka-Pa to Nostradamus
by Elton Hall
Symbols of the Eternal Doctrine
From Shamballa to Paradise
by Helen Valborg
The Key to Theosophy
An Exposition of the
Ethics, Science, and Philosophy
by H. P. Blavatsky
Evolution and Intelligent Design in
The Secret Doctrine
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“Between degrading superstition and still more degrading brutal
materialism, the White Dove of Truth has hardly room whereon
to rest her weary unwelcome feet.
It is time that Theosophy should enter the arena.â€
Lucifer, August, 1896
Contents
SELECTION 1: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, I 184-191
NEITHER OCCULTISM NOR THEOSOPHY HAS EVER SUPPORTED THE WILD THEORIES OF THE PRESENT DARWINISTS
THIRD RACE “MEN†CREATED THAT MISSING LINK WHICH BECAME THE REMOTE ANCESTOR OF THE REAL APE
THE PRELIMINARY CREATION OF MAN
THE MAN, OR THE APE; WHICH THE FIRST?
SECTION 2: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, I 233-236
THE HIERARCHY COMMISSIONED TO “CREATE†MEN
WHAT INCARNATES IN ANIMAL MAN?
THE ARCHAIC DOCTRINE: MAN IS SEVEN-FOLD IN HIS CONSTITUTION
SECTION 3: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, I 602-605
THE INFORMING VITAL SOUL OF THE PLANETS AND OUR EARTH
SECTION 4: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 9-10
PHYSICAL MAN WAS ORIGINALLY A COLOSSAL PRE-TERTIARY GIANT
SECTION 5: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 88-96
ON THE IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCES OF THE INCARNATING POWERS
SECTION 6: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 109-113
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SEXLESS SECOND RACE
THE SPIRITS OF THE EARTH CLOTHED THE SHADOWS AND EXPANDED THEM
IN THE “SOUL†IS THE REAL MAN, I.E. THE EGO AND THE CONSCIOUS I AM
SECTION 7: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 115-121
THE FIRST RACE OF MEN WERE THE IMAGES OF THEIR FATHERS
THE TWO MODES OF PROCREATION OF THE 2ND AND 3RD RACES
PRIMEVAL HUMAN HERMAPHRODITES ARE A FACT IN NATURE
THE CHHAYA CONTAINS WITHIN ITSELF THE POTENTIALITY OF ALL FORMS
SELECTION 8: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 124-128
SELECTION 9: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 131-137
THE EVOLUTION OF THE “SWEAT-BORNâ€
THE SEPARATION OF SEXES OCCURRED IN THE THIRD RACE
THE ELOHIM (GODS) BROUGHT FORTH FROM THEMSELVES MAN IN THEIR IMAGE
THE PRISTINE BI-SEXUAL UNITY OF THE HUMAN THIRD ROOT-RACE
SELECTION 10: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 148-150
COULD MEN HAVE EXISTED 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?
SELECTION 11: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 150-154
THE MONADS DESTINED TO ANIMATE FUTURE RACES WERE READY FOR THE NEW TRANSFORMATION
IS “SPONTANEOUS GENERATION†POSSIBLE UNDER DIFFERENT CONDITIONS?
DARWIN’S EVOLUTION BEGINS AT THE MIDDLE POINT, INSTEAD OF COMMENCING FOR MAN FROM UNIVERSALS
SELECTION 12: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 161-178
A STANZA CONTAINING THE WHOLE KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF EVIL, THE SO-CALLED FALL OF THE ANGELS
THE DOUBLE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN RACE
THE CHANCES FOR THE POLYGENETIC THEORY AMONG THE MEN OF SCIENCE
THE REFUSAL BY THE MANASA TO INCARNATE IN HALF-READY PHYSICAL BODIES
THE SONS OF WILL AND YOGA WERE CREATED, NOT BEGOTTEN
EARLY THIRD RACE HUMANITY: SWEAT-BORN AND ANDROGYNE
SELECTION 13: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 180-184
EVOLUTION OF THE ANIMAL MAMMALIANS — THE FIRST FALL
MEN, THE PROGENITORS OF ANIMALS
SELECTION 14: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 185-190
SELECTION 15: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 192-201
MAN HAS NOT ONE DROP OF PITHECOID BLOOD IN HIS VEINS
HOW WAS THE SEPARATION OF SEXES EFFECTED?
FOURTH RACE HUMANITY BEGOT OFFSPRING FROM FEMALES OF A SEMI-HUMAN NOT QUITE ANIMAL RACE
THIRD RACE HUMANITY WAS ALMOST SEXLESS AND BECAME ANDROGYNOUS
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH OCCURRED DURING THE EARLY THIRD RACE TO THE FOURTH RACE HUMANITY
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE EARTH
SELECTION 16: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 217-219
MANY OF THE SO-CALLED MYTHICAL ANIMALS WERE CREATURES THAT REALLY ONCE EXISTED
MAN CO-EXISTED WITH ANIMALS WHICH HAVE LONG SINCE BECOME EXTINCT
SELECTION 17: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 227-233
SOME EGOS REFUSED TO INCARNATE INTO THE THIRD RACE HUMANITY - THEIR LATER KARMIC PUNISHMENT
THE OLD DOCTRINE ABOUT THE TRUE MEANING OF THE “FALLEN ANGELS†EXPLAINS THE BIBLE
SELECTION 18: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 241-247
SELECTION 19: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 251-258
THE HINDU PURÂNAS ARE QUITE IN ACCORDANCE WITH PHYSICAL SCIENCE
IN THE PRESENT ROUND, MAN WAS ON EARTH FROM THE BEGINNING AND PRECEDED THE MAMMALS
IDENTITY OF HUMAN AND ANIMAL EMBRYOS
SELECTION 20: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 259-263
THE EMBRYO OF MAN CONTAINS IN ITSELF THE TOTALITY OF THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE
A “MISSING LINK†THAT WILL PROVE THE EXISTING THEORY WILL NEVER BE FOUND BY PALÆONTOLOGISTS
SELECTION 21: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 271-282
THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER
SELECTION 22: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 286-288
SELECTION 23: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 293-306
THE THIRD EYE IS DEAD AND ACTS NO LONGER, BUT IT HAS LEFT BEHIND A WITNESS TO ITS EXISTENCE
THE “ODD EYE†HAS BEEN GRADUALLY TRANSFORMED INTO A SIMPLE GLAND
THE NUMBER OF MONADS IS LIMITED
KARMA-NEMESIS, OR THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION, PREDESTINES NOTHING AND NO ONE
SELECTION 24: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 347-349
IT TAKES A GOD TO BECOME A MAN
SELECTION 25: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 434-436
A GENEALOGICAL TREE OF THE HUMAN FAMILY
THE EUROPEAN “FAMILY RACE†HAS MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS YET TO RUN
THE EGYPTIAN ZODIAC IS BETWEEN 75 - 80,000 YEARS OLD
SELECTION 26: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 649-655
SCIENCE CANNOT EXPLAIN THE MYSTERIOUS NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, OF SOUL, SPIRIT IN MAN
PHYSICAL EVOLUTION, AS MODERN SCIENCE TEACHES IT, IS A SUBJECT FOR OPEN CONTROVERSY
THE ESOTERIC TEACHING IS ABSOLUTELY OPPOSED TO THE DARWINIAN EVOLUTION AS APPLIED TO MAN
SELECTION 27: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 656-670
THE AHE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED BY SCIENCE
MAN HAS A DISTINCTLY DUAL NATURE
WHERE ARE THE “MISSING LINKS�
PROOFS OF HUMANITY’S “NOBLE DESCENTâ€
SOME SCIENTISTS DEMAND THEIR WILD THEORIES BE TAKEN ON BLIND FAITH AS THE OUTCOME OF SCIENCE
A WALKING ANIMAL CANNOT BE DESCENDED FROM A CLIMBING ONE
SELECTION 28: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 675-679
THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE ANTHROPOID APE
SELECTION 29: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 679-685
THE COMPARATIVE ANATOMY OF MAN AND ANTHROPOID IS NOT A CONFIRMATION OF DARWINISM
MAN CANNOT DESCEND FROM EITHER AN APE OR AN ANCESTOR COMMON TO BOTH
SELECTION 30: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 685-689
DARWINISM AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN: THE ANTHROPOIDS AND THEIR ANCESTRY
THE MAMMALIAN TYPE WAS A POST-HUMAN FOURTH ROUND PRODUCT
PROOFS FOR THE ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN RACE
SELECTION 31: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 709-721
SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS ON ESOTERIC GEOLOGICAL CHRONOLOGY
DIVERGENCES BETWEEN ORTHODOX AND ESOTERIC SCIENCE ON THE QUESTION OF THE AGE OF THE GLOBE AND OF MAN
SOME OF THE PRESENT DIFFICULTIES OF SCIENCE MIGHT BE EASILY MADE TO DISAPPEAR
THE ORIGIN AND THE DESCENT OF MAN IS STILL A GREAT PROBLEM FOR SCIENCE
STRANGE CONFESSIONS OF SCIENCE
THERE IS NO “MISSING LINK†ANYWHERE
PALÆOLITHIC MAN, A CALIGRAPH!
SELECTION 32: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 731-741
THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF SPECIES IN ALL THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE WORKS BY UNIFORM LAWS
NEITHER SCIENCE NOR ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY ADMIT DESIGN OR “SPECIAL CREATION
THE “TO BE OR NOT TO BE†OF SCIENCE
THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE MAMMALIA: SCIENCE AND THE ESOTERIC PHYLOGENY
FACTORS CONCERNED IN THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE
SELECTION 33: THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II 747-757
THE APE ARRIVED ON THE SCENE LATER THAN MAN
STILL MORE A STOUNDING CONTRADICTIONS
INTRODUCTION
In December 2005, Middle District of Pennsylvania District Court Judge John E. Jones III ruled in Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District that the doctrine called “Intelligent Design†is not science, and therefore cannot be taught as an alternative explanation to scientific evolution theory. During the preceding year, the Dover Area School District board had approved a statement to be read in ninth grade biology classes that indicated there are flaws in the current theory of evolution, and that a textbook on intelligent design could be consulted in the school library. In resolving the ensuing litigation, Judge Jones found that intelligent design is not science, that, as presented in the textbook, it is disguised biblical creationism, that it is not a theory for which scientific evidence was gathered, and that showing that contemporary evolution theory is incomplete does not in itself constitute an alternative scientific theory. Judge Jones wisely refrained from asserting the truth of either evolution or intelligent design. He had no objection to teaching biblically rooted intelligent design in a philosophy class or elsewhere, but he barred its teaching in science classes.
Judge Jones was especially concerned about the insistence by proponents of biblical intelligent design theories of the following either/or proposition: that either the modern version of Darwinian evolution is true, or biblical intelligent design is true. He flatly rejected this utterly false dichotomy, noting in his decision that there are other alternatives to both views. The compilation in the present volume presents a sweeping alternative to both contemporary evolutionary theory, with its insistence upon an ancestor common to the ape and the human race, and contemporary Christian creationism, with its insistence upon a special creation of each soul by a personal god. These highly philosophical views were first expressed in detail in The Secret Doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky, just as Darwinian theory was emerging as a serious rival to the mainstream Christian theology of 19th Century Europe and America. Needless to say, these topics quickly began to dominate the public discourse of that long-gone era.
Contemporary science seems to regard the belief that a personal god created the heavens and earth within the past 10,000 years as a deliberate surrendering of the intellect to superstition, and is justifiably indignant. In their eyes, it is mind boggling that, in the year 2006, 45% of the American population claims to hold such a belief in the face of the tremendous body of undeniable scientific facts about the age of this earth and its diverse fauna and flora that have existed upon it for millions of years. Many adherents of evolutionary theory regard this not as a triumph of faith, but as a failure of education.
A large portion of the Christian community does not see it quite so – they see their own views as a rejection of an unwarranted intrusion by science upon their spiritual intuitions. These Christians are indignant that evolutionary science is based upon the idea that chance is the supreme guiding principle behind the manifold diversity and ingenious intelligence that is so evident throughout this earth, as “chance†is most definitely a slap aimed directly at their deity’s cheek. They are equally horrified at the scientific proposition that the human race is descended from an animal ancestor also common to the anthropoid and pithecoid apes.
Christians are not alone in having this feeling. Something in the intuitions of men and women of every tradition very rightly rejects this provenance for Humanity. There is just too much evidence testifying to the noble origins of humanity. One simply has to think of all the examples of heroic self-sacrifice and devotion to duty that populate one’s own local mental horizon to cast serious doubt upon the proposition that “man is nothing but a higher animal.â€
But the possibility that Man has both an animal and a divine origin is one that neither contemporary science nor conventional Christianity cares to seriously consider.
To some astute thinkers, it is as likely that the higher apes are descended from humans as vice-versa. That some members of early humanity were guilty of unnatural couplings with animals of lower forms, and produced an offspring that – over several millions of years – resulted in the higher apes, is a possibility not incompatible with the scientific evidence of genetic homology between humans and apes. There are enough gaps in this area of evolutionary “theory†– and at this level, it is indeed a “theory†– to allow one reasonably to not believe in ape-like ancestors for humans. However we formulate our views, we must keep alive our intuitions that there is something grander and nobler to life in the human form than merely promoting one’s individual existence, perpetuating the species, or serving as the helpless agent of all-powerful chance.
Science is quite right in fighting against the idea of the intervention of a supposed personal god, and Christianity is quite right in fighting against the assumption of meaningless chance and ape ancestors for humans in evolutionary science. Clearly, what is needed is a synthesis of the truths of science and religion, not more either-or false dichotomies.
Is there any middle ground in this debate?
If there is a middle ground, it lies in the indestructible intuitions of human beings that there is some kind of guiding intelligence behind all of Nature (of which humans are a part). Whether it is one being, a trinity of beings, or perhaps galaxies of myriads of intelligent spiritual beings, they do not act by chance; they act with purpose throughout all of invisible Nature, they act hierarchically, and they act harmonically, in accord with universal law in guiding evolution. They are not visible to most of us ordinary humans; rather, they are the invisible agents who propel evolution forward in accordance with some overarching plan within the mind of Nature, what some of the ancients (pagans, mostly) called “universal mind,†and whom they viewed as the real “intelligent designer.†Theosophically, we human beings are evolved from these same spiritual ancestors; that is why those ancients considered us to be both divine and animal, divine beings in animal bodies.
In her exposition of the Theosophical philosophy, H.P. Blavatsky taught that spirit and matter are two aspects of a single reality, thereby rejecting both Cartesian dualism and crude reductionism. The universe is unitary, and no fundamental feature of it arises as an epiphenomenon at some stage in its development. Fact and value, spirit and matter, form and consciousness, all are present in some important way from the very beginning of the cosmos and evolve with it at every point. This teaching has some very practical implications that differ widely from contemporary scientific evolutionary theory – with its postulate of blind chance as the driving force behind evolution – and from contemporary Christian theology – with its postulate of a special creation by a personal deity of every human soul. Theosophically, Man is a divine being, and integral to the evolution of the universe in which he finds himself.
In rejecting reductionism, H.P. Blavatsky pointed to the limits of science as then and now conceived. Many scientists today reject any simple-minded form of reductionism. As mathematician Ian Stewart and reproductive biologist Jack Cohen show in their book Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind, such reductionism is inadequate to the task of providing complete explanations in science. Huston Smith in Why Religion Matters and Tenzin Gyatso, the XIVth Dalai Lama, in The Universe in a Single Atom, agree in quite different ways that the problem in modern science is not science itself, but the metaphysical assumptions that scientists too easily make: (1) how science discovers truth is the only way to discover truth, and (2) what empirical science explores, the material world, is all there is to explore. For his part, the Dalai Lama embraces the findings of empirical science, but notes that much that is not objectively empirical is worthy of deep study, e.g. the discoveries about consciousness that occur in deep meditative states. He supports a confluence of objective and subjective methods as mutually beneficial ways to discern truth.
H. P. Blavatsky taught that the evolution of the universe and the evolution of man form a seamless whole. Because spirit and matter constitute a continuum, the evolution of man and his real nature must be studied within the context of the nature, structure, and evolution of the universe. This comprehensive approach, refusing to fall prey to scientific compartmentalization or sectarian exclusivity, requires a radically revised anthropology. Additionally, she held that all religions contain a core of truth, but, being subjected to the limited understanding of generations upon generations of human beings, that truth is largely buried within an obscure system of allegory and symbolism, and has to be teased out of the encrusted religious traditions vying for the world’s allegiance. “There is no religion higher than Truth†was the motto she picked for the Theosophical quest for truth, and that motto puts both science and religion in a distinctive perspective.
H.P. Blavatsky clearly set the false dichotomy between Darwinian evolution and biblical intelligent design within the historical framework and human mind sets in which it arose, and she offered Theosophy as a liberating and truth-oriented alternative. She wrote:
The pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally emancipated herself from the shackles of theology, Science has embraced the opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to interpret Nature on purely materialistic lines, she has built up that most extravagant theory of the ages–the derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has this doctrine, in one form or another, now become, that the most Herculean efforts will be needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian anthropology is the incubus of the ethnologist, a sturdy child of modern Materialism, which has grown up and acquired increasing vigour, as the ineptitude of the theological legend of Man’s “creation†became more and more apparent. It has thriven on account of the strange delusion that – as a scientist of repute puts it – “All hypotheses and theories with respect to the rise of man can be reduced to two (the Evolutionist and the Biblical exoteric account). There is no other hypothesis conceivable...†!! The anthropology of the secret volumes is, however, the best possible answer to such a worthless contention.
The Secret Doctrine, II, 689
The human eye sees only part of the electromagnetic spectrum, that part called “visible light.†X-rays, radio waves, infrared and ultraviolet light and much else fall outside that scope. To deny their existence because we can’t see them would be bad common sense and bad science. Similarly, to divide the world into ‘spiritual’ and ‘material’ would be to fail to understand that both those terms cover wide ranges of subjective and objective phenomena. H.P. Blavatsky’s writings explore the rainbow of phenomena that constitutes our universe and ourselves, and in so doing, she redefines science and spirituality, showing that we and the universe are simultaneously more subtle and complex than any simple dichotomies and dogmas can begin to encompass.
A careful reading of the following passages will open up perspectives that profoundly aid a vastly deeper understanding of the inextricable links between the evolution of the universe and humankind; the remarkable philosophy behind them will certainly provoke a perplexity which only its deeper realization may at last relieve.
Prof. Elton. A. Hall
Boise, Idaho
January 2006
EDITOR’S PREFACE
All of the quotations included in the present volume come from H. P. Blavatsky’s monumental work, The Secret Doctrine, the Original Edition of which was published in 1888. Students of Theosophy know well the origins of The Secret Doctrine; H.P.B. (as she is known to students) alludes to a group of ancient texts – the Stanzas of Dzyan – that are inconceivably old, have been kept secret and away from the prying eyes of the profane world, and were only made known to the world in general in the last quarter of the 19th Century. These Stanzas, along with a series of “Commentaries†that are based upon them -also unknown in the West and forming the key to understanding the Stanzas themselves – are ancient records that describe the evolutionary development of both the Cosmos and Man. They form the principal subject matter of The Secret Doctrine.
Newcomers to the Theosophical philosophy may find that a number of very interesting and worthwhile questions about the original Stanzas and the Commentaries (those interested may look further into these matters by consulting The Secret Doctrine itself, where an extensive treatment of these question can be found – see www.theosophytrust.org) naturally arise, but these may be set aside temporarily in reading the current work, as most of its themes and arguments stand on the firm ground of logic and true scientific impartiality, without reliance upon any “authority†other than the integrity and logic of the arguments set forth.
The present work can be comprehended by any person who is impartial enough in approaching the ongoing debate between Evolution and Intelligent Design to take on a very different third perspective, one that gives credit and some sympathy to each of the two principal sides in the debate – where they are clearly warranted – but takes an uncompromising stand in a third position that rejects both the materialistic assumptions of the Evolutionists and the illogic of the Creationists. The Theosophical philosophy provides a solid middle ground for a perspective that is both religious and rational.
Readers may judge for themselves how well this work establishes that perspective.
A judicious selection of passages dealing specifically with the subject under consideration – the scientific evolutionary theory and the Christian theory of Intelligent Design (or Creationism) – has been chosen from the approximately 1500+ pages of The Secret Doctrine for inclusion in this volume. Another person or group of editors might have included other passages not found herein, and might not have included some that are contained in this book. There is room for debate on the matters of inclusion and exclusion; however, that discussion need not take away from the fact that the philosophy expounded in The Secret Doctrine offers a valuable and much-needed fresh voice in an on-going debate that has become a stand-off, with neither side willing to concede either truth or logic to the opposing point of view for fear of losing the argument altogether.
As a passage from The Great Master’s Letter (as it is known to Theosophists) says, “It is time that Theosophy should enter the arena.â€
Much of the scientific terminology has changed over the 118 years since the publication of The Secret Doctrine, and many of the authors and their works referred to – other than Darwin and his The Descent of Man- are now quite unknown by most of the public at large and many researchers themselves in the fields of anthropology, paleontology, and biology; in addition, the basic theories, discoveries, and developments in these fields have undergone enormous change, so much so that the reader acquainted with modern science might be tempted to dismiss altogether the arguments and facts alluded to by H.P.B. in these passage as being hopelessly outdated, if not merely quaint. To take this attitude would be a serious mistake, as the arguments and evidence posed by H.P.B. are as powerful and pertinent to the debate now as they were in the 19th Century. The underlying assumptions behind science – whether that of the 19th or the 21st centuries – have not altered significantly, and those assumptions are what H.P.B.’s arguments are directed toward, as they form the framework that supports the entire edifice of scientific evolutionary theory.
Readers who find the numerous Sanskrit and other non-English terms used in these passage a serious obstacle to understanding the writing can turn to a very excellent work titled “The Theosophical Glossary†for help; this work is available at www.theosophy.org and other Internet sites. The Glossary was written by H. P. Blavatsky to help the earnest enquirer gain a broader understanding of crucial terms used in her explanations of the Theosophical philosophy. Those who want to read more of the entire source book for the present work, The Secret Doctrine, can either purchase it online or download it in PDF from www.theosophytrust.org.
The selections in this book reflect the original as closely as possible, except for the italicizing and the capitalization and heading conventions, the application of which has been applied with more rigor. Some of the typesetting conventions of the 19th Century book publishers and printers – such as the use of italics, bold, all caps, small caps, semi-colons, colons, and final periods – varied considerably with each publisher or printer. Modern, large publishing houses employing well-trained copy editors working from style sheets can achieve a high level of consistency; such publishers were not so numerous in the 19th Century as they are today. Very frequently a book was taken to a print shop for publication, and the application of style conventions would vary with the experience, taste, and predilections of the typesetter. Hence, a large number of irregularities in the use of those conventions can be seen in a printed work like the Original Edition of The Secret Doctrine.
This present book has tried to correct some of the more glaring style irregularities and to be more consistent in punctuation and the application of style conventions, while retaining those unusual styles that HPB applied principally for emphasis and effect. Nothing has been altered from the original that might detract from her original intent, as far as we can discern that intent.
This book is published with the high hope that the clash between the opposing viewpoints of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design may be tempered by the middle ground of an ancient perspective, one vast enough to both protect the innate religious perception of human beings everywhere that Humanity has a divine origin, and accommodate the bewildering array of empirical anthropological evidence of the many links that bind diverse life forms into one interconnected whole.
The Editorial Board of Theosophy Trust
Selection 1
NEITHER OCCULTISM NOR THEOSOPHY HAS EVER SUPPORTED THE WILD THEORIES OF THE PRESENT DARWINISTS
It is really with surprise that we have ascertained the fact that “Esoteric Buddhism†was so little understood by some Theosophists, as to have led them into the belief that it thoroughly supported Darwinian evolution, and especially the theory of the descent of man from a pithecoid ancestor. As one member writes: “I suppose you realise that three-fourths of Theosophists and even outsiders imagine that, as far as the evolution of man is concerned, Darwinism and Theosophy kiss one another.†Nothing of the kind was ever realised, nor is there any great warrant for it, so far as we know, in “Esoteric Buddhism.†It has been repeatedly stated that evolution as taught by Manu and Kapila was the groundwork of the modern teachings, but – least of all the descent of man from an ape. Of this, more hereafter. But one has only to turn to p. 47 of “Esoteric Buddhism,†5th Ed., to find there the statement that “Man belongs to a kingdom distinctly separate from that of the animals.†With such a plain and unequivocal statement before him, it is very strange that any careful student should have been so misled unless he is prepared to charge the author with a gross contradiction.
Every Round repeats on a higher scale the evolutionary work of the preceding Round. With the exception of some higher anthropoids, as just mentioned, the Monadic inflow, or inner evolution, is at an end till the next Manvantara. It can never be too often repeated, that the full-blown human Monads have to be first disposed of, before the new crop of candidates appears on this Globe at the beginning of the next cycle. Thus there is a lull; and this is why, during the Fourth Round, man appears on Earth earlier than any animal creation, as will be described.
But it is still urged that the author of “Esoteric Buddhism†has “preached Darwinism†all along. Certain passages would undoubtedly seem to lend countenance to this inference. Besides which the Occultists themselves are ready to concede partial correctness to the Darwinian hypothesis in later details, bye-laws of Evolution, and after the midway point of the Fourth Race. Of that which has taken place, physical science can really know nothing, for such matters lie entirely outside of its sphere of investigation. But what the Occultists have never admitted, nor will they ever admit, is that man was an ape in this or in any other Round; or that he ever could be one, however much he may have been “ape-like.†This is vouched for by the very authority from whom the author of “Esoteric Buddhism†got his information.
Thus to those who confront the Occultists with these lines from the above-named volume: “It is enough to show that we may as reasonably – and that we must, if we would talk about these matters at all -conceive a life-impulse giving birth to mineral form, as of the same sort of impulse concerned to raise a race of apes into a race of rudimentary men.†To those who bring this passage forward as showing “decided Darwinism,†the Occultists answer by pointing to the explanation of the Master (Mr. Sinnett’s “teacherâ€) which would contradict these lines, were they written in the spirit attributed to them. A copy of this letter was sent to the writer, together with others, two years ago (1886), with additional marginal remarks, to quote from, in the “Secret Doctrine†It begins by considering the difficulty experienced by the Western student, in reconciling some facts, previously given, with the evolution of man from the animal, i.e. from the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and advises the student to hold to the doctrine of analogy and correspondences. Then it touches upon the mystery of the Devas, and even Gods, having to pass through states which it was agreed to refer to as “Immetallization, Inherbation, Inzoonization and finally Incarnation,†and explains this by hinting at the necessity of failures even in the ethereal races of Dhyan Chohans. Concerning this it says:
“Still, as these ‘failures’ are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyan Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms.....â€â€ After which only a hint is given about the mystery contained in the allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be expanded and explained in Book II. When Karma has reached them at the stage of human evolution, “they will have to drink it to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with the Elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop little by little the full type of humanity.â€â€
These Dhyan Chohans, as we see, do not pass through the three kingdoms as do the lower Pitris; nor do they incarnate in man until the Third Root Race. Thus, as the teaching stands:
A MASTER’S LETTER
“Man in the First Round and First Race on Globe D, our Earth, was an ethereal being (a Lunar Dhyani, as man), non-intelligent but super-spiritual; and correspondingly, on the law of analogy, in the First Race of the Fourth Round. In each of the subsequent races and sub-races . . . he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly ethereal. . . . He is sexless, and, like the animal and vegetable, he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarser surroundings.
“II. Round. He (Man) is still gigantic and ethereal but growing firmer and more condensed in body, a more physical man. Yet still less intelligent than spiritual (1), for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than is the physical frame . . .
“III. Round. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first the form of a giant-ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than spiritual. For, on the downward arc, he has now reached a point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality (2). In the last half of the Third Round his gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves in texture, and he becomes a more rational being, though still more an ape than a Deva. . . . (All this is almost exactly repeated in the third Root-Race of the Fourth Round.)
“IV. Round. Intellect has an enormous development in this Round. The (hitherto) dumb races acquire our (present) human speech on this globe, on which, from the Fourth Race, language is perfected and knowledge increases. At this half-way point of the Fourth Round (as of the Fourth Root, or Atlantean, race) humanity passes the axial point of the minor Manvantara cycle. . . . the world teeming with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease . .â€
This is from the authentic letter; what follows are the later remarks and additional explanations traced by the same hand in the form of footnotes. . .â€
(1.) “... The original letter contained general teaching – a ‘bird’s-eye view’ – and particularized nothing. . . . To speak of ‘physical man’ while limiting the statement to the early Rounds would be drifting back to the miraculous and instantaneous ‘coats of skin!... The first ‘Nature! the first ‘body! the first ‘mind’ on the first plane of perception, on the first Globe in the first Round, is what was meant. For Karma and evolution have -
‘ . . . centred in our make such strange extremes! From different Natures marvellously mixed . . .’
(2.) “Restore: he has now reached the point (by analogy, and as the Third Root Race in the Fourth Round) where his (“the angelâ€- man’s) primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent human mentality, and you have the true version on your thumb-nail.â€
These are the words of the Teacher – text, words and sentences in brackets, and explanatory footnotes. It stands to reason that there must be an enormous difference in such terms as “objectivity†and “subjectivity,†“materiality†and “spirituality,†when the same terms are applied to different planes of being and perception. All this must be taken in its relative sense. And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left to his own speculations, an author, however eager to learn, yet quite inexperienced in these abstruse teachings, has fallen into an error. Neither was the difference between the “Rounds†and the “Races†sufficiently defined in the letters received, nor was there anything of the kind required before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would have found out the difference in a moment. Moreover, to quote from a letter of the Master’s (188-), “the teachings were imparted under protest. . . . They were, so to say, smuggled goods . . . and when I remained face to face with only one correspondent, the other, Mr. – - – , had so far tossed all the cards into confusion, that little remained to be said without trespassing upon law.†Theosophists, “whom it may concern,†will understand what is meant.
THIRD RACE “MEN†CREATED THAT MISSING LINK WHICH BECAME THE REMOTE ANCESTOR OF THE REAL APE
The outcome of all this is that nothing had ever been said in the letters†to warrant the assurance that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any Adept believed in, the preposterous modern theory of the descent of man from a common ancestor with the ape – an anthropoid of the actual animal kind, unless metaphorically. To this day the world is more full of “ape-like men†than the woods are of “men-like apes.†The ape is sacred in India because its origin is well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a thick veil of allegory. Hanuman is the son of Pavana (Vayu, “the god of the windâ€) by Anjana, a monster called Kesarî, though his genealogy varies. The reader who bears this in mind will find in Book II passim, the whole explanation of this ingenious allegory. The “Men†of the Third Race (who separated) were “Gods†by their spirituality and purity, though senseless, and as yet destitute of mind, as men.
These “Men†of the Third Race – the ancestors of the Atlanteans – were just such ape-like, intellectually senseless giants as were those beings, who, during the Third Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it was these third Race “men†who, through promiscuous connection with animal species lower than themselves, created that missing link which became ages later (in the tertiary period only) the remote ancestor of the real ape as we find it now in the pithecoid family.1
THE PRELIMINARY CREATION OF MAN
Thus the earlier teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, did not teach the evolution of “man†from the “ape.†Nor does the author of “Esoteric Buddhism†assert it anywhere in his work in so many words; but, owing to his inclination towards modern science, he uses language which might perhaps justify such an inference. The man who preceded the Fourth, the Atlantean race, however much he may have looked physically like a “gigantic ape†– “the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a man†– was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The “Lemuro-Atlantean†was a highly civilized race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better history than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he was higher than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization of the day: at any rate, the Lemuro-Atlantean of the closing Third Race was so.
THE MAN, OR THE APE; WHICH THE FIRST?
The last human Monad incarnated before the beginning of the 5th Root-Race.2 The cycle of metempsychosis for the human monad is closed, for we are in the Fourth Round and the Fifth Root-Race. The reader will have to bear in mind – at any rate one who has made himself acquainted with “Esoteric Buddhism†– that the Stanzas which follow in this Book and Book II speak of the evolution in our Fourth Round only. The latter is the cycle of the turning-point, after which, matter, having reached its lowest depths, begins to strive onward and to get spiritualized with every new Race and with every fresh cycle. Therefore the student must take care not to see contradiction where there is none, as in “Esoteric Buddhism†Rounds are spoken of in general, while here only the Fourth, or our present Round, is meant. Then it was the work of formation; now it is that of reformation and evolutionary perfection.
The Secret Doctrine, i 184–191
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1 And if this is found clashing with that other statement which shows the animal later than man, then the reader is asked to bear in mind that the placental mammal only is meant. In those days there were animals of which zoology does not even dream in our own; and the modes of reproduction were not identical with the notions which modern physiology has upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to touch upon such questions in public, but there is no contradiction or impossibility in this whatever.
2 Such anthropoids form an exception because they were not intended by Nature, but are the direct product and creation of “senseless†man. The Hindus give a divine origin to the apes and monkeys because the men of the Third Race were gods from another plane who had become “senseless†mortals. This subject had already been touched upon in “Isis Unveiled†twelve years ago as plainly as was then possible. On pp. 278-279, the reader is referred “to the Brahmins, if he would know the reason of the regard they have for the monkeys. For then he (the reader) would perhaps learn–were the Brahman to judge him worthy of an explanation–that the Hindu sees in the ape but what Manu desired he should: the transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family, a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the latter. He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the educated ‘heathen’ the spiritual or inner man is one thing, and his terrestrial physical casket another. That physical nature, the great combination of physical correlations of forces, ever creeping onward towards perfection, has to avail herself of the material at hand; she models and remodels as she proceeds, and finishing her crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit tabernacle for the overshadowing of the divine Spirit.â€
Moreover, a German scientific work is mentioned in a footnote on the same page. It says that a Hanoverian scientist had recently published a Book entitled “Ueber die Auflosung der Arten durch Naturliche Zucht-wahl,†in which he shows, with great ingenuity, that Darwin was wholly mistaken in tracing man back to the ape. On the contrary, he maintains that it is the ape which is evolved from man. He shows that, in the beginning, mankind were morally and physically the types and prototypes of our present Race, and of our human dignity, by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial development, nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur of ideal conception. This is a purely Brahmanic, Buddhistic and Kabalistic philosophy. The Book is copiously illustrated with diagrams, tables, etc. It asserts that the gradual debasement and degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced throughout the ethnological transformation down to our time. And, as one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized man of the present day will at last, under the action of the inevitable law of necessity, be also succeeded by like descendants. If we may judge of the future by the actual Present, it certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and materialistic a body should end as Simia rather than as Seraphs. But though the apes descend from man, it is certainly not the fact that the human Monad, which has once reached the level of humanity, ever incarnates again in the form of an animal.
Selection 2
THE HIERARCHY COMMISSIONED TO “CREATE†MEN
The group of the hierarchy which is commissioned to “createâ€3 men is a special group, then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this cycle just as a higher and still more spiritual group evolved him in the Third Round. But as it is the Sixth – on the downward scale of Spirituality – the last and seventh being the terrestrial Spirits (elementals) which gradually form, build, and condense his physical body – this Sixth group evolves no more than the future man’s shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible transparent copy of themselves. It becomes the task of the fifth Hierarchy – the mysterious beings that preside over the constellation Capricornus, Makara, or “Crocodile†in India as in Egypt – to inform the empty and ethereal animal form and make of it the Rational Man. This is one of those subjects upon which very little may be said to the general public. It is a MYSTERY, truly but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of intellectual and conscious spiritual Beings in the Universe, limiting full Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a “function of the Brain.†Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated bodily in man, since the beginning of his appearance, and who, for all that, still exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space. . . .
WHAT INCARNATES IN ANIMAL MAN?
To put it more clearly: the invisible Entity may be bodily present on earth without abandoning, however, its status and functions in the supersensuous regions. If this needs explanation, we can do no better than remind the reader of like cases in Spiritualism, though such cases are very rare, at least as regards the nature of the Entity incarnating,4 or taking temporary possession of a medium. Just as certain persons – men and women, reverting to parallel cases among living persons – whether by virtue of a peculiar organization, or through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can be seen in their “double†in one place, while the body is many miles away; so the same thing can occur in the case of superior Beings.
Man, philosophically considered, is, in his outward form, simply an animal, hardly more perfect than his pithecoid-like ancestor of the third round. He is a living body, not a living being, since the realisation of existence, the “Ego-Sum,†necessitates self-consciousness, and an animal can only have direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well understood by the Ancients that the Kabalist even made of soul and body two lives, independent of each other.5 The soul, whose body vehicle is the Astral, ethero-substantial envelope, could die and man be still living on earth – i.e. the soul could free itself from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons – such as insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc.6 Therefore, that which living men (Initiates) can do, the Dhyanis, who have no physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This was the belief of the Antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual society, in Spiritualism, besides the Greek and Roman Churches, which teach the ubiquity of their angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their Amshaspends as dual entities (Ferouers), applying this duality – in esoteric philosophy, at any rate – to all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the numberless worlds in space which are visible to our eye. In a note of Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean oracles, we have a triple evidence of the universality of this doctrine, for he says: “In these oracles the seven Cosmocratores of the world, (’The World-Pillars’) mentioned likewise by St. Paul, are double – one set being commissioned to rule the superior worlds the spiritual and the sidereal, and the other to guide and watch over the worlds of matter.†Such is also the opinion of I amblichus, who makes an evident distinction between the archangels and the “Archontes.†(See “De Mysteriis,†Sec. II., Ch. 3.) The above may be applied, of course, to the distinction made between the degrees or orders of spiritual beings, and it is in this sense that the Roman Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the difference; for while the archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, their doubles are denounced by her as devils.7 But the word “ferouer†is not to be understood in this sense, for it means simply the reverse or the opposite side of some attribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says that the “Demon is the lining of God†(evil, the reverse of the medal), he does not mean two separate actualities, but the two aspects or facets of the same Unity. Now the best man living would appear, side by side with an Archangel – as described in Theology – a fiend. Hence a certain reason to depreciate a lower “double,†immersed far deeper in matter than its original. But there is still as little cause to regard them as devils, and this is precisely what the Roman Catholics maintain against all reason and logic.
THE ARCHAIC DOCTRINE: MAN IS SEVEN-FOLD IN HIS CONSTITUTION
The concluding sentence of this sloka shows how archaic is the belief and the doctrine that man is seven-fold in his constitution. The thread of being which animates man and passes through all his personalities, or rebirths on this Earth (an allusion to Sutratma), the thread on which moreover all his “Spirits†are strung – is spun from the essence of the “threefold,†the “fourfold†and the “fivefold“; which contain all the preceding. Panchâsikha, agreeably to Bhâgavata Purâna (V. XX. 25 – 28), is one of the seven Kumâras who go to Sveta-Dvipa to worship Vishnu. We shall see further on, what connection there is between the “celibate†and chaste sons of Brahmâ, who refuse “to multiply,†and terrestrial mortals. Meanwhile it is evident that “the Man-Plant,†Saptaparna, thus refers to the seven principles, and man is compared to the seven-leaved plant of this name so sacred among Buddhists.
The Secret Doctrine, i 233-236
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3 Creation is an incorrect word to use, as no religion, not even the sect of the Visishta Adwaitees in India—one which anthropomorphises even Parabrahmam—believes in creation out of nihil as Christians and Jews do, but in evolution out of preexisting materials..
4 The so-called “Spirits†that may occasionally possess themselves of the bodies of mediums are not the Monads or Higher Principles of disembodied personalities. Such a “Spirit†can only be either an Elementary, or—a Nirmânakâya.
5 On pp. 340–351 (Genesis of the Soul) in the “New Aspects of Life,†the Author states the Kabalistic teaching: “They held that, functionally, Spirit and Matter of corresponding opacity and density tended to coalesce; and that the resultant created Spirits, in the disembodied state, were constituted on a scale in which the differing opacities and transparencies of Elemental or uncreated Spirit were reproduced, and that these Spirits in the disembodied state attracted, appropriated, digested and assimilated Elemental Spirit and Elemental Matter whose condition was conformed to their own.†“They therefore taught that there was a wide difference in the condition of created Spirits; and that in the intimate association between the Spirit-world and the world of Matter, the more opaque Spirits in the disembodied state were drawn towards the more dense parts of the material world, and therefore tended towards the centre of the Earth, where they found the conditions most suited to their state; while the more transparent Spirits passed into the surrounding aura of the planet, the most rarified finding their home in its satellite.â€
6 This relates exclusively to our Elementary Spirits, and has naught to do with either the Planetary, Sidereal, Cosmic or Inter-Etheric Intelligent Forces or “Angels†as they are termed by the Roman Church. The Jewish Kabalists, especially the practical Occultists who dealt with ceremonial magic, busied themselves solely with the spirits of the Planets and the “Elementals†so-called. Therefore this covers only a portion of the Esoteric Teaching.
7 This identity between the Spirit and its material “double†(in man it is the reverse) explains still better the confusion, alluded to already in this work, made in the names and individualities, as well as the numbers, of the Rishis and the Prajâpatis, especially between those of the Satya yuga and the Mahabhâratan period. It also throws additional light on what the Secret Doctrine teaches with regard to the Root and the Seed Manus (see Book II, “On the primitive Manus of humanityâ€). Not only those progenitors of our mankind, but every human being, we are taught, has its prototype in the Spiritual Spheres, which prototype is the highest essence of his seventh principle. Thus the seven Manus become 14, the Root Manu being the Prime Cause, and the “Seed-Manu†its effect, and when the latter reach from Satya yuga (the first stage) to the heroic period, these Manus or Rishis become 21 in number.
Selection 3
THE INFORMING VITAL SOUL OF THE PLANETS AND OUR EARTH
. . . (our Esoteric Doctrine) teaches that it is this original, primordial prima materia, divine and intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind – the DaiviPrakriti (the divine light emanating from the Logos8) – which formed the nuclei of all the “self-moving†orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever-present moving-power and life-principle, the vital soul of the suns, moons, planets, and even of our Earth. The former latent: the last one active – the invisible Ruler and guide of the gross body attached to, and connected with, its Soul, which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of these respective planetary Spirits.
Another quite occult doctrine is the theory of Kant, that the matter of which the inhabitants and the animals of other planets are formed is of a lighter and more subtle nature and of a more perfect conformation in proportion to their distance from the Sun. The latter is too full of Vital Electricity, of the physical, life-giving principle. Therefore, the men on Mars are more ethereal than we are, while those of Venus are more gross, though far more intelligent, if less spiritual.
The last doctrine is not quite ours – yet those Kantian theories are as metaphysical, and as transcendental as any occult doctrines; and more than one man of Science would, if he but dared speak his mind, accept them as Wolf does. From this Kantian mind and soul of the Suns and Stars to the MAHAT (mind) and Prakriti of the Purânas, there is but a step. After all, the admission of this by Science would be only the admission of a natural cause, whether it would or would not stretch its belief to such metaphysical heights. But then Mahat, the MIND, is a “God,†and physiology admits “mind†only as a temporary function of the material brain, and no more.
SOME SCIENTISTS ACCEPT VIEWS SIMILAR TO THE OCCULTISTS
The Satan of Materialism now laughs at all alike, and denies the visible as well as the invisible. Seeing in light, heat, electricity, and even in the phenomenon of life, only properties inherent in matter, it laughs whenever life is called VITAL PRINCIPLE, and derides the idea of its being independent of and distinct from the organism.
But here again scientific opinions differ as in everything else, and there are several men of science who accept views very similar to ours. Consider, for instance, what Dr. Richardson, F.R.S. (elsewhere quoted at length) says of that “Vital principle,†which he calls “nervous ether†(“Popular Science Review,†Vol. 10):
“I speak only of a veritable material agent, refined, it may be, to the world at large, but actual and substantial: an agent having quality of weight and of volume, an agent susceptible of chemical combination, and thereby of change of physical state and condition, an agent passive in its action, moved always, that is to say, by influences apart from itself,9 obeying other influences, an agent possessing no initiative power, no vis or energia naturæ,10 but still playing a most important, if not a primary part in the production of the phenomena resulting from the action of the energeia upon visible matter†(p. 379).
As biology and physiology now deny, in toto, the existence of a “vital principle,†this extract, together with de Quatrefages’ admission, is a clear confirmation that there are men of science who take the same views about “things occult†as Theosophists and occultists do. These recognise a distinct vital principle independent of the organism -material, of course, as physical force cannot be divorced from matter, but of a substance existing in a state unknown to Science. Life for them is something more than the mere interaction of molecules and atoms. There is a vital principle without which no molecular combinations could ever have resulted in a living organism, least of all in the so-called “inorganic†matter of our plane of consciousness.
By “molecular combinations†is meant, of course, those of the matter of our present illusive perceptions, which matter energises only on this, our plane. And this is the chief point at issue.11
Thus the Occultists are not alone in their beliefs. Nor are they so foolish, after all, in rejecting even the “gravity†of modern Science along with other physical laws, and in accepting instead attraction and repulsion. They see, moreover, in these two opposite Forces only the two aspects of the universal unit, called “MANIFESTING MIND†in which aspects, Occultism, through its great Seers, perceives an innumerable Host of operative Beings: Cosmic Dhyan Chohans, Entities, whose essence, in its dual nature, is the Cause of all terrestrial phenomena. For that essence is co-substantial with the universal Electric Ocean, which is LIFE; and being dual, as said – positive and negative – it is the emanations of that duality that act now on earth under the name of “modes of motionâ€; even Force having now become objectionable as a word, for fear it should lead someone, even in thought, to separate it from matter! It is, as Occultism says, the dual effects of that dual essence, which have now been called centripetal and centrifugal forces, negative and positive poles, or polarity, heat and cold, light and darkness, etc., etc.
And it is maintained that even the Greek and Roman Catholic Christians are wiser in believing, as they do – even if blindly connecting and tracing them all to an anthropomorphic god – in Angels, Archangels, Archons, Seraphs, and Morning Stars: in all those theological Deliciæ humani generis, in short, that rule the cosmic elements, than Science is, in disbelieving in them altogether, and advocating its mechanical Forces. For these act very often with more than human intelligence and pertinency. Nevertheless, that intelligence is denied and attributed to blind chance. But, as De Maîstre was right in calling the law of gravitation merely a word which replaced “the thing unknown†(Soirées), so are we right in applying the same remark to all the other Forces of Science. And if it is objected that the Count was an ardent Roman Catholic, then we may cite Le Couturier, as ardent a materialist, who said the same thing, as also did Herschell and many others. (Vide Musée des Sciences, August, 1856.)
From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a star to a rushlight, from the Sun to the vital heat of the meanest organic being – the world of Form and Existence is an immense chain, whose links are all connected. The law of Analogy is the first key to the world-problem, and these links have to be studied co-ordinately in their occult relations to each other.
When, therefore, the Secret Doctrine – postulating that conditioned or limited space (location) has no real being except in this world of illusion, or, in other words, in our perceptive faculties – teaches that every one of the higher, as of the lower worlds, is interblended with our own objective world; that millions of things and beings are, in point of localization, around and in us, as we are around, with, and in them; it is no metaphysical figure of speech, but a sober fact in Nature, however incomprehensible to our senses.
The Secret Doctrine, i 602–605
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8 Which “Light†we call Fohat.
9 This is a mistake, which implies a material agent, distinct from the influences which move it, i.e. blind matter and perhaps “God†again, whereas this ONE Life is the very God and Gods “Itself.â€
10 The same error.
11 “Is the Jiva a myth, as science says, or is it not?†ask some Theosophists, wavering between materialistic and idealistic Science. The difficulty of really grasping esoteric problems concerning the “ultimate state of matter†is again the old crux of the objective and the subjective. What is matter? Is the matter of our present objective consciousness anything but our SENSATIONS? True, the sensations we receive come from without, but can we really (except in terms of phenomena) speak of the “gross matter†of this plane as an entity apart from and independent of us? To all such arguments Occultism answers: True, in reality matter is not independent of, or existent outside, our perceptions. Man is an illusion: granted. But the existence and actuality of other, still more illusive, but not less actual, entities than we are, is not a claim which is lessened, but rather strengthened by this doctrine of Vedantic and even Kantian Idealism.
Selection 4
PHYSICAL MAN WAS ORIGINALLY A COLOSSAL PRE-TERTIARY GIANT
The claim that physical man was originally a colossal pre-tertiary giant, and that he existed 18,000,000 years ago, must of course appear preposterous to admirers of, and believers in, modern learning. The whole posse comitatus of biologists will turn away from the conception of this third race Titan of the Secondary age, a being fit to fight as successfully with the then gigantic monsters of the air, sea, and land, as his forefathers – the ethereal prototype of the Atlantean – had little need to fear that which could not hurt him. The modern anthropologist is quite welcome to laugh at our Titans, as he laughs at the Biblical Adam, and as the theologian laughs at his pithecoid ancestor. The Occultists and their severe critics may feel that they have pretty well mutually squared their accounts by this time. Occult sciences claim less and give more, at all events, than either Darwinian anthropology or Biblical theology.
Nor ought the Esoteric Chronology to frighten any one; for, with regard to figures, the greatest authorities of the day are as fickle and as uncertain as the Mediterranean wave. As regards the duration of the geological periods alone, the learned men of the Royal Society are all hopelessly at sea, and jump from one million to five hundred millions of years with the utmost ease, as will be seen more than once during this comparison.
Take one instance for our present purpose – the calculations of Mr. Croll. Whether, according to this authority, 2,500,000 years represent the time since the beginning of the tertiary age, or the Eocene period, as an American geologist makes him say;12 or whether again Mr. Croll “allows fifteen millions since the beginning of the Eocene period,†as quoted by an English geologist,13 both sets of figures cover the claims made by the Secret Doctrine.14 For assigning as the latter does from four to five million years between the incipient and the final evolution of the Fourth Root-Race, on the Lemuro-Atlantean Continents; one million years for the Fifth, or Aryan Race, to the present date; and about 850,000 since the submersion of the last large peninsula of the great Atlantis – all this may have easily taken place within the 15,000,000 years conceded by Mr. Croll to the Tertiary Age. But, chronologically speaking, the duration of the period is of secondary importance, as we have, after all, certain American scientists to fall back upon. These gentlemen, unmoved by the fact that their assertions are called not only dubious but absurd, yet maintain that man existed so far back as in the Secondary Age. They have found human footprints on rocks of that formation; and furthermore, M. de Quatrefages finds no valid scientific reason why man should not have existed during the Secondary Age.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 9–10
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12 A. Winchell, Professor of Geology, “World-Life,†p. 369.
13 Mr. Charles Gould, late Geological surveyor of Tasmania, in “Mythical Monsters,†p. 84.
14 Sir Charles Lyell, who is credited with having “happily invented the terms Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene,†to mark the three divisions of the Tertiary age, ought really to have settled upon some approximate age for his “Mind-offspring.†Having left the duration of these periods, however, to the speculations of specialists, the greatest confusion and perplexity are the result of that happy thought. It seems like a hopeless task to quote one set of figures from one work, without the risk of finding it contradicted by the same Author in an earlier or a subsequent volume. Sir W. Thomson, one of the most eminent among the modern authorities, has changed about half-a-dozen times his opinion upon the age of the Sun and the date of the consolidation of the Earth’s crust. In Thomson and Tait’s “Natural Philosophy,†one finds only ten million years allowed since the time when the temperature of the Earth permitted vegetable life to appear on it; (App. D et seq.; also Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. XXlIl, Pt. 1, 157, 1862, where 847 is cancelled). Mr. Darwin gives Sir W. Thomson’s estimate as “a minimum of 98 and a maximum of 200 millions of years since the consolidation of the crust†(See Ch. Gould). In the same work “Natural Philosophy,†80 millions are given from the time of incipient incrustation to the present state of the world. And in his last lecture, as shown elsewhere, Sir W. Thomson declares (1887) that the Sun is not older than 15 millions of years! Meanwhile, basing his arguments as to the limits to the age of the Sun’s heat on figures previously established by Sir W. Thomson, Mr. Croll allows 60 millions of years since the beginning of the Cambrian period. This is hopeful for the lovers of exact knowledge. Thus, whatever figures are given by Occult Science, they are sure to be corroborated by those of some one among the modern men of Science who are considered as authorities.
Selection 5
ON THE IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCES OF THE INCARNATING POWERS
THE Progenitors of Man, called in India “Fathers,†Pitara or Pitris, are the creators of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as the first personalities, and we are they. Primeval man would be “the bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh,†if they had body and flesh. As stated, they were “lunar Beings.“
The Endowers of man with his conscious, immortal EGO, are the “Solar Angels“— whether so regarded metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of the Conscious EGO or human Soul are great. The esoteric name of these “Solar Angels†is, literally, the “Lords†(Nath) of “persevering ceaseless devotion†(pranidhâna). Therefore they of the fifth principle (Manas) seem to be connected with, or to have originated the system of the Yogis who make of pranidhâna their fifth observance (see Yoga Shastra, II., 32.) It has already been explained why the trans-Himalayan Occultists regard them as evidently identical with those who in India are termed Kumâras, Agnishwattas, and the Barhishads.
How precise and true is Plato’s expression, how profound and philosophical his remark on the (human) soul or EGO, when he defined it as “a compound of the same and the other.†And yet how little this hint has been understood, since the world took it to mean that the soul was the breath of God, of Jehovah. It is “the same and the other,†as the great Initiate-Philosopher said; for the EGO (the “Higher Self†when merged with and in the Divine Monad) is Man, and yet the same as the “OTHER,†the Angel in him incarnated, as the same with the universal MAHAT. The great classics and philosophers felt this truth, when saying that “there must be something within us which produces our thoughts. Something very subtle; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it is quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intellection; it is a number; it is harmony. . . . . †(Voltaire).
All these are the Manasam and Rajasas: the Kumâras, Asuras, and other rulers and Pitris, who incarnated in the Third Race, and in this and various other ways endowed mankind with Mind.
There are seven classes of Pitris, as shown below, three incorporeal and four corporeal; and two kinds, the Agnishwatta and the Barhishad. And we may add that, as there are two kinds of Pitris, so there is a double and a triple set of Barhishad and Agnishwatta. The former, having given birth to their astral doubles, are reborn as Sons of Atri, and are the “Pitris of the Demons,†or corporeal beings, on the authority of Manu (III., 196); while the Agnishwatta are reborn as Sons of Marichi (a son of Brahmâ), and are the Pitris of the Gods (Manu again, Matsya and Padma Purânas and Kulluka in the Laws of the Manavas, III., 195). 15 Moreover, the Vayu Purâna declares all the seven orders to have originally been the first gods, the Vairajas, whom Brahmâ “with the eye of Yoga, beheld in the eternal spheres, and who are the gods of godsâ€; and the Matsya adds that the Gods worshipped them; while the Harivansa (S. 1, 935) distinguishes the Virâjas as one class of the Pitris only — a statement corroborated in the Secret Teachings, which, however, identify the Virâjas with the elder Agnishwattas16 and the Rajasas, or Abhuta Rajasas, who are incorporeal without even an astral phantom. Vishnu is said, in most of the MSS., to have incarnated in and through them. “In the Raivata Manvantara, again, Hari, best of gods, was born of Sambhuti, as the divine Manasas— originating with the deities called Rajasas.†Sambhuti was a daughter of Daksha, and wife of Marichi, the father of the Agnishwatta, who, along with the Rajasas, are ever associated with Manasas. As remarked by a far more able Sanskritist than Wilson, Mr. Fitzedward Hall, “Manasa is no inappropriate name for a deity associated with the Rajasas. We appear to have in it Manasam— the same as Manas— with the change of termination required to express male personification†(Vishnu Purâna Bk. III., ch. I., p. 17 footnote). All the sons of Virâja are Manasa, says Nilakantha. And Virâja is Brahmâ, and, therefore, the incorporeal Pitris are called Vairâjas from being the sons of Virâja, says Vayu Purâna.
We could multiply our proofs ad infinitum, but it is useless. The wise will understand our meaning, the unwise are not required to. There are thirty-three crores, or 330 millions, of gods in India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the Bhagavad Gitâ, “they may be all devas, but are by no means all ‘gods’, in the high spiritual sense one attributes to the term.†“T his is an unfortunate blunder,†he remarks, “generally committed by Europeans. Deva is a kind of spiritual being, and because the same word is used in ordinary parlance to mean god, it by no means follows that we have to worship thirty-three crores of gods.†And he adds suggestively: “These beings, as may be naturally inferred have a certain affinity with one of the three component Upadhis (basic principles) into which we have divided man.“—(Vide Theosophist, Feb., 1887, et seq.)
The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every Manvantara. Thus the twelve great gods, Jayas, created by Brahmâ to assist him in the work of creation in the very beginning of the Kalpa, and who, lost in Samadhi, neglected to create — whereupon they were cursed to be repeatedly born in each Manvantara till the seventh — are respectively called Ajitas, Tushitas, Satyas, Haris, Vaikunthas, Sadhyas, and Adityas: they are Tushitas (in the second Kalpa), and Adityas in this Vaivasvata period (see Vayu Purâna), besides other names for each age. But they are identical with the Manasa or Rajasas, and these with our incarnating Dhyan Chohans. They are all classes of the Gnana-devas.
Yes; besides those beings, who, like the Yakshas, Gandharvas, Kinaras, etc., etc., taken in their individualities, inhabit the astral plane, there are real Devagnanams, and to these classes of Devas belong the Adityas, the Vairâjas, the Kumaras, the Asuras, and all those high celestial beings whom Occult teaching calls Manaswin, the Wise, foremost of all, and who would have made all men the self-conscious spiritually intellectual beings they will be, had they not been “cursed†to fall into generation, and to be reborn themselves as mortals for their neglect of duty.
SEVEN CLASSES OF PITRIS
STANZA IV. — (Continued.)
15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS (chhayas) OF FUTURE MEN (or Amanasas) (a) WERE (thus) BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN COLOUR (complexion) AND KIND (b). EACH (also) INFERIOR TO HIS FATHER (creator). THE FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS WITH BONES. THEIR PROGENY WERE BHUTA (phantoms) WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND, THEREFORE THEY WERE CALLED THE CHHAYA (image or shadow) RACE (c).
(a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the root “man†to think, hence “a thinker.†It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latin “mens,†mind, the Egyptian “Menes,†the “Master-Mind,†the Pythagorean Monas, or conscious “thinking unit,†mind also, and even our “Manas†or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these shadows are called amanasa, “mindless.â€
With the Brahmins the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors, 17 or ancestors of men — the first Manushya on this Earth — and offerings are made to them by the Brahmin when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the gods (See the “Laws of Manu,†Bk. III., p. 203).
May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of progenitors?
The Pitris being divided into seven classes, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all the Purânas agree that three of these are arupa, 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 Vayu 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 Dhyanis,†which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishwattas, is called in our school the “Heart†of the Dhyan-Chohanic Body; and it 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 prototype above. 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 have four lower “cavities and three higher divisions,†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 Dhyanis? 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?
“Having projected their shadows and made men of one element (ether), the progenitors re-ascend to Maha-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),†says the Commentary.
“Not-gods,†for the Brahmins, perhaps, but the highest Breaths, for the Occultist; since those progenitors (Pitar), 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 the Rig Veda— the highest authority for a Hindu of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means “spiritual divine,†and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, while in the sense of a “God,†the term “Asura†is applied to Varuna and Indra and pre-eminently to Agni — the three having been in days of old the three highest gods, before Brahmanical 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 the Zend Avesta the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, “Asura†is the lord Asura Visvavedas, the “all-knowing†or “omniscient Lordâ€; and Asura-Mazdha, become later Ahura-Mazdha, is, as Benfey shows, “the Lord who bestows Intelligence†— Asura-Medha and Ahura-Mazdao. Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded as sevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdha, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the “Lord,†or “Lords†collectively “who bestow Intelligence,†connects the Amshaspends with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyan Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing gods of Egypt, Chaldea, 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 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. (Compare also what is said about Makara and the Kumâras in connection with the Zodiac.)
The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded them into demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brahmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people’s mind. Even in Chaldean exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, i.e., who are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgos, are also denounced as the Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras who are devoid thereof, who are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith — a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brahmins — and forthwith the former become A-Suras. The first and mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are cursed by Brahmâ to be born as men. They are hurled down to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into the infernal regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd — which is the emblem of terrestrial illusive life, 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 his 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 through self-conscious efforts; and it is these worshippers of Form who have made demons of the Angels of Light.
Esoteric philosophy, however, teaches that one third 18 of the Dhyanis— i.e., the three classes of the Arupa Pitris, endowed with intelligence, “which is a formless breath, composed of intellectual not elementary substances†(see Harivamsa, 932) — was simply doomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be reborn (or incarnated) on Earth. 19 Some of these were Nirmanakayas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the Purânas, reappearing on this globe, in the third Manvantara, as Kings, Rishis and heroes (read Third Root-Race). This tenet, being too philosophical and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over them 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 incarnate anew, 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 — since they were Arupa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogis of long past preceding Manvantara s; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmanakayas, 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 allegory within an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with his spiritual eye.
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 Pitar-Devata, i.e., those possessed of the physical 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 the creative gods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal but higher; (see Gen. and Plato’s Timæus). Their 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. They would not, simply because they could not, 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 symbolised 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. (See Part II of this volume, “The Fallen Angelsâ€; also “The Gods of Light proceed from the Gods of Darkness.â€)
WHAT PROMETHEUS SYMBOLIZED
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 the personal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves — perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first, 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 have refused to do so, and man had to be formed by more material creators, 20 who, 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 themselves shadowy men, a little less ethereal and spiritual, less divine and perfect than 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 every negative (Nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute light is absolute darkness, and vice versa. 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 Maya. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists per 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 a lower order 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 mayavic 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, 21 to which class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.
Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the Phædrus, of a winged race of men. Aristophanes (in Plato’s Banquet), speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. In Pymander, all the animal kingdom even is double-sexed. Thus in § 18, it is said: “The circuit having been accomplished, the knot was loosened. . . . and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, were untied (separated) together with man.....†for. . . . “the causes had to produce effects on earth.†22 Again, in the ancient Quiche Manuscript, the Popol 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 onceâ€: thus showing the divine 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.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 88–96
________________
15 We are quite aware that the Yayu and Matsya Purânas identify (agreeably to Western interpretation) the Agnishwatta with the seasons, and the Barhishad Pitris with the months; adding a fourth class — the Kavyas — cyclic years. But do not Christian, Roman Catholics identify their Angels with planets, and are not the seven Rishis become the Saptarshi — a constellation? They are deities presiding over all the cyclic divisions.
16 The Vayu Purâna shows the region called Virâja-loka inhabited by the Agnishwattas.
17 This was hinted at in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., p. xxxviii., though the full explanation could not then be given: “The Pitris are not the ancestors of the present living men, but those of the first human kind or Adamic race; the spirits of human races, which, on the great scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were physically as well as spiritually, far superior to our modem pigmies. In Manava-Dharma-Sastra they are called the Lunar ancestors.â€
18 Whence the subsequent assertions of St. John’s vision, referred to in his Apocalypse, about “the great red Dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads,†whose “tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth†(ch. xii.).
19 The verse “did cast them to the Earth,†plainly shows its origin in the grandest and oldest allegory of the Aryan mystics, who, after the destruction of the Atlantean giants and sorcerers, concealed the truth — astronomical, physical, and divine, as it is a page out of pre-cosmic theogony — under various allegories. Its esoteric, true interpretation is a veritable Theodice of the “Fallen Angels,†so called; the willing and the unwilling, the creators and those who refused to create, being now mixed up most perplexingly by Christian Catholics, who forget that their highest Archangel, St. Michael, who is shown to conquer (to master and to assimilate) the DRAGON OF WISDOM and of divine Self-sacrifice (now miscalled and calumniated as Satan), WAS THE FIRST TO REFUSE TO CREATE! This led to endless confusion. So little does Christian theology understand the paradoxical language of the East and its symbolism, that it even explains, in its dead letter sense, the Chinese Buddhist and Hindu exoteric rite of raising a noise during certain eclipses to scare away the “great red Dragon,†which laid a plot to carry away the light! But here “Light†means esoteric Wisdom, and we have sufficiently explained the secret meaning of the terms Dragon, Serpent, etc., etc., all of which refer to Adepts and Initiates.
20 In spite of all efforts to the contrary, Christian theology — having burdened itself with the Hebrew esoteric account of the creation of man, which is understood literally — cannot find any reasonable excuse for its “God, the Creator,†who produces a man devoid of mind and sense; nor can it justify the punishment following an act, for which Adam and Eve might plead non compos. For if the couple is admitted to be ignorant of good and evil before the eating of the forbidden fruit, how could it be expected to know that disobedience was evil? If primeval man was meant to remain a half-witted, or rather witless, being, then his creation was aimless and even cruel, if produced by an omnipotent and perfect God. But Adam and Eve are shown, even in Genesis, to be created by a class of lower divine Beings, the Elohim, who are so jealous of their personal prerogatives as reasonable and intelligent creatures, that they will not allow man to become “as one of us.†This is plain, even from the dead-letter meaning of the Bible. The Gnostics, then, were right in regarding the Jewish God as belonging to a class of lower, material and not very holy denizens of the invisible World.
21 In Isis Unveiled several of these Gnostic systems are given. One is taken from the Codex Nazaræus, the Scriptures of the Nazarenes, who, although they existed long before the days of Christ, and even before the laws of Moses, were Gnostics, and many of them Initiates. They held their “Mysteries of Life†in Nazara (ancient and modern Nazareth), and their doctrines are a faithful echo of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine — some of which we are now endeavouring to explain.
22 See the translation from the Greek by Francois, Monsieur de Foix, Evesque d’Ayre: the work dedicated to Marguerite de France, Reine de Navarre. Edition of 1579, Bordeaux.
Selection 6
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SEXLESS SECOND RACE
STANZA 18. THE FIRST (Race) WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE CHILDREN OF THE YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER.
In the later Commentary, the sentence is translated:
“The Sons of the Sun and of the Moon, the nursling of ether (or the wind)
(a)..... “They were the shadows of the shadows of the Lords (b). They (the shadows) expanded. The Spirits of the Earth clothed them; the solar Lhas warmed them (i.e. preserved the vital fire in the nascent physical forms). The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. They had no fire nor water of their own (c).
(a) Remember in this connection the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes, the esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to it. The Astro-Chemical is well known to students, the anthropological may be given now. The “One thing†mentioned in it is MAN. It is said: “The Father of THAT ONE ONLY THING is the Sun; its Mother the Moon; the Wind carries it in his bosom, and its nurse is the Spirituous Earth.†In the occult rendering of the same it is added: “and Spiritual Fire is its instructor (Guru)â€
THE SPIRITS OF THE EARTH CLOTHED THE SHADOWS AND EXPANDED THEM
This fire is the higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally reincarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves, changing with every re-birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the Ego takes refuge in the Atman, the ALL-SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the essence thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be thoroughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple lines – spiritual, psychic and physical.
That which propels towards, and forces evolution, i.e. compels the growth and development of Man towards perfection, is (a) the MONAD, or that which acts in it unconsciously through a force inherent in itself; and (b) the lower astral body or the personal SELF. The former, whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an animal body, is endowed with, is indeed itself, that force. Owing to its identity with the ALL-FORCE, which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all-potent on the Arupa, or formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains all-potential, but individually becomes inactive: e.g. the rays of the Sun, which contribute to the growth of vegetation, do not select this or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it to a piece of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not follow it. So with the Atman: unless the higher Self or EGO gravitates towards its Sun – the Monad – the lower Ego, or personal Self, will have the upper hand in every case. For it is this Ego, with its fierce Selfishness and animal desire to live a Senseless life (Tanha), which is “the maker of the tabernacle,†as Buddha calls it in Dhammapada (153 and 154). Hence the expression, “the Spirits of the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded them.†To these “Spirits†belong temporarily the human astral selves; and it is they who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the Monad and its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the “Solar†Lhas, Spirits, warm them, the shadows. This is physically and literally true; metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true that the Atman alone warms the inner man; i.e. it enlightens it with the ray of divine life and alone is able to impart to the inner man, or the reincarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, as we shall find, for the first three and a half Root-Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the astral shadows of the “progenitors,†the lunar Pitris, which are the formative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the evolution of the physical form towards perfection – this, at the cost of a proportionate loss of spirituality. Then, from the turning point, it is the Higher Ego, or incarnating principle, the nous or Mind, which reigns over the animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by the latter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes it from steadily progressing on the path of its evolution only when the selfishness of the personality has so strongly infected the real inner man with its lethal virus, that the upward attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober truth, vice and wickedness are an abnormal, unnatural manifestation, at this period of our human evolution – at least they ought to be so. The fact that mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now, civilized nations having succeeded in making of the first an ethical characteristic, of the second an art, is an additional proof of the exceptional nature of the phenomenon.
The entire scheme is in the “Chaldean Book of Numbers,†and even in the Zohar, if one only understood the meaning of the apocalyptic hints. First comes En-Soph, the “Concealed of the Concealed,†then the Point, Sephira and the later Sephiroth; then the Atzilatic World, a World of Emanations that gives birth to three other worlds – called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the World of Formation, or Jetzira, the habitat of the Angels who sent forth the Third, or World of Action, the Asiatic World, which is the Earth or our World; and yet it is said of it that this world, also called Kliphoth, containing the (six other) Spheres, 
, and matter, is the residence of the “Prince of Darkness.†This is as clearly stated as can be; for Metatron, the Angel of the second or Briatic World, means Messenger, άγελος , Angel, called the great Teacher, and under him are the Angels of the third World, Jetzira, whose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,23 of whom it is said that “they inhabit and vivify this world as Essential Entities and Intelligences, whose correlatives and contraries inhabit the third or “Asiatic World.†These “Contraries†are called “the Shells,†
, or demons, 24 who inhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the seven zones of our globe. Their prince is called in the Kabala Samael, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing serpent Satan; but that Satan is also Lucifer, the bright angel of Light, the Light and Life-bringer, the “Soul†alienated from the HOLY Ones, the other angels, and for a period, anticipating the time when they would have descended on Earth to incarnate in their turn.
IN THE “SOUL†IS THE REAL MAN, I.E. THE EGO AND THE CONSCIOUS I AM
“The Souls (Monads) are pre-existent in the world of Emanations,†(“Book of Wisdom,†VIII, p. 20); and the Zohar teaches that in the “Soul†“is the real man, i.e. the Ego and the conscious I AM: ’Manas’.
“They descend from the pure air to be chained to bodies,†says Josephus, repeating the belief of the Essenes (De Bello Judæo, 11, 12). “The air is full of Souls,†states Philo, “they descend, to be tied to mortal bodies, being desirous to live in them.†(De Gignat, 222 C.; De Somniis, p.455)25; because through, and in, the human form they will become progressive beings, whereas the nature of the angel is purely intransitive, therefore man has in him the potency of transcending the faculties of the Angels. Hence the Initiates in India say that it is the Brahmin, the twice-born, who rules the gods or devas; and Paul repeated it in I Corinthians vi., 3: “Know ye not that we (the Initiates) shall judge angels�
Finally, it is shown in every ancient scripture and Cosmogony that man evolved primarily as a luminous incorporeal form, over which, like the molten brass round the clay model of the sculptor, the physical frame of his body was built by, through, and from, the lower forms and types of animal terrestrial life. “The Soul and the Form when descending on Earth put on an earthly garment,†says the Zohar. His protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal frames are fashioned. “When Adam dwelt in the garden of Eden, he was clothed in the celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light. . . . light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden,†(Zohar II. 229 B). “Man (the heavenly Adam) was created by the ten Sephiroth of the Jetziric world, and by the common power they (the seven angels of a still lower world) engendered the earthly Adam. . . . First Samael fell, and then deceiving (?) man, caused his fall also.â€
(b) The sentence: “They were the shadows of the shadows of the Lords,†i.e. the progenitors created man out of their own astral bodies, explains an universal belief. The Devas are credited in the East with having no shadows of their own. “The devas cast no shadows,†and this is the sure sign of a good holy Spirit.
Why had they “no fire or water of their own�26 Because:
(c) That which Hydrogen is to the elements and gases on the objective plane, its noumenon is in the world of mental or subjective phenomena; since its trinitarian latent nature is mirrored in its three active emanations from the three higher principles in man, namely, “Spirit, Soul, and Mind,†or Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human basis. Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the “air†or the “wind,†becomes the perfect man later on; when, with the development of “Spiritual fire,†the noumenon of the “Three in One†within his Self, he acquires from his inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of Self-Consciousness, which he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again divine Spirit is symbolised by the Sun or Fire; divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, human Soul, or Mind, symbolised by the Wind or air, for Pneuma, means “breath.â€
The Secret Doctrine, ii 109–113
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23 See Vol. I. Part III., “Gods, Monads and Atoms†It is symbolised in the Pythagorean Triangle, the 10 dots within, and the seven points of the Triangle and the Cube.
24 Whence the Kabalistic name of Shells given to the astral form, the body called Kama Rupa, left behind by the higher angels in the shape of the higher Manas, when the latter leaves for Devachan, forsaking its residue.
25 Which shows that the Essenes believed in re-birth and many reincarnations on Earth, as Jesus himself did, a fact we can prove from the New Testament itself.
26 It is corroborated, however, as we have shown, by the esotericism of Genesis. Not only are the animals created therein after the “Adam of Dust,†but vegetation is shown in the Earth before “the heavens and the Earth were created.†“Every plant of the field before it (the day that the heavens and the Earth were made, v. 4) was in the Earth†(v. 5). Now, unless the Occult interpretation is accepted, which shows that in this 4th Round the Globe was covered with vegetation, and the first (astral) humanity was produced before almost anything could grow and develop thereon, what can the dead letter mean? Simply that the grass was in the earth of the Globe before that Globe was created? And yet the meaning of verse 6, which says that “there went up a mist from the Earth†and watered the whole face of the Earth before it rained, and caused the trees, etc., to grow, is plain enough. It shows also in what geological period it occurred, and further what is meant by “Heaven and Earth.†It meant the firmament and dry incrustated land, separated and ridden of its vapours and exhalations. Moreover, the student must bear in mind that, as Adam Kadmon, “the male and female being†of Genesis, ch. I., is no physical human being but the host of the Elohim, among which was Jehovah himself—so the animals mentioned in that chapter as “created†before man in the dead letter text, were no animals, but the Zodiacal signs and other sidereal bodies.
Selection 7
THE FIRST RACE OF MEN WERE THE IMAGES OF THEIR FATHERS
The first race of men were, then, simply the images, the astral doubles, of their Fathers, who were the pioneers, or the most progressed Entities from a preceding though lower sphere, the shell of which is now our Moon. But even this shell is all-potential, for, having generated the Earth, it is the phantom of the Moon which, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form its first inhabitants, the pre-human monsters, (vide supra, Stanza 2.). To assure himself of this, the student has again to turn to the Chaldean Fragments, and read what Berosus says. Berosus obtained his information, he tells us, from Ea, the male-female deity of Wisdom. While the gods were generated in its androgynous bosom (Svâbhâvat, Mother-space) its (the Wisdom’s) reflections became on Earth the woman Omoroka, who is the Chaldean Thavatth, or the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which esoterically and even exoterically is the Moon. It was the Moon (Omoroka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings which were slain by the Dhyanis. (Vide Hibbert Lectures, p. 370 et seq.; also in Part II, Adam-Adami.â€)
Evolutionary law compelled the lunar “Fathers†to pass, in their monadic condition, through all the forms of life and being on this globe; but at the end of the Third Round, they were already human in their divine nature, and were thus called upon to become the creators of the forms destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed Monads, whose turn it was to incarnate. These “Forms†are called “Sons of Yoga,†because Yoga (union with Brahmâ exoterically) is the supreme condition of the passive infinite deity, since it contains all the divine energies and is the essence of Brahmâ, who is said (as Brahmâ) to create everything through Yoga power. Brahmâ, Vishnu and Siva are the most powerful energies of God, Brahma, the Neuter, says a Purânic text. Yoga here is the same as Dhyâna, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan text, where the “Sons of Yoga†are called “Sons of Dhyâna,†or of that abstract meditation through which the Dhyani-Buddhas create their celestial sons, the Dhyani-Bodhisattvas. All the creatures in the world have each a superior above. “This superior, whose inner pleasure it is to emanate into them, cannot impart efflux until they have adored†– i.e. meditated as during Yoga. (Sepher M’bo Sha-arim, translated by Isaac Myer, “Qabbalah,†pp. 109 – 111)
STANZA 19. THE SECOND RACE (was) THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION; THE A-SEXUAL (form) FROM THE SEXLESS (shadow). THUS WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE PRODUCED (a).
THE TWO MODES OF PROCREATION OF THE 2ND AND 3RD RACES
(a) What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this asexual Race, the Second, the fathers of the “Sweat-born†so-called, and perhaps still more the Third Race, the “Egg-born†androgynes. These two modes of procreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those who are not students of Occult metaphysics. European language has no words to express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution, things which therefore can have no meaning for the materialist. But there are analogies. It is not denied that in the beginning of physical evolution there must have been processes in Nature, spontaneous generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other forms. Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any particular mode of reproducing life. For “it shows that the same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the course of its life-cycle, during some of which it may be sexual, and in others a-sexual; i.e. it may reproduce itself alternately by the co-operation of two beings of opposite sex, and also by fissure or budding from one being only, which is of no sex.â€27 “Budding†is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhayas reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since they were ethereal, a-sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of desire, or Kama Rupa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved the Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the AmÅ“ba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed, the cell-theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms, and if the microscopic cells are looked upon by physical science as independent living beings – just as Occultism regards the “fieryâ€28 – there is no difficulty in the conception of the primitive process procreation.
Consider the first stages of the development of a germ-cell. Its nucleus grows, changes, and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, 
, within the cell. This spindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is extruded in the form of what are called the “polar cells†These polar cells now die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation of the remaining part of the nucleus which is nourished by the substance of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created in this way – at the very beginning of human and mammalian evolution?
This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by which the Second Race was formed from the First.
The astral form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its egg-shaped sphere of aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the germ-cell or ovum. The astral form itself is the nucleus, now, as then, instinct with the principle of life.
When the season of reproduction arrives, the sub-astral “extrudes†a miniature of itself from the egg of surrounding aura. This germ grows and feeds on the aura till it becomes fully developed, when it gradually separates from its parent, carrying with it its own sphere of aura; just as we see living cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent division into two.
The analogy with the “polar cells†would seem to hold good, since their death would now correspond to the change introduced by the separation of the sexes, when gestation in utero, i.e. within the cell, became the rule.
“The early Second (Root) Race were the Fathers of the ‘Sweat-born’; the later Second (Root) Race were ‘Sweat-born’ themselvesâ€
This passage from the Commentary refers to the work of evolution from the beginning of a Race to its close. The “Sons of Yoga,†or the primitive astral race, had seven stages of evolution racially, or collectively; as every individual Being in it had, and has now. It is not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself. Thus the first sub-races of the Second Race were born at first by the process described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually, pari passu with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise. The process of reproduction had seven stages also in each Race, each covering æons of time. What physiologist or biologist could tell whether the present mode of generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older than half a million, or at most on million of years, since their cycle of observation began hardly half a century ago.
PRIMEVAL HUMAN HERMAPHRODITES ARE A FACT IN NATURE
Primeval human hermaphrodites are a fact in Nature well known to the ancients, and form one of Darwin’s greatest perplexities. Yet there is certainly no impossibility, but, on the contrary, a great probability that hermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early races; while on the grounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one universal law in physical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction of plant, animal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of monogenesis, and the descent of man from the mammals instead of the reverse, are fatal to the completeness of evolution as taught in modern schools on Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the insuperable difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition – if the terms Science and Knowledge are denied in this particular to antiquity – can alone reconcile the inconsistencies and fill the gap. “If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eye wide on the visible,†says a Talmudic axiom.
In the “Descent of Manâ€29 occurs the following passage; which shows how near Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching.
It has been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various accessory parts appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex. . . . Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite or androgynous30 . . . But here we encounter a singular difficulty. In the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the Vesiculæ prostaticæ; they bear also rudiments of mammæ, and some male marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac. Other analogous facts could be added. Are we then to suppose that some extremely ancient mammal continued androgynous after it had acquired the chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? This seems very improbable,31 for we have to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous forms.â€
Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which the facts so forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous stem from which the mammalia sprang. His explanation runs:â€The fact that various accessory organs proper to each sex, are found in a rudimentary condition in the opposite sex may be explained by such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex and then transmitted in a more or less imperfect condition to the other.†He instances the case of “spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for battle or for ornament by male birds†and only partially inherited by their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the need of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so much more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial details with which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the argument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterises the old fauna? Occultism proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most comprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other organs as mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of functions which have long since become atrophied in the course of animal and human progress, but which once played a signal part in the general economy of primeval life.
The occult doctrine, anyhow, can be advantageously compared with that of the most liberal men of science, who have theorised upon the origin of the first man.
THE CHHAYA CONTAINS WITHIN ITSELF THE POTENTIALITY OF ALL FORMS
Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave the name of Blastema to that which the Darwinists call protoplasm, put forward a theory half occult and half scientifico-materialistic. He made Adam, the a-sexual, spring suddenly from the clay, as it is called in the Bible, the Blastema of Science. “It is from this larval form of mankind that the evolutive force effected the completion of species. For the accomplishment of this great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility and unconsciousness, very analogous to the nymphal state of animals undergoing metamorphosis,†explains Naudin. For the eminent botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but mankind, “which remained concealed within a temporary organism . . . . distinct from all others and never contracting alliance with any of these.†He shows the differentiation of sexes accomplished by “a process of germination similar to that of Medusæ and Ascidians.†Mankind, thus constituted physiologically, “would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production of the various great human races.â€
De Quatrefages criticises this position in the “Human Species†It is unscientific, he says, or, properly speaking, Naudin’s ideas “do not form a scientific theory,†inasmuch as primordial Blastema is connected in his theory with the First Cause, which is credited with having made potentially in the Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus of having in reality created these beings en masse; moreover, Naudin does not even consider the secondary Causes, or their action in this evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with Secondary Causes, has thus “nothing to say to the theory of Naudin†(p. 125).
Nor will it have any more to say to the occult teachings, which are to some extent approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his “primordial Blastema†the Dhyan-Chohanic essence, the Chhaya or double of the Pitris, which contains within itself the potentiality of all forms, we are quite in accord. But there are two real and vital differences between our teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by sudden leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years; and his primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts – a kind of unconscious First Cause in the manifested Kosmos- which is an absurdity. Whereas it is our Dhyan Chohanic essence – the causality of the primal cause which creates physical man- which is the living, active and potential matter, pregnant per se with that animal consciousness of a superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver, which produces the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this his “ancient and general process of creation†from proto-organisms is as occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be.
Moreover, the Kabalistic works are full of the proof of this. The Zohar, for instance, says that every type in the visible has its prototype in the invisible Universe. “All that which is in the lower (our) world is found in the upper. The Lower and the Upper act and react upon each other.†(Zohar, fol. 186.) Vide infra, Part II., “Esoteric Tenets corroborated in every Scriptureâ€
STANZA 20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF-BORN. THE SELF-BORN, THE CHHAYA FROM THE BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS, THE SONS OF TWILIGHT (a).
(a) The “shadows,†or Chhayas, are called the sons of the “self-born,†as the latter name is applied to all the gods and Beings born through the WILL, whether of Deity or Adept. The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be also given this name, though the latter process is on a far more material plane. The name “Sons of Twilight†shows that the “Self-born†progenitors of our doctrine are identical with the Pitris of the Brahmanical system, as the title is a reference to their mode of birth, these Pitris being stated to have issued from Brahmâ’s body of twilight.†(See the Purânas)
The Secret Doctrine, ii 115–121
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27 See Laing’s “Modern Science and Modern Thought,†p. 90.
28 See Book I, Part I, Stanza VII, Commentary 10.
29 Second Edition, p. 161.
30 And why not all the progenitive first Races, human as well as animal; and why one “remote progenitor�
31 Obviously so, on the lines of Evolutionism, which traces the mammalia to some Amphibian ancestor.
Selection 8
THE DIVINE HERMAPHRODITE
An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the occult and religious mysteries taught, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean race, some 12,000 years ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so desecrated. Of these sciences several have now become exoteric – such as Astronomy, for instance, in its purely mathematical and physical aspect. Hence their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolised and left to the sole guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and their meaning has become perverted. Nevertheless, one finds the hermaphrodite in the scriptures and traditions of almost every nation; and why such unanimous agreement if the statement is only a fiction?
It is this secrecy which led the Fifth Race to the establishment, or rather the re-establishment of the religious mysteries, in which ancient truths might be taught to the coming generations under the veil of allegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable witness to the evolution of the human races from the divine, and especially from the androgynous Race – the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages! Divine wisdom incarnating on earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of personal experience of pain and suffering, generated under the shade of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil – a secret first known only to the Elohim, the SELF-INITIATED, “higher gods†– on earth only. 32
In the Book of Enoch we have Adam, 33 the first divine androgyne, separating into man and woman, and becoming JAH-HEVA in one form, or Race, and Cain and Abel 34 (male and female) in its other form or Race – the double-sexed Jehovah35 – an echo of its Aryan prototype, Brahmâ-Vâch. After which come the Third and Fourth Root-Races of mankind 36 – that is to say, Races of men and women, or individuals of opposite sexes, no longer sexless semi-spirits and androgynes, as were the two Races which precede them. This fact is hinted at in every Anthropogony. It is found in fable and allegory, in myth and revealed Scriptures, in legend and tradition. Because, of all the great Mysteries, inherited by Initiates from hoary antiquity, this is one of the greatest. It accounts for the bi-sexual element found in every creative deity, in Brahmâ-Virâj-Vâch, as in Adam -Jehovah-Eve, also in “Cain-Jehovah- Abel.†For “The Book of the Generations of Adam†does not even mention Cain and Abel, but says only: “Male and female created he them. . . and called their name Adam†(ch. v. 5). Then it proceeds to say: “And Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth†(v. 3); after which he begets other sons and daughters, thus proving that Cain and Abel are his own allegorical permutations. Adam stands for the primitive human race, especially in its cosmo-sidereal sense. Not so, however, in its theo-anthropological meaning. The compound name of Jehovah, or Jah-Hovah, meaning male life and female life – first androgynous, then separated into sexes – is used in this sense in Genesis from ch. v. onwards. As the author of “The Source of Measures†says (p. 159): “The two words of which Jehovah is composed make up the original idea of male-female, as the birth originatorsâ€; for the Hebrew letter Jod was the membrum virile and Hovah was Eve, the mother of all living, or the procreatrix, Earth and Nature. The author believes, therefore, that “It is seen that the perfect one†(the perfect female circle or Yoni, 20612, numerically), “as originator of measures, takes also the form of birth-origin, as Hermaphrodite one; hence the phallic form and use.â€
Precisely; only “the phallic form and use†came long ages later; and the first and original meaning of Enos, the son of Seth, was the First Race born in the present usual way from man and woman – for Seth is no man, but a race. Before him humanity was hermaphrodite.
While Seth is the first result (physiologically) after the FALL, he is also the first man; hence his son Enos is referred to as the “Son of man.†(Vide infra.) Seth represents the later Third Race.
To screen the real mystery name of AIN-SOPH- the Boundless and Endless No-T hing – the Kabalists have brought forward the compound attribute-appellation of one of the personal creative Elohim, whose name was Yak and Jab, the letters i or j or y being interchangeable, or Jah-Hovah, i.e. male and female; 37 Jah-Eve an hermaphrodite, or the first form of humanity, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam Kadmon, whose “mind-born son†is the earthly Jah-Hovah, mystically. And knowing this, the crafty Rabbin-Kabalist has made of it a name so secret, that he could not divulge it later on without exposing the whole scheme; and thus he was obliged to make it sacred.
How close is the identity between Brahmâ-Prajâpati and Jehovah-Sephiroth, between Brahmâ-Virâj and Jehovah-Adam, the Bible and the Purânas compared can alone show. Analysed and read in the same light, they afford cogent evidence that they are two copies of the same original – made at two periods far distant from each other. Compare once more in relation to this subject Genesis ch. 4. verses 1 and 26 and Manu I., and they will both yield their meaning. In Manu (Book I. 32) Brahmâ, who is also both man and god, and divides his body into male and female, stands in his esoteric meaning, as does Jehovah or Adam in the Bible, for the symbolical personification of creative and generative power, both divine and human. The Zohar affords still more convincing proof of identity, while some Rabbins repeat word for word certain original Purânic expressions; e.g., the “creation†of the world is generally considered in the Brahmanical books to be the Lila, delight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator, “Vishnu being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and time, sports like a playful boy in frolics.†(Vishnu Purâna, Book I., ch. ii.) Now compare this with what is said in the Book, “Nobeleth’ Hokhmahâ€: “The Kabalists say that the entering into existence of the worlds happens through delight, in that Ain-Soph (? !) rejoiced in Itself, and flashed and beamed from Itself to Itself . . . . which are all called delight,†etc. (Quoted in Myer’s “Qabbalah†p. 110). Thus it is not a “curious idea of the Qabbalists,†as the author just quoted remarks, but a purely Purânic, Aryan idea. Only, why make of Ain-Soph a Creator?
The “Divine Hermaphrodite†is then Brahmâ-Vâch-Virâj; and that of the Semites, or rather of the Jews, is Jehovah-Cain-Abel. Only the “Heathen†were, and are, more sincere and frank than were the later Israelites and Rabbis, who undeniably knew the real meaning of their exoteric deity. The Jews regard the name given to them – the Yah-oudi- as an insult. Yet they have, or would have if they only wished it, as undeniable a right to call themselves the ancient Yah-oudi, “Jah-hovians,†as the Brahmins have to call themselves Brahmins, after their national deity. For Jah-hovah is the generic name of that group or hierarchy of creative planetary angels, under whose star their nation has evolved. He is one of the planetary Elohim of the regent group of Saturn. Verse 26 of Genesis, ch. iv., when read correctly, would alone give them such a right, for it calls the new race of men sprung from Seth and Enos, Jehovah, something quite different from the translation adopted in the Bible: – “To him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call themselves Jah or Yah-hovah,†to with men and women, the “lords of creation.†One has but to read the above-mentioned verse in the original Hebrew text and by the light of the Kabala, to find that, instead of the words as they now stand translated, it is: “Then began men to call themselves Jehovah,†which is the correct translation, and not “Then began men to call upon the name of the Lordâ€; the latter being a mistranslation, whether deliberate or not. Again the well-known passage: “I have gotten a man from the Lord,†should read: “I have gotten a man, even Jehovahâ€38 Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics quite differently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it: “Cain – I have gotten Kain, from Kânithi, “I have gotten.†Luther: “I have gotten a man O – even the Lord†(Jehovah); and the author of “The Source of Measuresâ€: “I have measured a man, even Jehovah†The last is the correct rendering, because (a) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist, explained the passage to the writer in precisely this way, and (b) because this rendering is identical with that in the Secret Doctrine of the East with regard to Brahmâ. In “Isis Unveiled,â€39 it was explained by the writer that “Cain . . . is the son of the ‘Lord’ not of Adam (Genesis iv. I)†The “Lord†is Adam Kadmon, the “father†of Yodcheva, “Adam-Eve,†or Jehovah, the son of sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood. Seth, on the other hand, is the leader and the progenitor of the Races of the Earth; for he is the son of Adam, exoterically, but esoterically he is the progeny of Cain and Abel, since Abel or Hebel is a female, the counterpart and female half of the male Cain, and Adam is the collective name for man and woman: “male and female (Zachar va Nakobeh) created he them . . . and called their name Adam.†The verses in Genesis from Chs. i. to v., are purposely mixed up for Kabalistic reasons. After MAN of Genesis Ch. i. 26 and Enos, Son of Man of ch. iv. v. 26, after Adam, the first androgyne, after Adam Kadmon, the sexless (the first) Logos, Adam and Eve once separated, come finally Jehovah-Eve and Cain-Jehovah. These represent distinct Root-Races, for millions of years elapsed between them.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 124–128
________________
32 See “Book of Enochâ€
33 Adam (Kadmon) is, like Brahmâ and Mars, the symbol of the generative and creative power typifying Water and Earth – an alchemical secret. “It takes Earth and Water to create a human soul,†said Moses. Mars is the Hindu Mangala, the planet Mars, identical with Kartikeya, the “War-God,†born of Gharma-ja (Siva’s sweat) and of the Earth. He is Lokita, the red, like Brahmâ also and Adam. The Hindu Mars is, like Adam, born from no woman and mother. With the Egyptians, Mars was the primeval generative Principle, and so are Brahmâ, in exoteric teaching, and Adam, in the Kabala.
34 Abel is Chebel, meaning “Pains of Birth,†conception.
35 See “Isis Unveiled†Vol. II, p. 398, where Jehovah is shown to be Adam and Eve blended, and Hevah, and Abel, the feminine serpent.
36 See “Isis Unveiled,†Vol. I., 305: “The union of the two create a third Race, etc.“
37 Jod in the Kabala has for symbol the hand, the forefinger and the lingham, while numerically it is the perfect one; but it is also the number 10, male and female, when divided.
38 See “Source of Measures,†p. 227. †Vol. II., p. 264, et seq.
39 Vol. II., p. 264, et seq.
Selection 9
THE EVOLUTION OF THE “SWEAT-BORNâ€
STANZA 22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE SWEAT-BORN, THE THIRD (Race). THE SWEAT GREW, ITS DROPS GREW, AND THE DROPS BECAME HARD AND ROUND. THE SUN WARMED IT; THE MOON COOLED AND SHAPED IT; THE WIND FED IT UNTIL ITS RIPENESS. THE WHITE SWAN FROM THE STARRY VAULT (the Moon), OVERSHADOWED THE BIG DROP. THE EGG OF THE FUTURE RACE, THE MAN-SWAN (Hamsa) OF THE LATER THIRD (a). FIRST MALE-FEMALE, THEN MAN AND WOMAN (b).
(a) The text of the Stanza clearly implies that the human embryo was nourished ab extra by Cosmic forces, and that the “Father-Mother†furnished apparently the germ that ripened: in all probability a “sweat-born egg,†to be hatched out, in some mysterious way, disconnected from the “double†parent. It is comparatively easy to conceive of an oviparous humanity, since even now man is, in one sense, “eggborn.†Magendie, moreover, in his Précis Elémentaire de Physiologie, citing “a case where the umbilical cord was ruptured and perfectly cicatrized,†yet the infant was born alive, pertinently asks, “How was the circulation carried on in this organ?†On the next page he says: “Nothing is at present known respecting the use of digestion in the fœtus;†and respecting its nutrition, propounds this query: “What, then, can we say of the nutrition of the fœtus? Physiological works contain only vague conjectures on this point.†“Ah, but,†the sceptic may urge, “Magendie’s book belongs to the last generation, and Science has since made such strides that his stigma of ignorance can no longer be fixed upon the profession.†Indeed; then let us turn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir M. Foster (“Text-Book of Physiology,†3rd Ed., 1879, p. 623); and to the disadvantage of modern Science we shall find him saying, “Concerning the rise and development of the functional activities of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We know scarcely anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental qualities of the protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into the complex phenomena which we have attempted in this book to explain.†The students of Trin. Coll. Cantab. will now kindly draw a veil before the statue of Hygeia and bandage the eyes of the busts of Galen and Hippocrates, lest they look reproachfully at their degenerate descendants. One further fact we must note. Sir M. Foster is discreetly silent about the case of the ruptured umbilical cord cited by his great French confrère.
THE SEPARATION OF SEXES OCCURRED IN THE THIRD RACE
This is a very curious statement as explained in the Commentaries. To make it clear: The First Race having created the Second by “budding,†as just explained, the Second Race gives birth to the Third – which itself is separated into three distinct divisions, consisting of men differently procreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous method, presumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the early sub-races of the Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform ball – or shall we say egg? – whichserved as an extraneous vehicle for the generation therein of a fÅ“tus and child, the mode of procreation by the later races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of the earlier races were entirely sexless -shapeless even for all one knows40; but those of the later races were born androgynous. It is in the Third Race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being previously a-sexual, Humanity became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi-sexual; and finally the man-bearing eggs began to give birth, gradually and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to Beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to distinct men and women. And now let us search for corroboration of these statements in the religious legends of East and West. Let us take the “Egg-born Race†first. Think of Kasyapa, the Vedic sage, and the most prolific of creators. He was the son of Marichi, Brahmâ’s mind-born son; and he is made to become the father of the Nagas, or Serpents, among other beings. Exoterically, the Nagas are semi-divine beings which have a human face and the tail of a serpent. Yet there was a race of Nagas, said to be a thousand in number only, born or rather sprung from Kadra, Kasyapa’s wife, for the purpose of peopling Pâtâla, which is undeniably America, as will be shown; and there was a NAGA-Dwipa, one of the seven divisions of Bhârata-Varsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who are allowed, even by some Orientalists, to be historical, and to have left many a trace behind them to this day.
BI-SEXUAL REPRODUCTION
Now the point most insisted upon at present is that, whatever origin be claimed for man, his evolution took place in this order: (1) Sexless, as all the earlier forms are; (2) then, by a natural transition, he became, “a solitary hermaphrodite,†a bi-sexual being; and (3) finally separated and became what he is now. Science teaches us that all the primitive forms, though sexless, “still retained the power of undergoing the processes of A-Sexual multiplication;†why, then, should man be excluded from that law of Nature? Bi-sexual reproduction is an evolution, a specialized and perfected form on the scale of matter of the fissiparous act of reproduction. Occult teachings are pre-eminently panspermic, and the early history of humanity is hidden only “from ordinary mortals;†nor is the history of the primitive Races buried from the Initiates in the tomb of time, as it is for profane science. Therefore, supported on the one hand by that science which shows to us progressive development and an internal cause for every external modification, as a law in Nature; and, on the other hand, by an implicit faith in the wisdom – we may say pansophia even – of the universal traditions gathered and preserved by the Initiates, who have perfected them into an almost faultless system – thus supported, we venture to state the doctrine clearly.
In an able article, written some fifteen years ago, our learned and respected friend Prof. Alex. Wilder, of New York, shows the absolute logic and necessity of believing “The Primeval Race Double-Sexed,†and gives a number of scientific reasons for it.41 He argues firstly, “that a large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the phenomenon of bisexuality . . . the Linnaean classification enumerating thus almost all plants. This is the case in the superior families of the vegetable kingdoms as much as in the lower forms, from the Hemp to the Lombardy Poplar and Ailanthus. In the animal kingdom, in insect life, the moth generates a worm, as in the Mysteries the great secret was expressed: “Taurus Draconem genuit, et Taurum Draco†The coral-producing family, which, according to Agassiz, ‘has spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present geological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida . .produce their offspring from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree.’ Bees are somewhat in the same line . . . . The Aphides or plant lice keep house like Amazons, and virgin parents perpetuate the Race for ten successive generations.â€
What say the old sages, the philosopher-teachers of antiquity. Aristophanes speaks thus on the subject in Plato’s “Banquetâ€: Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was androgynous, the form and name partaking of, and being common to both the male and female. . . . Their bodies were round, and the manner of their running circular.42They were terrible in force and strength and had prodigious ambition. Hence Zeus divided each of them into two, making them weaker; Apollo, under his direction, closed up the skin.â€
Meshia and Meshiane were but a single individual with the old Persians. “They also taught that man was the product of the tree of life, growing in androgynous pairs, till they were separated at a subsequent modification of the human form.“43
THE ELOHIM (GODS) BROUGHT FORTH FROM THEMSELVES MAN IN THEIR IMAGE
In the Toleduth (generation) of Adam, the verse “God created (bara, brought forth) man in his image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them,’’ if read esoterically will yield the true sense, viz.: “The Elohim (Gods) brought forth from themselves (by modification) man in their image . . . . created they him (collective humanity, or Adam), male and female created he (collective deity) them.“44 This will show the esoteric point. The sexless Race was their first production, a modification of and from themselves, the pure spiritual existences; and this was Adam solus. Thence came the second Race: Adam-Eve or Jod-Heva, inactive androgynes; and finally the Third, or the “Separating Hermaphrodite,†Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth, Seth-Enos, etc. It is that Third, the last semi-spiritual race, which was also the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The Fourth, which had tasted from the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil – Wisdom united already to earthy, and therefore impure, intelligence45 – had consequently to acquire that Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and Intelligence, the former ruling the latter, is called in the Hermetic books “the God possessing the double fecundity of the two sexes.†Mystically Jesus was held to be man-woman. See also in the Orphic hymns, sung during the Mysteries, we find: “Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal maid.†The Egyptian Ammon was the goddess Neïth, in his other half. Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her statues, and Ila, the goddess, is also Su-Dyumna, the god, as Vaivasvata’s progeny.
“The name Adam,†says Professor A. Wilder, “or man, itself implies this double form of existence. It is identical with Athamas, or Thomas (Tamil Tam), which is rendered by the Greek Didumos, a twin; if, therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the first man, she must, as a logical necessity, be ‘taken out of man’ . . . and the side which the Elohim had taken from man, ‘made he a woman’ (Gen. ii.). The Hebrew word here used is Tzala, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to trace the legend in Berosus, who says that Thalatth (the Omoroca, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She was also Melita, the queen of the Moon. . . . The two twin births of Genesis, that of Cain and Abel, and of Esau and Jacob, shadow the same idea. The name ‘Hebel’ is the same as Eve, and its characteristic seems to be feminine,†continues the author. “Unto thee shall be his desire,†said the Lord God to Cain, “and thou shalt rule over him.†The same language had been uttered to Eve: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.â€
THE PRISTINE BI-SEXUAL UNITY OF THE HUMAN THIRD ROOT-RACE
Thus the pristine bi-sexual unity of the human Third Root-Race is an axiom in the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to “Gods,†because that Race represented their “divine Dynasty.†The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth Race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were “male and female.â€
As stated in Book I, the humanities developed coördinately, and on parallel lines with the four Elements, every new Race being physiologically adapted to meet the additional element. Our Fifth Race is rapidly approaching the Fifth Element – call it interstellar ether, if you will – which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. We men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but the first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they subservient to any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught, men lived down to the close of the Third Root-Race, when eternal spring reigned over the whole globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of Jupiter; a “world,†says M. Flammarion, “which is not subject like our own to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to abrupt alternations of temperature, but which is enriched with all the treasures of eternal spring.†(“Pluralité des Mondes,†p. 69.) Those astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in our sense of the term, are invited to settle their dispute with this learned French Astronomer.46 It must, however, be always borne in mind that the “eternal spring†referred to is only a condition cognised as such by the Jovians. It is not “spring†as we know it. In this reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories here cited. Both embrace partial truths.
It is thus a universal tradition that mankind has evolved gradually into its present shape from an almost transparent condition of texture, and neither by miracle nor by sexual intercourse. Moreover, this is in full accord with the ancient philosophies; from those of Egypt and India with their Divine Dynasties down to that of Plato. And all these universal beliefs must be classed with the “presentiments†and “obstinate conceptions,†some of them ineradicable, in popular faiths. Such beliefs, as remarked by Louis Figuier, are “frequently the outcome of the wisdom and observation of an infinite number of generations of men.†For, “a tradition which has an uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of scientific testimony.â€47 And there is more than one such tradition in the Purânic allegories, as has been shown. Moreover, the doctrine that the first Race of mankind was formed out of the chhayas (astral images) of the Pitris, is fully corroborated in the Zohar.†In the Tza lam (shadow image) of Elohim (the Pitris) was made Adam (man). (Cremona, Ed. iii, 76a; Brody, Ed. iii, 159a; “Qabbalah,†Isaac Myer, p. 420)
STANZA 23. THE SELF-BORN WERE THE CHHAYAS, THE SHADOWS FROM THE BODIES OF THE SONS OF TWILIGHT. NEITHER WATER NOR FIRE COULD DESTROY THEM. THEIR SONS WERE (so destroyed) (a).
(a) This verse cannot be understood without the help of the Commentaries. It means that the First Root-Race, the “Shadows†of the Progenitors, could not be injured or destroyed by death. Being so ethereal and so little human in constitution, they could not be affected by any element – flood or fire. But their “Sons,†the Second Root-Race, could be and were so destroyed. As the “progenitors†merged wholly in their own astral bodies, which were their progeny, so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants, the “Sweat-born.†These were the second Humanity – composed of the most heterogeneous gigantic semi-human monsters – the first attempts of material nature at building human bodies. The ever-blooming lands of the Second Continent (Greenland, among others) were transformed, in order, from Edens with their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was due to the displacement of the great waters of the globe, to oceans changing their beds, and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the globe during the human period. Of such great cataclysms there have already been four,48 and we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 131–138
________________
40 See the “Timæusâ€
41 See Extracts from that Essay in “The Theosophist†of February, 1883.
42 Compare Ezekiel’s vision (chap. i.) of the four divine beings who “had the likeness of a man†and yet had the appearance of a wheel, “when they went they went upon their four sides . . . . for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheel.â€
43 See Prof. Wilder’s Essay “The Primeval Race Double-Sexed.
44 Eugibinus, a Christian, and the Rabbis Samuel, Manasseh ben I srael, and Maimonides taught that “Adam had two faces and one person, and from the beginning he was both male and female—male on one side and female on the other (like Manu’s Brahmâ), but afterwards the parts were separated.†The one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm of David recited by Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eliazar is evidence of this. “Thou hast fashioned me behind and before,†not beset as in the Bible, which is absurd and meaningless, and this shows, as Prof. Wilder thinks, “that the primeval form of mankind was androgynous.“
45 See the union of Chochmah, Wisdom, with Binah, Intelligence, or Jehovah, the Demiurge, called Understanding in the Proverbs of Solomon, ch. vii. Unto men Wisdom (divine occult Wisdom) crieth: “Oh, ye simple, understand Wisdom; and ye fools, be of an understanding heart.†It is spirit and matter, the nous and the psyche; of the latter of which St. James says that it is “earthly, sensual, and devilish.â€
46 An hypothesis evolved in 1881 by Mr. Mattieu Williams seems to have impressed Astronomers but little. Says the author of “The Fuel of the Sun,†in Knowledge, Dec. 23, 1881: “Applying now the researches of Dr. Andrews to the conditions of Solar existence . . . I conclude that the sun has no nucleus, either solid, liquid, or gaseous, but is composed of dissociated matter in the critical state, surrounded, first, by a flaming envelope, due to the recombination of the dissociated matter, and outside of this, by another envelope of vapours due to this combination.â€
This is a novel theory to be added to other hypotheses, all scientific and orthodox. The meaning of the “critical state†is explained by Mr. M. Williams in the same journal (Dec. 9, 1881), in an article on “Solids, Liquids, and Gases.†Speaking of an experiment by Dr, Andrews on carbonic acid, the scientist says that “when 88° is reached, the boundary between liquid and gas vanished; liquid and gas have blended into one mysterious intermediate fluid; an indefinite fluctuating something is there filling the whole of the tube—an etherealised liquid or a visible gas. Hold a red-hot poker between your eye and the light; you will see an upflowing wave of movement of what appears like liquid air. The appearance of the hybrid fluid in the tube resembles this, but is sensibly denser, and evidently stands between the liquid and gaseous states of matter, as pitch or treacle stands between solid and liquid.â€
The temperature at which this occurs has been named by Dr. Andrews the “critical temperatureâ€: here the gaseous and the liquid states are “continuous,†and it is probable that all other substances capable of existing in both states have their own particular critical temperatures.
Speculating further upon this “critical†state, Mr. Mattieu Williams emits some quite occult theories about Jupiter and other planets. He says: “Our notions of solids, liquids, and gases are derived from our experiences of the state of matter here upon this Earth. Could we be removed to another planet, they would be curiously changed. On Mercury water would rank as one of the condensible gases; on Mars, as a fusible solid; but what on Jupiter?â€
“Recent observations justify us in regarding this as a miniature sun, with an external envelope of cloudy matter, apparently of partially-condensed water, but red-hot, or probably still hotter within. His vaporous atmosphere is evidently of enormous depth, and the force of gravitation being on his visible outer surface two-and-a-half times greater than that on our Earth’s surface, the atmospheric pressure, in descending below this visible surface, must soon reach that at which the vapour of water would be brought to its critical condition. Therefore we may infer that the oceans of Jupiter are neither of frozen, liquid, nor gaseous water, but are oceans or atmospheres of critical water. If any fish or birds swim or fly therein, they must be very critically organized.â€
As the whole mass of Jupiter is 300 times greater than that of the Earth and its compressing energy towards the centre proportional to this, its materials, if similar to those of the Earth, and no hotter, would be considerably more dense and the whole planet would have a higher specific gravity; but we know by the movement of its satellites that, instead of this, its specific gravity is less than a fourth of that of the Earth. This justifies the conclusion that it is intensely hot, for even hydrogen, if cold, would become denser than Jupiter under such pressure.
“As all elementary substances may exist as solids, liquids, or gases, or, critically, according to the conditions of temperature and pressure, I am justified in hypothetically concluding that Jupiter is neither a solid, a liquid, nor a gaseous planet, but a critical planet, or an orb composed internally of associated elements in the critical state, and surrounded by a dense atmosphere of their vapours and those of some of their compounds such as water. The same reasoning applies to Saturn and other large and rarified planets.â€
It is gratifying to see how scientific imagination approaches every year more closely to the borderland of our occult teachings.
47 “The Day After Death,†p. 23.
48 The first occurred when what is now the North Pole was separated from the later Continents.
Selection 10
COULD MEN HAVE EXISTED 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?
To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all scientific objectors. Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata-Manu Man, i.e., the male and female entity already separated into distinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have lived 300,000,000 years ago for all that science can tell. For the geological and physical difficulties in the way of the theory could not exist for the primeval, ethereal man of the Occult teachings. The whole issue of the quarrel between the profane and the esoteric sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an astral body within the physical, the former independent of the latter. Paul d’Assier, the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,49 not to speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the modern spiritualists and mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.
The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms and disturbances of our globe, which – owing to its being the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth Round is the middle-point of the life allotted to it – were far more terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds (the cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi-ethereal conditions) physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 years. 50 This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral and vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the theory of a “boneless,†purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic theology still more so. The first will object on logical and reasonable grounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always existed on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the last on a tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought forward by theologians, is based on the virtual assumption that mankind (read Christians) on this planet have the honour of being the only human beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a globe, and that they are consequently, the best of their kind. 51
The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the mother-philosophy, repel the objections of both theologians and scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, during those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, successive floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and organization, such as is assigned by them to the early mankind. Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, or the Silurian age itself.
The Secret Doctrine, ii, 148–150
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49 “Posthumous Humanity†— translated by H. S. Olcott, London, 1887.
50 Professor Newcomb says: “The heat evolved by contraction would last only 18,000,000 years†(“Popular Astronomy,†p. 500); but “a temperature permitting the existence of water could not be reached earlier than 10,000,000 years ago†(Winchell’s “World-Life,†p. 356). But Sir W. Thomson says that the whole age of the incrustation of the Earth is 18,000,000 years, though, this year, he has again altered his opinion and allows only 15,000,000 years as the age of the Sun. As will be shown in the Addenda, the divergence of scientific opinions is so great that no reliance can ever be placed upon scientific speculation.
51 The essay on “The Plurality of Worlds†(1853) — an anonymous work, yet well known to have been the production of Dr. Whewell — is a good proof of this. No Christian ought to believe in either the plurality of worlds or the geological age of the globe, argues the Author; because, if it is asserted that this world is only one among the many of its kind, which are all the work of God, as it is itself; that all are the seat of life, all the realm and dwelling of intelligent creatures endowed with will, subject to law and capable of freewill; then, it would become extravagant to think that our world should have been the subject of God’s favours and His special interference, of His communications and His personal visit.......Can the Earth presume to be considered the centre of the moral and religious Universe, he asks, if it has not the slightest distinction to rely upon in the physical Universe? Is it not as absurd to uphold such an assertion (of the plurality of inhabited worlds), as it would be to-day to uphold the old hypothesis of Ptolemy, who placed Earth in the centre of our system? . . . The above is quoted from memory, yet almost textually. The author fails to see that he is bursting his own soap-bubble with such a defence.
Selection 11
THE MONADS DESTINED TO ANIMATE FUTURE RACES WERE READY FOR THE NEW TRANSFORMATION
The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the mother-philosophy, repel the objections of both theologians and scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, during those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, successive floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and organization, such as is assigned by them to the early mankind. Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, or the Silurian age itself.
Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new transformation. They had passed their phases of immetalization, of plant and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. Yet, what could the plastic modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by the Biblical dead-letter, form “Lord-God“-like, or as Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam-Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a living soul into Man? No, because the soul was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed but a coating. Pygmalion, who fails to animate his statue, and Bahak-Zivo of the Nazarean Gnostics, who fails to construct “a human soul in the creature,†are, as conceptions, far more philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead-letter sense, or the Biblical Elohim-Creators. Esoteric philosophy, which teaches spontaneous generation – after the Sishta and Prajâpati have thrown the seed of life on the Earth – shows the lower angels able to construct physical man only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved the ethereal form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic model.
IS “SPONTANEOUS GENERATION†POSSIBLE UNDER DIFFERENT CONDITIONS?
This will again be objected to: “Spontaneous Generation†is an exploded theory, we shall be told. Pasteur’s experiments disposed of it twenty years ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He ought to know that, should spontaneous generation be indeed proven impossible in our present world – period and actual conditions – which the Occultists deny – still it would be no demonstration that it could not have taken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the Laurentian period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be interesting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both the Biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur’s observations, however, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud reject their importance and show that they have none. The question is so far left sub judice, as well as that other one, “when, at what period, life appeared on the Earth?†As to the idea that Hæckel’s Moneron - a pinch of salt! – has solved the problem of the origin of life, it is simply absurd. Those materialists, who feel inclined to pooh-pooh the theory of the “Self-existent,†the “Self-born heavenly man,†represented as an ethereal, astral man, must excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing, in his turn, at some speculations of modern thought. After proving most learnedly that the primitive speck of protoplasm (Moneron) is neither animal nor plant, but both, and that it has no ancestors among either of these, since it is that Moneron which serves as a point of departure for all organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera are their own ancestors. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical also; too much so, even for the Occultist.
If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now, owing perhaps to accumulated material on hand, so as to almost escape detection, it was in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even the simple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature proceeds. The scale-bound, gigantic sauria, the winged pterodactyl, the Megalosaurus, and the hundred-feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are the transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom found in the sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all those above enumerated “antediluvian†monsters appeared as filamentoid infusoria without shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and reproduced their kind by gemmation, as do microscopical animals also, the architects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings of science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed the same law in his growth, i.e. gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced person would prefer to believe that primeval humanity had at first an ethereal – or, if so preferred, a huge filamentoid, jelly-like form, evolved by gods or natural “forces,†which grew, condensed throughout millions of ages, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and tendency, until it settled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man, – rather than believe him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some unknown anthropoid ancestor.
Nor does our esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first appearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter to “Knowledge,†(Dec. 23, 1881). “Evolution – rather Nature, in the light of evolution – has only been studied for some twenty-five years or so. That is, of course, a mere fractional space in the history of human thought.†And just because of that we do not lose all hope that materialistic science will amend its ways, and will gradually accept the esoteric teachings – if even at first divorced from their (to science) too metaphysical elements.
Has the last word on the subject of human evolution yet been said? “Each . . . . answer to the great Question (Man’s Real Place in Nature), invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, it may be for twenty,†writes Prof. Huxley; “but, as invariably, time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth – tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successorsâ€!! Will this eminent Darwinian admit the possibility of his pithecoid ancestry being assignable to the list of “wholly intolerable beliefs,†in the “larger knowledge†of Occultists? But whence the savage? Mere “rising to the civilized state†does not account for the evolution of form.
In the same letter, “The Evolution of Man,†Dr. Wilson makes other strange confessions. Thus, he observes, in answer to the queries put to “Knowledge†by “G. M.â€:
“Has evolution effected any change in man? If so, what change? If not, why not?’ . . . If we refuse to admit (as science does) that man was created a perfect being, and then became degraded, there exists only another supposition – that of evolution. If man has arisen from a savage to a civilized state, that surely is evolution. We do not yet know, because such knowledge is difficult to acquire, if the human frame is subject to the same influences as those of lower animals. But there is little doubt that elevation from savagery to civilized life means and implies ‘evolution,’ and that of considerable extent. Mentally, man’s evolution cannot be doubted; the ever-widening sphere of thought has sprung from small and rude beginnings, like language itself. But man’s ways of life, his power of adaptation to his surroundings, and countless other circumstances, have made the facts and course of his ‘evolution’ very difficult to trace.“
DARWIN’S EVOLUTION BEGINS AT THE MIDDLE POINT, INSTEAD OF COMMENCING FOR MAN FROM UNIVERSALS
This very difficulty ought to make the Evolutionists more cautious in their affirmations. But why is evolution impossible, if “man was created a perfect being, and then became degraded?†At best it can only apply to the outward, physical man. As remarked in “Isis Unveiled,†Darwin’s evolution begins at the middle point, instead of commencing for man, as for everything else, from the universals. The Aristotle-Baconian method may have its advantages, but it has undeniably already demonstrated its defects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded from the Universals downwards, are now shown more learned, in the light of modern science, than was Aristotle. For he opposed and denounced the idea of the revolution of the earth and even of its rotundity. “Almost all those,†he wrote, “who affirm that they have studied heaven in its uniformity, claim that the earth is in the centre, but those of the Italian School, otherwise called the Pythagoreans, teach entirely the contrary. . . .†Because (a) the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and (b) they followed the deductive method. Whereas, Aristotle, the father of the inductive system, complained of those who taught that the centre of our system was occupied by the Sun, and the earth was only a star, which by a rotatory motion around the same centre, produces night and day†(Vide “De CÅ“lo,†Book II, Chp. 13.) The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret Doctrine, and now expounded, is the only one, which can – without falling into the absurdity of a “miraculous†man created out of the dust of the Earth, or the still greater fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime-salt, (the ex-protoplasmic Moneron)- account for his appearance on Earth.
Analogy is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne’s thread that can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her primal and final mysteries. Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite, and no generation of physical scientists can ever boast of having exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon which she proceeds. If we can conceive of a ball of Fire-mist becoming gradually – as it rolls through æons of time in the interstellar spaces – a planet, a self-luminous globe, to settle into a man-bearing world or Earth, thus having passed from a soft plastic body into a rockbound globe; and if we see on it everything evolving from the non-nucleated jelly-speck that becomes the sarcode52 of the Moneron, then passes from its protistic state53 into the form of an animal, to grow into a gigantic reptilian monster of the Mesozoic times; then dwindles again into the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, now confined solely to tropical regions, and the universally common lizard54 – how can man alone escape the general law? “There were giants on earth in those days,†says Genesis, repeating the statement of all the other Eastern Scriptures, and the Titans are founded on anthropological and physiological fact.
And, as the hard-shelled crustacean was once upon a time a jelly-speck, “a thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive condition,†so was the outward covering of primitive man, his early “coat of skin,†plus an immortal spiritual monad, and a psychic temporary form and body within that shell. The modern, hard, muscular man, almost impervious to any climate, was, perhaps, some 25,000,000 years ago, just what the Hæckelian Moneron is, strictly “an organism without organs,†an entirely homogeneous substance with a structureless albumen body within, and a human form only outwardly.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 150–154
________________
52 Or what is more generally known as Protoplasm. This substance received its name of “Sarcode†from Prof. Dujardin Beaumetz far earlier.
53 The Monera are indeed Protista. They are neither animals “nor plants,†writes Hæckel; “. . . the whole body of the Moneron represents nothing more than a single thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive condition.†(“Journal of Microscopical Science,†Jan. 1869, p. 28.)
54 Behold the Iguanodon of the Mesozoic ages—the monster 100 feet long—now transformed into the small Iguana lizard of South America. Popular traditions about giants in days of old, and their mention in every mythology, including the Bible, may some day be shown to be founded on fact. In nature, the logic of analogy alone ought to make us accept these traditions as scientific verities.
Selection 12
A STANZA CONTAINING THE WHOLE KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF EVIL, THE SO-CALLED FALL OF THE ANGELS
STANZA 24. THE SONS OF WISDOM , THE SONS OF NIGHT (issued from the body of Brahmâ when it became night), READY FOR RE-BIRTH, CAME DOWN. THEY SAW THE (intellectually) VILE FORMS OF THE FIRST THIRD (still race) (a). “WE CAN CHOOSE,†SAID THE LORDS, “WE HAVE WISDOM.†SOME ENTERED THE CHHAYAS. SOME PROJECTED A SPARK. SOME DEFERRED TILL THE FOURTH (race). FROM THEIR OWN ESSENCE THEY FILLED (intensified) THE KAMA (the vehicle of desire). THOSE WHO RECEIVED BUT A SPARK REMAINED DESTITUTE OF (higher) KNOWLEDGE. THE SPARK BURNT LOW (b). THE THIRD REMAINED MINDLESS. THEIR JIVAS (monads) WERE NOT READY. THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE SEVEN (primitive human species). THEY (became the) NARROW-HEADED. THE THIRD WERE READY. IN THESE SHALL WE DWELL, SAID THE LORDS OF THE FLAME AND OF THE DARK WISDOM (c).
This Stanza contains, in itself, the whole key to the mysteries of evil, the so-called Fall of the angels, and the many problems that have puzzled the brains of the philosophers from the time that the memory of man began. It solves the secret of the subsequent inequalities of intellectual capacity, of birth or social position, and gives a logical explanation to the incomprehensible Karmic course throughout the æons which followed. The best explanation which can be given, in view of the difficulties of the subject, shall now be attempted.
(a) Up to the Fourth Round, and even to the later part of the Third Race in this Round, Man- if the ever-changing forms that clothed the Monads during the first three Rounds and the first two and a half races of the present one can be given that misleading name – is, so far, only an animal intellectually. It is only in the actual midway Round that he develops in himself entirely the fourth principle as a fit vehicle for the fifth. But Manas will be relatively fully developed only in the following Round, when it will have an opportunity of becoming entirely divine until the end of the Rounds. As Christian SchÅ“ttgen says in Horæ Hebraicæ, etc., the first terrestrial Adam “had only the breath of life,†Nephesh, but not the living Soul.
(b) Here the inferior Races, of which there are still some analogues left – as the Australians (now fast dying out) and some African and Oceanic tribes – are meant. “They were not ready†signifies that the Karmic development of these Monads had not yet fitted them to occupy the forms of men destined for incarnation in higher intellectual Races. But this is explained later on.
(c) The Zohar speaks of “Black Fire,†which is Absolute Light-Wisdom. To those who, prompted by old theological prejudice, may say: “But the Asuras are the rebel Devas, the opponents of the Gods- hence devils, and the spirits of Evil,†it is answered: Esoteric philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se, as existing independently in nature. The cause for both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and passions. There is no devil or the utterly depraved, as there are no Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be spirits of Light and of Darkness; thus LUCIFER - the spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and Freedom of Thought – is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man to find his way through the rocks and sandbanks of Life, for Lucifer is the LOGOS in his highest, and the “Adversary†in his lowest, aspect – both of which are reflected in our Ego. Lactantius, speaking of the Nature of Christ, makes the LOGOS, the Word, “the first-born brother of Satan, the “first of all creatures.†(Inst. div. Book II, Chp. VIII, “Qabbalah,†116.)
The Vishnu Purâna describes these primeval creatures (the Arvaksrota) with crooked digestive canals: They were “endowed with inward manifestations, but mutually in ignorance about their kind and nature.†The twenty-eight kinds of Badha, or imperfections, do not apply, as Wilson thought, to the animals now known and specified by him,55 for these did not exist in those geological periods. This is quite plain in the said work, in which the first created (on this globe) are the “five-fold immovable creation,†minerals and vegetables; then come those fabulous animals, Tiryaksrota, (the monsters of the abyss slain by the “Lords,†see Stanzas 2 and 3.); then the Urdhwasrotas, the happy celestial beings, which feed on ambrosia; then lastly, the Arvaksrotas, human beings – Brahmâ’s seventh creation so-called. But these “creations,†including the latter, did not occur on this globe, wherever else they may have taken place. It is not Brahmâ who creates things and men on this Earth, but the chief and Lord of the Prajâpati, the Lords of Being and terrestrial Creation.56 Obeying the command of Brahmâ, Daksha (the synthesis, or the aggregate, of the terrestrial creators and progenitors, Pitris included) made superior and inferior (vara and avara) things referring to “putra†progeny, and “bipeds and quadrupeds, and subsequently by his will (the Sons of Will and Yoga) made females,†i.e. separated the androgynes. Here again, we have “bipeds†or men, created before the “quadrupeds†as in the esoteric teachings. (Vide supra and Stanza 12 as explained.)
Since, in the exoteric accounts, the Asuras are the first beings created from the “body of night,†while the Pitris issue from that of Twilight, the “gods†being placed by Parâsara (Vishnu Purâna) between the two, and shown to evolve from the “body of the day,†it is easy to discover a determined purpose to veil the order of creation. Man is the Arvaksrota coming from the “Body of the Dawn ; and elsewhere, man is again referred to, when the creator of the world, Brahmâ, is shown “creating fierce beings, denominated Bhûtas and eaters of flesh,†or as the text has it, “fiends frightful from being monkey-coloured and carnivorous.â€57 Whereas the Râkshasas are generally translated by “Evil Spirits†and the “enemies of the gods,†which identifies them with the Asuras. In the Ramâyana, when Hanuman is reconnoitering the enemy in Lanka, he finds there Râkshasas, some hideous, “while some were beautiful to look upon,†and, in Vishnu Purâna, there is a direct reference to their becoming the Saviours of “Humanity,†or of Brahmâ.
AN INGENIOUS ALLEGORY
The allegory is very ingenious. Great intellect and too much knowledge are a two-edged weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good. When combined with Selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a footstool for the elevation of him who possesses them, and a means for the attainment of his objects; while, applied to altruistic humanitarian purposes, they may become the means of the salvation of many. At all events, the absence of self-consciousness and intellect will make of man an idiot, a brute in human form. Brahmâ is Mahat- the universal Mind – hence the too-selfish among the Râkshasas showing the desire to become possessed of it all – to “devour†Mahat. The allegory is transparent.
At any rate, esoteric philosophy identifies the pre-Brahmanical Asuras, Rudras,58 Râkshasas and all the “Adversaries†of the Gods in the allegories, with the Egos, which, by incarnating in the still witless man of the Third Race, made him consciously immortal. They are, then, during the cycle of Incarnations, the true dual Logos- the conflicting and two-faced divine Principle in Man. The Commentary that follows, and the next Stanzas may, no doubt, throw more light on this very difficult tenet, but the writer does not feel competent to give it out fully. Of the succession of Races, however, they say:
“First come the SELF-EXISTENT on this Earth. They are the ‘Spiritual Lives’ projected by the absolute WILL and LAW, at the dawn of every rebirth of the worlds. These LIVES are the divine ‘Sishta,’ (the seed – Manus, or the Prajâpati and the Pitris).â€
From these proceed -
1. The First Race, the “Self-born,†which are the (astral) shadows of their Progenitors.59 The body was devoid of all understanding (mind, intelligence, and will). The inner being (the higher self or Monad), though within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The link, the Manas, was not there as yet.
2. From the First (race) emanated the second, called the “Sweat-bornâ€60, and the “Boneless.†This is the Second Root-Race, endowed by the preservers (Râkshasas)61 and the incarnating gods (Asuras and the Kumâras) with the first primitive and weak spark (the germ of intelligence) . . . . And from these in turn proceeds:
3. The Third Root-Race, the “Two-fold†(Androgynes). The first Races hereof are shells, till the last is “inhabited†(i.e. informed) by the Dhyanis.
The Second Race, as stated above, being also sexless, evolved out of itself, at its beginning, the Third Androgyne Race by an analogous but already more complicated process. As described in the Commentary, the very earliest of that race were:
“The ’Sons of Passive Yoga.’62 They issued from the second Manushyas (human race) and became oviparous.†The emanations that came out of their bodies during the seasons of procreation were ovulary; the small spheroidal nuclei developing into a large soft, egg-like vehicle, gradually hardened, when, after a period of gestation, it broke and the young human animal issued from it unaided, as the fowls do in our race.â€
THE PROGRESSIVE ORDER OF THE METHODS OF REPRODUCTION, AS UNVEILED BY SCIENCE, IS A BRILLIANT CONFIRMATION OF ESOTERIC ETHNOLOGY
This must seem to the reader ludicrously absurd. Nevertheless, it is strictly on the lines of evolutionary analogy, which science perceives in the development of the living animal species. First the Moneron- like procreation by self-division (vide Hæckel); then, after a few stages, the oviparous, as in the case of the reptiles, which are followed by the birds; then, finally, the mammals with their ovoviviparous modes of producing their young ones.
If the term ovoviviparous is applied to some fish and reptiles, which hatch their eggs within their bodies, why should it not be applied to female mammalians, including woman? The ovule, in which, after impregnation, the development of the foetus takes place, is an egg.
At all events, this conception is more philosophical than that of Eve with a suddenly created placenta giving birth to Cain, because of the Apple, when even the marsupial, the earliest of mammals, is not placental yet.
Moreover, the progressive order of the methods of reproduction, as unveiled by science, is a brilliant confirmation of esoteric Ethnology. It is only necessary to tabulate the data in order to prove our assertion. (Cf especially Schmidt’s “Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,†p. 39, et seq., and Laing’s “A Modern Zoroastrian,†pp. 102 – 111.)
I. Fission:
(a) As seen in the division of the homogeneous speck of protoplasm, known as Moneron or Amœba, into two.
(b) As seen in the division of the nucleated cell, in which the cell-nucleus splits into two sub-nuclei, which either develop within the original cell-wall or burst it, and multiply outside as independent entities. (Cf., the First Root-Race.)
II. Budding:A small portion of the parent structure swells out at the surface and finally parts company, growing to the size of the original organism, e.g. many vegetables, the sea-anemone, etc. (Cf., the Second Root-Race.)63
III. Spores:A single cell thrown off by the parent organism, which develops into a multicellular organism reproducing the features of the latter, e.g. bacteria and mosses.
IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism:Male and female organs inhering in the same individual, e.g. the majority of plants, worms, and snails, etc.; allied to budding. (Cf. Second and early Third Root-Races.)
V. True sexual union:(Cf., later Third Root-Race.)
THE DOUBLE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN RACE
We now come to an important point with regard to the double evolution of the human race. The Sons of Wisdom, or the spiritual Dhyanis, had become “intellectual†through their contact with matter, because they had already reached, during previous cycles of incarnation, that degree of intellect which enabled them to become independent and self-conscious entities, on this plane of matter. They were reborn only by reason of Karmic effects. They entered those who were “ready,†and became the Arhats, or sages, alluded to above. This needs explanation.
It does not mean that Monads entered forms in which other Monads already were. They were “Essences,†“Intelligences,†and conscious spirits, entities seeking to become still more conscious by uniting with more developed matter. Their essence was too pure to be distinct from the universal essence. but their “Egos,†or Manas (since they are called Manasaputra, born of “Mahat,†or Brahmâ) had to pass through earthly human experiences to become all-wise, and be able to start on the returning ascending cycle. The Monads are not discrete principles, limited or conditioned, but rays from that one universal absolute Principle. The entrance into a dark room through the same aperture of one ray of sunlight following another will not constitute two rays, but one ray intensified. It is not in the course of natural law that man should become a perfect septenary being before the seventh race in the seventh Round. Yet he has all these principles latent in him from his birth. Nor is it part of the evolutionary law that the Fifth principle (Manas) should receive its complete development before the Fifth Round. All such prematurely developed intellects (on the spiritual plane) in our Race are abnormal; they are those whom we call the “Fifth-Rounders.†Even in the coming seventh Race, at the close of this Fourth Round, while our four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will be only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the spiritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was reached during the Fourth Root-Race. Thus, those who were “half ready,†who received “but a spark,†constitute the average humanity which has to acquire its intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution, after which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the “Sons of Wisdom.†While those which “were not ready†at all, the latest Monads, which had hardly evolved from their last transitional and lower animal forms at the close of the Third Round, remained the “narrow-brained†of the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees of intellectuality among the various races of men – the savage Bushman and the European – even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are very little above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly disinherited, or the unfavoured, as some may think – nothing of the kind. They are simply those latest arrivals among the human Monads, which were not ready: which have to evolve during the present Round, as on the three remaining globes (hence on four different planes of being) so as to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth Round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in this connection. The MONADS of the lowest specimens of humanity (the “narrow-brainedâ€64 savage South-Sea Islander, the African, the Australian) had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured brethren in intelligence had. The former are spinning out Karma only now; the latter are burdened with past, present, and future Karma. In this respect the poor savage is more fortunate than the greatest genius of civilised countries.
Let us pause before giving any more such strange teachings. Let us try and find out how far any ancient Scriptures, and even Science, permit the possibility of, or even distinctly corroborate, such wild notions as are found in our Anthropogenesis.
Recapitulating that which has been said we find:That the Secret Doctrine claims for man, (1) a polygenetic origin; (2) a variety of modes of procreation before humanity fell into the ordinary method of generation; (3) that the evolution of animals – of the mammalians at any rate – follows that of man instead of preceding it. And this is diametrically opposed to the now generally accepted theories of evolution and the descent of man from an animal ancestor.
THE CHANCES FOR THE POLYGENETIC THEORY AMONG THE MEN OF SCIENCE
Let us, by giving to Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, examine, first of all, the chances for the polygenetic theory among the men of science.
Now the majority of the Darwinian evolutionists incline to a polygenetic explanation of the origin of Races. On this particular question, however, scientists are, as in many other cases, at sixes and sevens; they agree to disagree.
“Does man descend from one single couple or from several groups- monogenism or polygenism? As far as one can venture to pronounce on what in the absence of witnesses (?) will never be known (?), the second hypothesis is far the most probable.â€65 Abel Hovelacque, in his “Science of Language,†comes to a similar conclusion, arguing from the evidence available to a linguistic enquirer.
In an address delivered before the British Association, Professor W. H. Flower remarked on this question:
“The view which appears best to accord with what is now known of the characters and distribution of the races of man . . . . is a modification of the monogenistic hypothesis (!). Without entering into the difficult question of the method of man’s first appearance upon the world, we must assume for it a vast antiquity, at all events as measured by any historical standard. If we had any approach to a complete palæontological record, the history of Man could be re-constructed, but nothing of the kind is forthcoming.â€
Such an admission must be regarded as fatal to the dogmatism of the physical Evolutionists, and as opening a wide margin to occult speculations. The opponents of the Darwinian theory were, and still remain, polygenists. Such “intellectual giants†as John Crawford and James Hunt discussed the problem and favoured polygenesis, and in their day there was a far stronger feeling in favour of than against this theory. It is only in 1864 that Darwinians began to be wedded to the theory of unity, of which Messrs. Huxley and Lubbock became the first coryphæi.
As regards that other question, of the priority of man to the animals in the order of evolution, the answer is as promptly given. If man is really the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, then the teaching has nothing so very impossible in it, and is but logical. For, man becomes that Macrocosm for the three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing from a physical standpoint, all the lower kingdoms, save the mineral – which is light itself, crystallised and immetallised – from plants to the creatures which preceded the first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical structures by means of the “cast-off dust†of those minerals, and the refuse of the human matter, whether from living or dead bodies, on which they fed and which gave them their outer bodies. In his turn, man grew more physical, by re-absorbing into his system that which he had given out, and which became transformed in the living anima crucibles through which it had passed, owing to Nature’s alchemical transmutations. There were animals in those days of which our modern naturalists have never dreamed, and the stronger became physical material man, the giants of those times, the more powerful were his emanations. Once that Androgyne “humanity†separated into sexes, transformed by Nature into child-bearing engines, it ceased to procreate its like through drops of vital energy oozing out of the body. But while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on the human plane (before his Fall, as a believer in Adam would say), all this vital energy, scattered far and wide from him, was used by Nature for the production of the first mammal-animal forms. Evolution is an eternal cycle of becoming, we are taught, and nature never leaves an atom unused. Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are directed towards one point – MAN. The progress in the succession of beings, says Agassiz, “consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the vertebrates especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is the end towards which all animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first palæozoic “fishes.â€66
Just so, but “the palæozoic fishes†being at the lower curve of the arc of the evolution of forms, this Round began with astral man, the reflection of the Dhyan Chohans, called the “Builders.†Man is the alpha and the omega of objective creation. As said in “Isis Unveiled,†all things had their origin in spirit – evolution having originally begun from above and proceeding downwards, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory.â€67 Therefore, the tendency spoken of by the eminent naturalist above quoted, is one inherent in every atom. Only, were one to apply it to both sides of the evolution, the observations made would greatly interfere with the modern theory, which has now almost become (Darwinian) law.
But in citing the passage from Agassiz’ work with approval, it must not be understood that the occultists are making any concession to the theory, which derives man from the animal kingdom. The fact that in this Round he preceded the mammalia is obviously not impugned by the consideration that the latter (mammalia) follow in the wake of man.
THE REFUSAL BY THE MANASA TO INCARNATE IN HALF-READY PHYSICAL BODIES
STANZA 25. HOW DID THE MANÂSA, THE SONS OF WISDOM ACT? THEY REJECTED THE SELF-BORN, (the boneless). THEY ARE NOT READY. THEY SPURNED THE (First) SWEAT-BORN.68 THEY ARE NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT ENTER THE (First) EGG-BORN.69
To a Theist or a Christian this verse would suggest a rather theological idea: that of the Fall of the Angels through Pride. In the Secret Doctrine, however, the reasons for the refusal to incarnate in half-ready physical bodies seem to be more connected with physiological than metaphysical reasons. Not all the organisms were sufficiently ready. The incarnating powers chose the ripest fruits and spurned the rest.70
By a curious coincidence, when selecting a familiar name for the continent on which the first androgynes, the Third Root-Race, separated, the writer chose, on geographical considerations, that of “Lemuria,†invented by Mr. P. L. Sclater. It is only later, that reading Hæckel’s “Pedigree of Man,†it was found that the German “Animalist†had chosen the name for his late continent. He traces, properly enough, the centre of human evolution to “Lemuria,†but with a slight scientific variation. Speaking of it as that “cradle of mankind,†he pictures the gradual transformation of the anthropoid mammal into the primeval savage!! Vogt, again, holds that in America, Man sprang from a branch of the platyrrhine apes, independently of the origination of the African and Asian root-stocks from the old world catarrhinians. Anthropologists are, as usual, at loggerheads on this question, as on many others. We shall examine this claim in the light of esoteric philosophy in Stanza 8. Meanwhile, let us give a few moments of attention to the various consecutive modes of procreation according to the laws of Evolution.
Let us begin by the mode of reproduction of the later sub-races of the Third human race, by those who found themselves endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as “towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositaries of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.†Have they likewise fallen, if, then, incarnation was the Fall?
Of this presently. The only thing now to be noted of these is, that the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity. They were the pre-Adamite and the divine Races, with which even theology, in whose sight they are all “the accursed Cainite Races,†now begins to busy itself.
But the action of “spiritual progenitors†of that Race has first to be disposed of. A very difficult and abstruse point has to be explained with regard to Stanzas 26 and 27. These say:
STANZA 26. WHEN THE SWEAT-BORN PRODUCED THE EGG-BORN, THE TWO-FOLD (androgyne Third Race)71, THE MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH BONES, THE LORDS OF WISDOM SAID: “NOW SHALL WE CREATE†(a).
Why “now†– and not earlier? This the following sloka explains.
STANZA 27. (Then) THE THIRD (race) BECAME THE VAHAN (vehicle) OF THE LORDS OF WISDOM. IT CREATED SONS OF “WILL AND YOGA,†BY KRIYASAKTI (b) IT CREATED THEM, THE HOLY FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF THE ARHATS.
(a) How did they create, since the “Lords of Wisdom†are identical with the Hindu Devas, who refuse “to createâ€? Clearly they are the Kumâras of the Hindu Pantheon and Purânas, those elder sons of Brahmâ, “Sanandana and the other sons of Vedhas,†who, previously created by him “without desire or passion, remained chaste, full of holy wisdom and undesirous of progeny?â€72
THE SONS OF WILL AND YOGA WERE CREATED, NOT BEGOTTEN
The power by which they first created is just that which has since caused them to be degraded from their high status to the position of evil spirits, of Satan and his Host, created in their turn by the unclean fancy of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyasakti, that mysterious and divine power latent in the will of every man, and which, if not called to life, quickened and developed by Yogi-training, remains dormant in 999,999 men out of a million, and gets atrophied. This power is explained in the “Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,â€73 as follows:
(b) Kriyasakti – the mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally, if one’s attention (and Will) is deeply concentrated upon it; similarly, an intense volition will be followed by the desired result. A Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti (Will-power) and Kriyasakti.â€
The Third Race had thus created the so-called SONS OF WILL AND YOGA, or the “ancestors†(the spiritual forefathers) of all the subsequent and present Arhats, or Mahatmas, in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who were generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the Fall of Man. For creation is but the result of will acting on phenomenal matter, the calling forth out of it the primordial divine Light and eternal Life. They were the “holy seed-grain†of the future Saviours of Humanity.
Here we have to make again a break, in order to explain certain difficult points, of which there are so many. It is almost impossible to avoid such interruptions. For explanations and a philosophical account of the nature of those beings, which are now viewed as the “Evil†and rebellious Spirits, the creators by Kriyasakti, the reader is referred to the chapters on “The Fallen Angels†and “The Mystic Dragons,†in Part II. of this Volume.
The order of the evolution of the human Races stands thus in the Fifth Book of the Commentaries, and was already given:
The First men were Chhayas (1); the second, the “Sweat-born†(2); the Third, “Egg-born,†and the holy Fathers born by the power of Kriyasakti (3); the Fourth were the children of the Padmapani (Chenresi) (4).
Of course such primeval modes of procreation – by the evolution of one’s image, through drops of perspiration, after that by Yoga, and then by what people will regard as magic (Kriyasakti) – are doomed beforehand to be regarded as fairy-tales. Nevertheless, beginning with the first and ending with the last, there is really nothing miraculous in them, nor anything which could not be shown natural. This must be proven.
1. Chhaya-birth, or that primeval mode of sexless procreation, the first Race having oozed out, so to say, from the bodies of the Pitris, is hinted at in a Cosmic allegory in the Purânas.74 It is the beautiful allegory and story of Sanjnâ, the daughter of Viswakarman – married to the Sun, who, “unable to endure the fervours of her lord,†gave him her chhaya (shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle to perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the “chhaya†to be his wife begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith -an ethereal shadow also, as in the legend, though an actual living female monster millions of years ago.
But, perhaps, this instance proves little except the exuberant fancy of the Pur̢nic authors. We have another proof ready. If the materialised forms, which are sometimes seen oozing out of the bodies of certain mediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid Рthe creation of the first Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind of procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the mystery nor the impossibility of such a mode is certainly any greater Рwhile it is far more comprehensible to the mind of the true metaphysical thinker Рthan the mystery of the conception of the foetus, its gestation and birth as a child, as we now know it.
Now to the curious and little understood corroboration in the Purânas about the “Sweat-born.â€
2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogi, eminent in holy wisdom and pious austerities, which finally awaken the jealousy of the gods, who are represented in the Hindu Scriptures as being in never-ending strife with the ascetics. Indra, the “King of the Gods,â€75 finally sends one of his female Apsarasas to tempt the sage. This is no worse than Jehovah sending Sarah, Abraham’s wife, to tempt Pharoah; but in truth it is those gods (and god) who are ever trying to disturb ascetics and thus make them lose the fruit of their austerities, who ought to be regarded as “tempting demons,†instead of applying the term to the Rudras, Kumâras, and Asuras, whose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing reproach to the Don Juanic gods of the Pantheon. But it is the reverse that we find in all the Purânic allegories, and not without good esoteric reason.
The king of the gods (or Indra) sends a beautiful Apsarasas (nymph) named Pramlochâ to seduce Kandu and disturb his penance. She succeeds in her unholy purpose and “907 years six months and three daysâ€76 spent in her company seem to the sage as one day. When this psychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni curses bitterly the creature who seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. “Depart, begone!†he cries, “vile bundle of illusions!†. . . And Pramlochâ, terrified, flies away, wiping the perspiration from her body with the leaves of the trees as she passes through the air. She went from tree to tree, and as with the dusky shoots that crowned their summits she dried her limbs, the child she had conceived by the Rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews, and the winds collected them into one mass. “This,†said Soma (the Moon), “I matured by my rays, and gradually it increased in size, till the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely girl named Mârishâ.â€77
Now Kandu stands here for the First Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one devoid of mind, which is hinted at by his being unable to discern a period of nearly one thousand years from one day; therefore he is shown to be so easily deluded and blinded. Here is a variant of the allegory in Genesis, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which the “Lordgod†breathes the breath of life but not of intellect and discrimination, which are developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; in other words when he has acquired the first development of Mind and had implanted in him Manas, whose terrestrial aspect is of the Earth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with Spirit and the divine Soul. Pramlochâ is the Hindu Lilith of the Aryan Adam; and Mârishâ, the daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the “sweat-born,†and stands as a symbol for the Second Race of Mankind.
As remarked in the footnote (vide supra), it is not Indra, who now figures in the Purânas, but Kama Deva, the god of love and desire, who sends Pramlochâ on Earth. Logic, besides the esoteric doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kama is the king and lord of the Apsarasas, of whom Pramlochâ is one; and, therefore, when Kandu, in cursing her, exclaims “Thou hast performed the office assigned by the monarch of the gods, go!†he must mean by that monarch Kama and not Indra, to whom the Apsarasas are not subservient. For Kama, again, is in the Rig Veda (x. 129) the personification of that feeling which leads and propels to creation. He was the first movement that stirred the ONE, after its manifestation from the purely abstract principle, to create, “Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind; and which sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity.†A hymn in the Atharva Veda exalts Kama into a supreme God and Creator, and says: “Kama was born the first. Him, neither gods nor fathers (Pitara) nor men have equalled.†. . . . The Atharva Veda identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to that god. The Taittarîya Brâhmana makes him allegorically the son of Dharma (moral religious duty, piety and justice) and of Sraddha (faith). Elsewhere Kama is born from the heart of Brahmâ; therefore he is Atma-Bhu, “Self-Existent,†and Aja, the “unborn.†His sending Pramlochâ has a deep philosophical meaning; sent by Indra – the narrative has none. As Eros was connected in early Greek mythology with the world’s creation and only afterwards became the sexual Cupid, so was Kama in his original Vedic character (Harivansa making him a son of Lakshmi, who is Venus). The allegory, as said, shows the psychic element developing the physiological before the birth of Daksha, the progenitor of real physical men, made to be born from Mârishâ and before whose time living beings and men were procreated “by the will, by sight, by touch and by Yoga,†as will be shown.
This, then, is the allegory built on the mode of procreation of the Second or the “Sweat-born.†The same for the Third Race in its final development.
Mârishâ, through the exertions of Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the Prachetasas, the production of the “Mind-born†sons of Brahmâ also78, from whom they beget the Patriarch Daksha, a son of Brahmâ also, in a former Kalpa or life, explain and add the Purânas in order to mislead, yet speaking the truth.
EARLY THIRD RACE HUMANITY: SWEAT-BORN AND ANDROGYNE
(3.) The early Third Race, then, is formed from drops of “sweat,†which, after many a transformation, grow into human bodies. This is not more difficult to imagine or realise than the growth of the fÅ“tus from an imperceptible germ, which fÅ“tus develops into a child, and then into a strong, heavy man. But this race again changes its mode of procreation, according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated a vis formativa, which changed the drops of perspiration into greater drops, which grew, expanded, and became ovoid bodies – huge eggs. In these the human fÅ“tus gestated for several years. In the Purânas, Mârishâ, the daughter of Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetasas and the mother of Daksha. Now Daksha is the father of the first human-like progenitors, having been born in this way. He is mentioned later on. The evolution of man, the microcosm, is analogous to that of the Universe, the macrocosm. His evolution stands between that of the latter and that of the animal, for which man, in his turn, is a macrocosm.
Then the race becomes:
(4.) The androgyne, or hermaphrodite. This process of men-bearing explains, perhaps, why Aristophanes79 describes the nature of the old race as androgynous, the form of every individual being rounded, “having the back and sides as in a circle,†whose “manner of running was circular . . . . terrible in force and strength and with prodigious ambition.†Therefore, to make them weaker, “Zeus divided them (in the Third Root-Race) into two, and Apollo (the Sun), under his direction, closed up the skin.†The Madagascans (the island belonged to Lemuria) have a tradition about the first man, who lived at first without eating, and, having indulged in food, a swelling appeared in his leg; this bursting, there emerged from it a female, who became the mother of their race. Truly . . . “We have our sciences of Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis, showing that the field is yet open.....The polyps . . . . produce their offspring from themselves, like the buds and ramifications of a tree. . . .†Why not the primitive human polyp? The very interesting polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation into the sex method of reproduction. Curiously enough, though it grows merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, which ultimately develop into a sea-nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to its parent-organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself differently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs, Stauridia once more put in an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to understand that a form may be evolved – as in the sexual Lemurians from hermaphrodite parentage -quite unlike its immediate progenitors. It is moreover, unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations, the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of “Heredity,†its servant.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 161–178
________________
55 See Book I, Chp. V, p. 71.
56 “Vishnu Purâna,†Book B, Chp. XV of Vol. 2.
57 Ibid., Book 1., chap. v.
58 Whom Manu calls “our paternal grandfathers†(III., 284). The Rudras are the seven manifestations of Rudra-Siva, “the destroying god,†and also the grand Yogi and ascetic.
59 See § II., §§ I, Commentary.
60 To speak of life as having arisen, and of the human race as having originated, in this absurdly unscientific way, in the face of the modern Pedigrees of Man, is to court instantaneous annihilation. The esoteric doctrine risks the danger, nevertheless, and even goes so far as to ask the impartial reader to compare the above hypothesis (if it is one) with Hæckel’s theory—now fast becoming an axiom with science—which is quoted verbatim:—
“. . . How did life, the living world of organisms, arise? And, secondly, the special question: How did the human race originate? The first of these two inquiries, that as to the first appearance of living beings, can only be decided empirically (!!) by proof of the so-called Archebiosis, or equivocal generation, or the spontaneous production of organisms of the simplest conceivable kind. Such are the Monera (Protogenes, Protamoeba, etc), exceedingly simple microscopic masses of protoplasm without structure or organisation, which take in nutrient and reproduce themselves by division. Such a Moneron as that primordial organism discovered by the renowned English zoologist Huxley, and named Bathybius Hæckelii, appears as a continuous thick protoplasmic covering at the greatest depths of the ocean, between 3,000 and 30,000 feet. It is true that the first appearance of such Monera has not up to the present moment been actually observed; but there is nothing intrinsically improbable in such an evolution.†(The “Pedigree of Man,†Aveling’s translation, p. 33.)
The Bathybius protoplasm having recently turned out to be no organic substance at all, there remains little to be said. Nor, after reading this, does one need to consume further time in refuting the further assertion that . . . . “in that case man also has beyond a doubt (to the minds of Hæckel and his like) arisen from the lower mammalia, apes and the earlier simian creatures, the still earlier Marsupialia, Amphibia, Pisces, by progressive transformations,†all produced by “a series of natural forces working blindly,.. without aim, without design†(p. 36).
The above-quoted passage bears its criticism on its own face. Science is made to teach that which, up to the present time, “has never been actually observed.†She is made to deny the phenomenon of an intelligent nature and a vital force independent of form and matter, and to find it more scientific to teach the miraculous performance of “natural forces working blindly without aim or design.†If so, then we are led to think that the physico-mechanical forces of the brains of certain eminent Scientists are leading them on as blindly to sacrifice logic and common sense on the altar of mutual admiration. Why should the protoplasmic Moneron producing the first living creature through self-division be held as a very scientific hypothesis, and an ethereal pre-human race generating the primeval men in the same fashion be tabooed as unscientific superstition? Or has materialism obtained a sole monopoly in Science?
61 The Râkshasas, regarded in Indian popular theology as demons, are called the “Preservers†beyond the Himalayas. This double and contradictory meaning has its origin in a philosophical allegory, which is variously rendered in the Purânas. It is that when Brahmâ created the demons, Yakshas (from Yaksh, to eat) and the Râkshasas, both of which kinds of demons, as soon as born, wished to devour their creator, those among them that called out “Not so! oh, let him be saved (preserved)†were named Râkshasas (Vishnu Purâna, Book I. ch. v.). The Bhâgavata Purâna (III, 19–21) renders the allegory differently. Brahmâ transformed himself into night (or ignorance) invested with a body, upon which the Yakshas and Râkshasas seized, exclaiming “Do not spare it; devour it.†Brahmâ then cried out, “Do not devour me, spare me.†This has an inner meaning of course. The body of Night is the darkness of ignorance, and it is the darkness of silence and secrecy. Now the Râkshasas are shown in almost every case to be Yogis, pious Saddhus and Initiates, a rather unusual occupation for demons. The meaning then is that while we have power to dispel the darkness of ignorance, “devour it,†we have to preserve the sacred truth from profanation. “Brahmâ is for the Brahmins alone,†says that proud caste. The moral of the fable is evident.
62 The gradual evolution of man in the Secret Doctrine shows that all the later (to the profane the earliest) Races have their physical origin in the early Fourth Race. But it is the sub-race which preceded the one that separated sexually that is to be regarded as the spiritual ancestors of our present generations, and especially of the Eastern Aryan Races. Weber’s idea that the Indo-Germanic Race preceded the Aryan Vedic Race is, to the Occultist, grotesque to the last degree.
63 Every process of healing and cicatrisation in the higher animal groups—even in the case of reproduction of mutilated limbs with the Amphibians — is effected by fission and gemmation of the elementary morphological elements.
64 The term here means neither the dolicho-cephalic nor the brachyo-cephalic, nor yet skulls of a smaller volume, but simply brains devoid of intellect generally. The theory which would judge of the intellectual capacity of a man according to his cranial capacity seems absurdly illogical to one who has studied the subject. The skulls of the stone period, as well as those of African Races (Bushmen included), show that the first are above rather than below the average of the brain capacity of the modern man, and the skulls of the last are on the whole (as in the case of Papuans and Polynesians generally) larger by one cubic inch than that of the average Frenchman. Again, the cranial capacity of the Parisian of today represents an average of 1437 cubic centimeters compared to 1523 of the Auvergnat.
65 A. Lefèvre, “Philosophy,†p. 498.
66 “Principles of Zoology,†p. 206.
67 Vol. I, p. 154.
68 This is explained in the Selection which follows this series of Stanzas in the allegory from the Purânas concerning Kandu, the holy sage, and Pramlochâ, the nymph alleged to have hypnotised him (Vide§§ II., Commentary after St. I.); a suggestive allegory, scientifically, as the drops of perspiration, which she exuded, are the symbols of the spores of science (Vide infra).
69 This will be explained as we proceed. This unwillingness to fashion men, or create, is symbolized in the Purânas by Daksha having to deal with his opponent Narada, the “strife-making ascetic.â€
70 Vide Verse 24.
71 The evolutionist Professor Schmidt alludes to “the fact of the separation of sexes, as to the derivation of which from species once hermaphrodite all (the believers in creation naturally excepted) are assuredly of one accord.†Such indeed is the incontestable evidence drawn from the presence of rudimentary organs. (Cf. his “Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,†p. 159) Apart from such palpable traces of a primeval hermaphroditism, the fact may be noted that, as Laing writes, “a study of embryology, . . . shows that in the human higher animal species the distinction of sex is not developed until a considerable progress has been made in the growth of the embryo.†(“A Modern Zoroastrian,†p. 106.) The Law of Retardation—operative alike in the case of human races, animal species, etc., when a higher type has once been evolved—still preserves hermaphroditism as the reproductive method of the majority of plants and many lower animals.
72 See “Vishnu Purâna.†Book I., ch. 7, para. I.
73 See “Five Years of Theosophy†p. 777.
74 Vide “Vishnu-Purâna†Book III, Chp. 2.
75 In the oldest MS. of “Vishnu-Purâna†in the possession of an Initiate in Southern India, the god is not Indra, but Kama, the god of love and desire. See text further on.
76 These are the exoteric figures given in a purposely reversed and distorted way, being the figure of the duration of the cycle between the first and second human race. All Orientalists to the contrary, there is not a word in any of the Purânas that has not a special esoteric meaning.
77 “Vishnu Purâna,†Book I., ch, 15. Cf. also Vivien’s temptation of Merlin (Tennyson), the same legend in Irish tradition.
78 The text has: “From Brahmâ were born mind-engendered progeny, with forms and faculties derived from his corporeal nature, embodied spirits produced from the limbs (gâtra) of Dhimat (all-wise deity).†These beings were the abode of the three qualities of deva-sarga (divine creation, which, as the five-fold creation, is devoid of clearness of perception, without reflection, dull of nature). But as they did not multiply themselves, Brahmâ created other mind-born sons like “himself,†namely, the Brahmâ -Rishis, or the Prajâpati (ten and seven). Sanandana and the other sons of Vedhas (Brahmâ) were previously created, but, as shown elsewhere, they were “without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the universe and undesirous of progeny (Book I., ch. 7). These Sanandana and other Kumâras are, then, the Gods, who after refusing to “create progeny†are forced to incarnate in senseless men. The reader must pardon unavoidable repetitions in view of the great number of the facts given.
79 See Plato’s “Banquetâ€
Selection 13
EVOLUTION OF THE ANIMAL MAMMALIANS — THE FIRST FALL
§§ (28) How the first mammals were produced. (29) A quasi-Darwinian Evolution. (30) The animals get solid bodies. (31) Their separation into sexes. (32) The first sin of the mindless men.
28. FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT (a); FROM THE RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE; MATTER FROM DEAD BODIES AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL BEFORE (previous, Third Round); AND FROM CAST-OFF DUST; THE FIRST ANIMALS (of this Round) WERE PRODUCED.
(a) The Occult doctrine maintains that, in this Round, the mammalians were a later work of evolution than man. Evolution proceeds in cycles. The great Manvantaric cycle of Seven Rounds, beginning in the First Round with mineral, vegetable, and animal, brings its evolutionary work on the descending arc to a dead stop in the middle of the Fourth Race, at the close of the first half of the Fourth Round. It is on our Earth, then, (the Fourth sphere and the lowest) and in the present Round, that this middle point has been reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its “first inmetallization†on Globe A, through the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds in every degree of the three states of matter, except the last degree of the third or solid state, which it reached only at the “mid-point of evolution†it is but logical and natural that at the beginning of the Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the first to appear; and also that his frame should be of the most tenuous matter that is compatible with objectivity. To make it still clearer: if the Monad begins its cycle of incarnations through the three objective kingdoms on the descending curved line, it has necessarily to enter on the re-ascending curved line of the sphere as a man also. On the descending arc it is the spiritual which is gradually transformed into the material. On the middle line of the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in Man. On the ascending arc, Spirit is slowly re-asserting itself at the expense of the physical, or matter, so that, at the close of the seventh Race of the Seventh Round, the Monad will find itself as free from matter and all its qualities as it was in the beginning; having gained in addition the experience and wisdom, the fruition of all its personal lives, without their evil and temptations.
MEN, THE PROGENITORS OF ANIMALS
This order of evolution is found also in Genesis (ch. 1 and 2) if one reads it in its true esoteric sense, for chapter i. contains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that of the first Three Races of the Fourth, up to that moment when Man is called to conscious life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In the first chapter, animals, whales and fowls of the air, are created before the androgyne Adam. 80
In the second, Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him. Even the state of mental torpor and unconsciousness of the first two races, and of the first half of the Third Race, is symbolized, in the second chapter of Genesis, by the deep sleep of Adam. It was the dreamless sleep of mental inaction, the slumber of the Soul and Mind, which was meant by that “sleep,†and not at all the physiological process of differentiation of sexes, as a learned French theorist (M. Naudin) imagined.
The Purânas, the Chaldean and Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese traditions, all show an agreement with the Secret Doctrine as to the process and order of evolution. We find in them the corroboration of almost all our teaching. For instance: the statement concerning the oviparous mode of procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint at a less innocent mode of the procreation of the first mammal forms, “gigantic, transparent, dumb and monstrous they were,†says the Commentary. Study the stories of the several Rishis and their multifarious progeny; e.g., Pulastya is the father of all the Serpents and Nagas— the oviparous brood; Kasyapa was grandsire, through his wife Tamra, of the birds and of Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was the parent of cows and buffaloes, etc., etc.
In the Secret Doctrine, the first Nagas— beings wiser than Serpents — are the “Sons of Will and Yoga,†born before the complete separation of the sexes, “matured in the man-bearing eggs 81 produced by the power (Kriyasakti) of the holy sages†of the early Third Race. 82
.....In these were incarnated the Lords of the three (upper) worlds, the various classes of Rudras, who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who are Adityas;†for, as explained by Parâsara, “There are a hundred appellations of the immeAsurably mighty Rudrasâ€
Some of the descendants of the primitive Nagas, the Serpents of Wisdom, peopled America, when its continent arose during the palmy days of the great Atlantis, (America being the Pâtâla or Antipodes of Jambu-Dwipa, not of Bharata-Varsha). Otherwise, whence the traditions and legends — the latter always more true than history, as says Augustin Thierry — and even the identity in the names of certain “medicine men†and priests, who exist to this day in Mexico? We shall have to say something of the Nargals and the Nagals and also of Nagalism, called “devil-worship†by the Missionaries.
In almost all the Purânas, the story of the “Sacrifice of Daksha†is given, the oldest account of which is to be found in Vayu Purâna. Allegorical as it is, there is more meaning and biological revelation in it to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo-scientific vagaries, which are regarded as learned theories and hypotheses.
Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out as the creator of physical man in the “fable,†which makes him lose his head from his body in the general strife between the gods and the Raumas. This head, being burnt in the fire, is replaced by the head of a ram (Kasi-Khanda). Now the ram’s head and horns are ever the symbol of generating power and of reproductive force, and are phallic. As we have shown, it is Daksha who establishes the era of men engendered by sexual intercourse. But this mode of procreation did not occur suddenly, as one may think, and required long ages before it became the one “natural†way. Therefore, his sacrifice to the gods is shown as interfered with by Siva, the destroying deity, evolution and PROGRESS personified, who is the regenerator at the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall them to life under another more perfect type. Siva-Rudra creates the terrible Virabhadra (born of his breath) the “thousand-headed, thousand-armed†(etc.) monster, and commissions him to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha. Then Virabhadra, “abiding in the region of the ghosts (ethereal men). . . . created from the pores of the skin (Romakupas), powerful Raumas, 83(or Raumyas).†Now, however mythical the allegory, the Mahabhârata, which is history as much as is the Iliad, shows 84 the Raumyas and other races, as springing in the same manner from the Romakupas, hair or skin pores. This allegorical description of the “sacrifice†is full of significance to the students of the Secret Doctrine who know of the “Sweat-born.â€
In the Vayu Purâna’s account of Daksha’s sacrifice, moreover, it is said to have taken place in the presence of creatures born from the egg, from the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally only, from the womb.
Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, still devoid of an individual Ego, and having merely the passive capacities. Brahmâ, therefore, commands him to create (in the exoteric texts); when, obeying the command, he made “inferior and superior†(avara and vara) progeny (putra), bipeds and quadrupeds; and by his will, gave birth to females . . . . to the gods, the Daityas (giants of the Fourth Race), the snake-gods, animals, cattle and the Danavas (Titans and demon Magicians) and other beings.â€
. . . . “From that period forward, living creatures were engendered by sexual intercourse. Before the time of Daksha, they were variously propagated — by the will, by sight, by touch, and by Yoga-power.†85 And now comes the simply zoological teaching.
29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP AND FLYING SARPAS (serpents) WERE ADDED TO THE CREEPING THINGS. THEY THAT CREEP ON THE GROUND GOT WINGS. THEY OF THE LONG NECKS IN THE WATER, BECAME THE PROGENITORS OF THE FOWLS OF THE AIR (A).
(a) This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation are in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition process between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot, especially in the ornithoscelidæ, hesperornis, and the archæopteryx of Vogt.
30. DURING THE THIRD (Race), THE BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND CHANGED: THEY BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES (a), THEIR CHHAYAS BECAME SOLID (also).
31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST (into male and female) (b).
(a) Vertebrates, and after that mammalians. Before that the animals were also ethereal proto-organisms, just as man was.
(b) The fact of former hermaphrodite mammals and the subsequent separation of sexes is now indisputable, even from the stand-point of Biology. As Prof. Oscar Schmidt, an avowed Darwinist, shows: “Use and disuse combined with selection elucidate (?) the separation of the sexes, and the existence, totally incomprehensible, of rudimentary sexual organs. In the Vertebrata especially, each sex possesses such distinct traces of the reproductive apparatus characteristic of the other, that even antiquity assumed hermaphroditism as a natural primeval form of mankind. . . . The tenacity with which the rudiments of sexual organs are inherited is remarkable. In the class of mammals, actual hermaphroditism is unheard of, although through the whole period of their development they drag along with them these residues born by their unknown ancestry, no one can say how long ago.†86
31.....THEY (the animals) BEGAN TO BREED. THE TWO-FOLD MAN (then) SEPARATED ALSO. HE (man), SAID “LET US AS THEY; LET US UNITE AND MAKE CREATURES.†THEY DID. . . .
32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK (the “narrow-brained†87 TOOK HUGE SHE-ANIMALS UNTO THEM (a). THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY WERE (the “narrow-brainedâ€) THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR TONGUES UNTIED (b). THE TONGUES OF THEIR PROGENY REMAINED STILL. MONSTERS THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED, RED-HAIR-COVERED MONSTERS, GOING ON ALL FOURS. 88 A DUMB RACE, TO KEEP THE SHAME UNTOLD. 89
(a) The animals “separated the first,†says Stanza 31. Bear in mind that at that period men were different, even physiologically, from what they are now, having passed the middle point of the Fifth Race. We are not told what the “huge she-animals†were; but they certainly were as different from any we know now, as were the men.
This was the first physical “fall into matter†of some of the then existing and lower races. Bear in mind Stanza 24. The “Sons of Wisdom†had spurned the early Third Race, i.e., the non-developed, and are shown incarnating in, and thereby endowing with intellect, the later Third Race. Thus the sin of the brainless or “mindless†Races, who had no “spark†and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them their Karmic duty.
(b) See later on concerning the beginning of human speech.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 180–184
________________
80 An allegorical reference to the “Sacred Animals†of the Zodiac and other heavenly bodies. Some Kabalists see in them the prototypes of the animals.
81 In “Hesiod,†Zeus creates his third race of men out of ash-trees. In the “Popol Vuh†the Third Race of men is created out of the tree Tzita and the marrow of the reed called Sibac. But Sibac means “egg†in the mystery language of the Artufas (or Initiation caves). In a report sent in 1812 to the Cortes by Don Baptista Pino it is said: “All the Pueblos have their Artufas— so the natives call subterranean rooms with only a single door where they (secretly) assemble.....These are impenetrable temples . . . . and the doors are always closed to the Spaniards.....They adore the Sun and Moon . . . . fire and the great SNAKE (the creative power), whose eggs are called Sibacâ€
82 There is a notable difference esoterically between the words Sarpa and Naga, though they are both used indiscriminately. Sarpa (serpent) is from the root Srip, serpo to creep; and they are called “Ahi,†from Ha, to abandon. “The sarpa was produced from Brahmâ’s hair, which, owing to his fright at beholding the Yakshas, whom he had created horrible to behold, fell off from the head, each hair becoming a serpent. They are called Sarpa from their creeping and Ahi because they had deserted the head†(Wilson). But the Nagas, their serpent’s tail notwithstanding, do not creep, but manage to walk, run and fight in the allegories.
83 “Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,†pp. 186–7. The “Unknown Ancestry†referred to are the primeval astral prototypes. Cf. § Il., p. 260 (a).
84 See verse 24.
85 These “animals,†or monsters, are not the anthropoid or any other apes, but verily what the Anthropologists might call the “missing link,†the primitive lower man; see infra.
86 Wilson translates the word as “demigods†(See his Vishnu Purâna, p. 130); but Raurnas or Raumyas are simply a race, a tribe.
87 xii. 10308.
88 “Vishnu Purânaâ€
89 The shame of their animal origin which our modern scientists would emphasize if they could.
Selection 14
OCCULTISM REJECTS THE IDEA THAT NATURE DEVELOPED MAN FROM THE APE , OR EVEN FROM AN ANCESTOR COMMON TO BOTH
Thus Occultism rejects the idea that Nature developed man from the ape, or even from an ancestor common to both, but traces, on the contrary, some of the most anthropoid species to the Third Race man of the early Atlantean period. As this proposition will be maintained and defended elsewhere, a few words more are all that are needed at present. For greater clearness, however, we shall repeat in brief what was said previously in Book I, Stanza 6.
Our teachings show that, while it is quite correct to say that nature had built, at one time, around the human astral form an ape-like external shape, yet it is as correct that this shape was no more that of the “missing link,†than were the coverings of that astral form during the course of its natural evolution through all the kingdoms of nature. Nor was it, as shown in the proper place, on this Fourth Round planet that such evolution took place, but only during the First, Second, and Third Rounds, when MAN was, in turn, “a stone, a plant, and an animal,†until he became what he was in the First Root-Race of present humanity. The real line of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two systems are irreconcilable, except when the latter is divorced from the dogma of “Natural Selection†and the like. Indeed, between the Monera of Hæckel and the Sarisripa of Manu, there lies an impassable chasm in the shape of the Jiva; for the “human†Monad, whether immetallised in the stone-atom, or invegetallised in the plant, or inanimalised in the animal, is still and ever a divine, hence also, a HUMAN Monad. It ceases to be human only when it becomes absolutely divine. The terms “mineral,†“vegetable,†and “animal†monad are meant to create a superficial distinction: there is no such thing as a Monad (jiva) other than divine, and consequently having been, or having to become, human. And the latter term has to remain meaningless unless the difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop out of the shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within the plane primeval differentiation. It is divine in its higher and human in its lower condition – the adjectives “higher†and “lower†being used for lack of better words – and a monad it remains at all times, save in the Nirvanic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms. As the Logos reflects the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the manifested Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibniz put it, repeating an Eastern teaching, so the MONAD has, during the cycle of its incarnations, to reflect in itself every root-form of each kingdom. Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that “MAN becomes a stone, a plant, an animal, a man, a Spirit, and finally God. Thus accomplishing his cycle or circuit and returning to the point from which he had started as the heavenly MAN.†But by “Man,†the divine Monad is meant, and not the thinking Entity, much less his physical body. While rejecting the immortal Soul, the men of Science now try to trace the latter through a series of animal forms from the lowest to the highest; whereas, in truth, all the present fauna are the descendants of those primordial monsters of which the Stanzas speak. The animals – the creeping beasts and those in the waters that preceded man in this Fourth Round, as well as those contemporary with the Third Race, and again the mammalia that are posterior to the Third and Fourth Races – all are either directly or indirectly the mutual and correlative product (physically) of man. It is correct to say that the man of this Manvantara, i.e. during the three preceding Rounds, has passed through all the kingdoms of nature. That he was “a stone, a plant, an animal.†But (a) these stones, plants, and animals were the prototypes, the filmy presentiments of those of the Fourth Round; and (b) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the astral shadows of the present, as the Occultists express it. And finally, the forms and genera of neither man, animal, nor plant were what they became later. Thus the astral prototypes of the lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round, which preceded (the chhayas of) Men, were the consolidated, though still very ethereal sheaths of the still more ethereal forms or models produced at the close of the Third Round on Globe D.90 “Produced from the residue of the substance matter; from dead bodies of men and (other extinct) animals of the wheel before,†or the previous Third Round – as Stanza 24 tells us. Hence, while the nondescript “animals†that preceded the astral man at the beginning of this life-cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the progeny of the man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their existence, in a great measure, to man again. Moreover, the “ancestor†of the present anthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet mindless Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the level of an animal.
The above accounts for some of the alleged physiological proofs, brought forward by the anthropologists as a demonstration of the descent of man from the animals.
THE MYSTERIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN EMBRYO HOLDS THE SECRET OF THE METEMPSYCHOSIS OF THE HUMAN RACE
The point most insisted upon by the Evolutionists is that, “the history of the embryo is an epitome of that of the race.†That “every organism, in its development from the egg, runs through a series of forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors have passed in the long course of Earth’s history.91 The history of the embryo . . . . is a picture in little, and outline of that of the race. This conception forms the gist of our fundamental biogenetic law, which we are obliged to place at the head of the study of the fundamental law of organic development.â€92
This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically expressed by, the Sages and Occultists from the remotest ages. A passage from “Isis Unveiled†may here be cited to furnish a few points of comparison. In Vol. I, pp. 388 – 9, it was asked why, with all their great learning, physiologists were unable to explain teratological phenomena? Any anatomist who has made the development and growth of the embryo “a subject of special study,†can tell, without much brain-work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes show him, viz., that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the spawn – a tadpole. But no physiologist or anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying to the development of the human being – from the first instant of its physical appearance as a germ to its ultimate formation and birth – the Pythagorean esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics. The meaning of the axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man, etc.†was mentioned in another place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of men on this Earth. We will now add a few more words to make the matter clearer.
What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a corpuscle, say some physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the ovum, say others. If it could be analysed – by the microscope or otherwise – of what ought we to expect to find it composed? Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of inorganic matter, deposited from the circulation at the germinating point, and united with a deposit of organic matter. In other words, this infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same elements as a stone – of the same elements as the Earth, which the man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the Kabalists as authority for the remark that it required earth and water to make a living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as a stone.
At the end of three or four weeks, the ovum has assumed a plant-like appearance, one extremity having become spheroidal and the other tapering like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be composed, like an onion, of very delicate laminæ or coats, enclosing a liquid. The laminæ approach each other at the lower end, and the embryo hangs from the root of the umbilicus almost like the fruit from the bough. The stone has now become changed, by “metempsychosis,†into a plant. Then the embryonic creature begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its limbs, and develops its features. The eyes are visible as two black dots; the ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of a pineapple, before they begin to project. The embryo develops into an animal-like fÅ“tus – the shape of a tadpole – and, like an amphibious reptile, lives in water and develops from it. Its Monad has not yet become either human or immortal, for the Kabalists tells us that this only occurs at the “fourth hour.†One by one the fÅ“tus assumes the characteristics of the human being, the first flutter of the immortal breath passes through its being; it moves; and the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it will inhabit until the moment of physical death, when man becomes a spirit.
This mysterious process of a nine-months’ formation, the Kabalists call the completion of the “individual cycle of evolution.†As the fœtus develops amidst the liquor amnii in the womb, so the Earths germinate in the universal ether, or astral fluid, in the womb of the Universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy inhabitants, are at first nuclei, then ovules, then gradually mature; and becoming mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms. From centre to circumference, from the imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of the Kosmos, those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle merging into cycle, containing and contained in an endless series. The embryo evolving in its pre-natal sphere, the individual in his family, the family in the state, the state in mankind, the Earth in our system, that system in its central universe, the universe in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos in the ONE CAUSE . . . thus runs their philosophy of evolution, differing as we see, from that of Hæckel:
“All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm) the soul . . .â€
These are the proofs of Occultism, and they are rejected by Science. But how is the chasm between the mind of man and animal to be bridged in this case? How, if the anthropoid and Homo primigenius had, argumenti gratiâ, a common ancestor (in the way modern speculation puts it), did the two groups diverge so widely from one another as regards mental capacity? True, the Occultist may be told that in every case, Occultism does what Science repeats: it gives a common ancestor to ape and man, since it makes the former issue from primeval man. Aye, but that “primeval man†was man only in external form. He was mindless and soulless at the time he begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather of a series of apes. This speculation – if speculation it be – is at least logical, and fills the chasm between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and explains the hitherto unaccountable and inexplicable. The fact that, in the present stage of evolution, Science is almost certain that no issue can follow from the union of man and animal, is considered and explained elsewhere.
Now what is the fundamental difference between the accepted (or nearly so) conclusions, as enunciated in “The Pedigree of Man,†viz., that man and ape have a common ancestor; and the teachings of Occultism, which deny this conclusion and accept the fact that all things and all living beings have originated from one common source? Materialistic science makes man evolve gradually to what he is now, and, starting from the first protoplasmic speck called Moneron (which we are told has, like the rest, “originated in the course of immeAsurable ages from a few, or from one simple, spontaneously arising original form, that has obeyed one law of evolution), pass through “unknown and unknowable†types up to the ape, and thence to the human being. Where the transitional shapes are discoverable we are not told, for the simple reason that no “missing links†between man and the apes have ever yet been found, though this fact in no way prevents men like Hæckel from inventing them ad libitum.
Nor will they ever be met with; simply, again, because that link which unites man with his real ancestry is searched for on the objective plane and in the material world of forms, whereas it is safely hidden from the microscope and dissecting knife within the animal tabernacle of man himself. We repeat what we have said in Isis Unveiled:
“....All things had their origin in spirit – evolution having originally begun from above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words, there has been a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed ultimate of debasement is reached. This point is that at which the doctrine of modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis. Arrived at this period we will find it easier to understand Hæckel’s Anthropogeny, which traces the pedigree of man ‘from its proto-plasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed before the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,’ according to Professor Huxley’s exposition. We may believe the man (of the Third Round) evolved ‘by gradual modification of an (astral) mammal of ape-like organization – still easier when we remember that (though in a more condensed and less elegant, but still as comprehensible, phraseology) the same theory was said by Berosus to have been taught many thousands of years before his time by the man-fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi-demon of Babylonia93 (though on somewhat modified lines).
“But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as he is concerned nothing but ‘unverifiable hypotheses.’ For, as he puts it, he views all beings ‘as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited.’94 He does not attempt to show us who these ‘few beings’ were. But it answers our purpose quite as well, for, in the admission of their existence at all, resort to the ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea receives the stamp of scientific approbation. . . .“
Truly, as also said in our first work: “If we accept Darwin’s theory of the development of species, we find that his starting point is placed in front of an open door. We are at liberty with him, to either remain within, or cross the threshold, beyond which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible, or rather the Unutterable. If our mortal language is inadequate to express what our spirit dimly foresees in the great ’Beyond- while on this earth – it must realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity.†But what lies “beyond†Hæckel’s theory? Why Bathybius Hæckelii, and no more!
A further answer is given in Part III, Addenda.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 185–190
________________
90 Vide “Esoteric Buddhism.â€
91 “A very strong argument in favour of variability is supplied by the science of Embryology. Is not a man in the uterus . . . a simple cell, a vegetable with three or four leaflets, a tadpole with branchiæ, a mammal with a tail, lastly a primate (?) and a biped? It is scarcely possible not to recognise in the embryonic evolution a rapid sketch, a faithful summary, of the entire organic series.†(Lefèvre, “Philosophy,†p. 484).
The summary alluded to is, however, only that of the store of types hoarded up in man, the microcosm. This simple explanation meets all such objections, as the presence of the rudimentary tail in the foetus—a fact triumphantly paraded by Hæckel and Darwin as conclusively in favour of the Ape-Ancestor theory. It may also be pointed out that the presence of a vegetable with leaflets in the embryonic stages is not explained on ordinary evolutionist principles. Darwinists have not traced man through the vegetable, but Occultists have. Why then this feature in the embryo, and how do the former explain it?
92 “The Proofs of Evolution,†a lecture by Hæckel.
93 Cory, “Ancient Fragmentsâ€
94 “Origin of Species,†pp. 448–9, first edition.
Selection 15
THE “FALL†OF MANKIND
The “Fall†occurred, according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the old records, as soon as Daksha (the reincarnated Creator of men and things in the early Third Race) disappeared to make room for that portion of mankind which had “separated.†This is how the Commentary explains the details that preceded the “Fallâ€:
In the initial period of man’s Fourth evolution, the human kingdom branched off in several and various directions. The outward shape of its first specimens was not uniform, for the vehicles (the egg-like, external shells, in which the future fully physical man gestated) were often tampered with, before they hardened, by huge animals, of species now unknown, and which belonged to the tentative efforts of Nature. The result was that intermediate races of monsters, half animals, half men, were produced. But as they were failures, they were not allowed to breathe long and live, though the intrinsically paramount power of psychic over physical nature being yet very weak, and hardly established, the ‘Egg-Born’ Sons had taken several of their females unto themselves as mates, and bred other human monsters. Later, animal species and human races becoming gradually equilibrized, they separated and mated no longer. Man created no more – he begot. But he also begot animals, as well as men, in days of old. Therefore the Sages (or wise men), who speak of males who had no more will-begotten offspring, but begat various animals along with Danavas (giants) on females of other species – animals being as (or in a manner of) Sons putative to them; and they (the human males) refusing in time to be regarded as (putative) fathers of dumb creatures – spoke truthfully and wisely. Upon seeing this (state of things), the kings and Lords of the Last Races (of the Third and the Fourth) placed the seal of prohibition upon the sinful intercourse. It interfered with Karma, it developed new (Karma).95 They (the divine Kings) struck the culprits with sterility. They destroyed the Red and Blue Races.96
In another we find:
“There were blue and red-faced animal-men even in later times; not from actual intercourse (between the human and animal species), but by descent.â€
And still another passage mentions:
“Red-haired, swarthy men going on all-fours, who bend and unbend (stand erect and fall on their hands again) who speak as their forefathers, and run on their hands as their giant fore-mothers.â€
MAN HAS NOT ONE DROP OF PITHECOID BLOOD IN HIS VEINS
Perchance in these specimens, Hæckelians might recognize, not the Homo primigenius, but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the Australian savages. Nevertheless, even these are not descended from the anthropoid apes, but from human fathers and semi-human mothers, or, to speak more correctly, from human monsters – those “failures†mentioned in the first Commentary. The real anthropoids, Hæckel’s Catarrhini and Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of Atlantis. The orang-outang, the gorilla, the chimpanzee and cynocephalus are the latest and purely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a spark of the purely human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not one drop of pithecoid97 blood in his veins. Thus saith old Wisdom and universal tradition.
HOW WAS THE SEPARATION OF SEXES EFFECTED?
How was the separation of sexes effected?“, it is asked. Are we to believe in the old Jewish fable of the rib of Adam yielding Eve? Even such belief is more logical and reasonable than the descent of man from the Quadrumana without any reservation, as the former hides an esoteric truth under a fabulous version, while the latter conceals no deeper fact than a desire to force upon mankind a materialistic fiction. The rib is bone, and when we read in Genesis that Eve was made out of the rib, it only means that the Race with bones was produced out of a previous Race and Races, which were “boneless.†This is an esoteric tenet spread far and wide, as it is almost universal under its various forms. A Tahitian tradition states that man was created out of Aræa, “red Earth.†Taaroa, the creative power, the chief god, “put man to sleep for long years, for several lives,†which means racial periods, and is a reference to his mental sleep, as shown elsewhere. During that time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out of man and she became a woman.98
Nevertheless, whatever the allegory may mean, even its exoteric meaning necessitates a divine Builder of man, a “Progenitor.†Do we then believe in such “supernatural†beings? We say, No. Occultism has never believed in anything, whether animate or inanimate, outside nature. Nor are we Cosmolators or Polytheists for believing in “Heavenly Man†and divine men, for we have the accumulated testimony of the ages, with its unvarying evidence on every essential point, to support us in this, the Wisdom of the Ancients and UNIVERSAL tradition. We reject, however, every groundless and baseless tradition, which, having outgrown strict allegory and symbolism, has found acceptance in exoteric creeds. But that which is preserved in unanimous traditions, only the willfully blind could reject. Hence we believe in races of beings other than our own in far remote geological periods; in races of ethereal, following incorporeal, “Arupa,†men, with form but no solid substance, giants who preceded us pigmies; in dynasties of divine beings, those Kings and Instructors of the Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with which our little modern science stands less chance than elementary arithmetic with geometry.
No, certainly not. We do not believe in the supernatural, but only in the superhuman, or rather interhuman, intelligences. One may easily appreciate the feeling of reluctance that an educated person would have to being classed with the superstitious and ignorant, and even realize the great truth uttered by Renan when he says that, “The supernatural has become like the original sin, a blemish that every one seems ashamed of – even those most religious persons who refuse in our day to accept even a minimum of Bible miracles in all their crudeness, and who, seeking to reduce them to the minimum, hide and conceal it in the furthermost corners of the past.â€99
But the “supernatural†of Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It has nought to do with its Spirit nor with the reality of facts in Nature. If theology asks us to believe that four or five thousand years ago men lived 900 years and more, that a portion of mankind, the enemies of the people of Israel exclusively, was composed of giants and monsters, we decline to believe that such a thing existed in Nature 5,000 years back. For Nature never proceeds by jumps and starts, and logic and common sense, besides geology, anthropology, and ethnology have justly rebelled against such assertions. But if that same theology, giving up her fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived 969 years – the age of Methuselah – five million years ago, we would have nothing to say against the claim. For in those days the physical frame of men was, compared to the present human body, as that of a Megalosaurus to a common lizard.
FOURTH RACE HUMANITY BEGOT OFFSPRING FROM FEMALES OF A SEMI-HUMAN NOT QUITE ANIMAL RACE
A naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species which, however unequal in its races, can breed together. “There is no question of selection between human races,†say the anti-Darwinists, and no evolutionist can deny the argument – one which very triumphantly proves specific unity. How then can Occultism insist that a portion of the Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females of another, only semi-human, if not quite an animal, race, the hybrids resulting from which union not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern anthropoid apes? Esoteric science replies to this that it was in the very beginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has changed her ways, and sterility is the only result of the crime of man’s bestiality. But we have to this day proofs of this. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the specific unity of mankind is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or rather still were a few years ago, descendants of these half-animal tribes or races, both of remote Lemurian and Lemuro-Atlantean origin. The world knows them as Tasmanians (now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders, etc. The descent of the Tasmanians can be almost proved by a fact, which struck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make anything of it. This fact deserves notice.
Now de Quatrefages and other naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the very fact of every race of mankind being capable of crossing with every other, have left out of their calculations exceptions, which do not in this case confirm the rule. Human crossing may have been a general rule from the time of the separation of sexes, and yet that other law may assert itself, viz., sterility between two human races, just as between two animal species of various kinds, in those rare cases when a European, condescending to see in a female of a savage tribe a mate, happens to chose a member of such mixed tribes.100 Darwin notes such a case in a Tasmanian tribe, whose women were suddenly struck with sterility, en masse, some time after the arrival among them of the European colonists. The great naturalist tried to explain this fact by change of diet, food, conditions, etc., but finally gave up the solution of the mystery. For the Occultist it is a very evident one. “Crossing,†as it is called, of Europeans with Tasmanian women – i.e. the representatives of a race, whose progenitors were a “soullessâ€101 and mindless monster and a real human, though still as mindless a man – brought on sterility. This, not alone as a consequence of a physiological law, but also as a decree of Karmic evolution in the question of further survival of the abnormal race. In no one point of the above is Science prepared to believe as yet- but it will have to in the long run. Esoteric philosophy, let us remember, only fills the gaps made by science and corrects her false premises.
Yet, in this particular, geology and even botany and zoology support the esoteric teachings. It has been suggested by many geologists that the Australian native – co-existing as he does with an archaic fauna and flora- must date back to an enormous antiquity. The whole environment of this mysterious race, about whose origin ethnology is silent, is a testimony to the truth of the esoteric position.
“It is a very curious fact,†says Jukes,102 that not only these marsupial animals (the mammals found in the Oxfordshire stone-field slates), but several of the shells – as for instance, the Trigonias and even some of the plants found fossil in the Oölitic rocks – much more nearly resemble those now living in Australia than the living forms of any other part of the globe. This might be explained on the supposition that, since the Oölitic (Jurassic) period, less change has taken place in Australia than elsewhere, and that the Australian flora and fauna consequently retain something of the Oölitic type, while it had been altogether supplanted and replaced on the rest of the Globe.†(!!)
Now why has less change taken place in Australia than elsewhere? Where is the raison d’être for such a “curse of retardation� It is simply because the nature of the environment develops pari passu with the race concerned. Correspondences rule in every quarter. The survivors of those later Lemurians, who escaped the destruction of their fellows when the main continent was submerged, became the ancestors of a portion of the present native tribes. Being a very low sub-race, begotten originally of animals, of monsters, whose very fossils are now resting miles under the sea floors, their stock has since existed in an environment strongly subjected to the law of retardation. Australia is one of the oldest lands now above the waters, and in the senile decrepitude of old age, its “virgin soil†notwithstanding. It can produce no new forms, unless helped by new and fresh races, and artificial cultivation and breeding.
THIRD RACE HUMANITY WAS ALMOST SEXLESS AND BECAME ANDROGYNOUS
To return, however, once more to the history of the Third Race, the “Sweat-Born,†the “Egg-bearing,†and the “Androgyne.†Almost sexless in its early beginnings, it became bisexual or androgynous, very gradually of course. The passage from the former to the latter transformation required numberless generations, during which the simple cell that issued from the earliest parent (the two in one) first developed into a bisexual being, and then the cell, becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual creature. The Third Race mankind is the most mysterious of all the hitherto developed five Races. The mystery of the “How†of the generation of the distinct sexes must, of course, be very obscure here, as it is the business of an embryologist and a specialist, the present work giving only faint outlines of the process. But it is evident that the units of the Third Race humanity began to separate in their pre-natal shells, or eggs,103 and to issue out of them as distinct male and female babes, ages after the appearance of its early progenitors. And as time rolled on its geological periods, the newly born sub-races began to lose their natal capacities. Toward the end of the fourth sub-race, the babe lost its faculty of walking as soon as liberated from its shell, and by the end of the fifth, mankind was born under the same conditions and by the same identical process as our historical generations. This required, of course, millions of years. The reader has been made acquainted with the approximate figures, at least of the exoteric calculations, in Stanza 2.
We are approaching the turning-point of the evolution of the Races. Let us see what occult philosophy says on the origin of language.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH OCCURRED DURING THE EARLY THIRD RACE TO THE FOURTH RACE HUMANITY
The Commentaries explain that the first Race – the ethereal or astral Sons of Yoga, also called “Self-born†– was, in our sense, speechless, as it was devoid of mind on our plane. The Second Race had a “Sound-language,†to wit, chant-like sounds composed of vowels alone. The Third Race developed in the beginning a kind of language which was only a slight improvement on the various sounds in Nature, on the cry of gigantic insects and of the first animals, which, however, were hardly nascent in the day of the “Sweat-born†(the early Third Race). In its second half, when the “Sweat-born†gave birth to the “Egg-born,†(the middle Third Race); and when these, instead of “hatching out†(may the reader pardon the rather ridiculous expression when applied to human beings in our age) as androgynous beings, began to evolve into separate males and females; and when the same law of evolution led them to reproduce their kind sexually, an act which forced the creative gods, compelled by Karmic law, to incarnate in mindless men; then only was speech developed. But even then it was still no better than a tentative effort. The whole human race was at that time of “one language and of one lip.†This did not prevent the last two Sub-Races of the Third Race104 from building cities, and sowing far and wide the first seeds of civilization under the guidance of their divine instructors105 and their own already awakened minds. Let the reader also bear in mind that, as each of the seven races is divided into four ages – the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Age – so is every smallest division of such races.106 Speech then developed, according to occult teaching, in the following order:
I. Monosyllabic speech: that of the first approximately fully developed human beings at the close of the Third Root-Race, the “golden-coloured,†yellow-complexioned men, after their separation into sexes, and the full awakening of their minds. Before that, they communicated through what would now be called “thought-transference,†though, with the exception of the Race called the “Sons of Will and Yoga†– the first in whom the “Sons of Wisdom†had incarnated – thought was but very little developed in nascent physical man, and never soared above a low terrestrial level. Their physical bodies belonging to the Earth, their Monads remained on a higher plane altogether. Language could not be well developed before the full acquisition and development of their reasoning faculties. This monosyllabic speech was the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard consonants, still in use amongst the yellow races which are known to the anthropologist.107
II. These linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative languages. The latter were spoken by some Atlantean races, while other parent stocks of the Fourth Race preserved the mother language. And as languages have their cyclic evolution, their childhood, purity, growth, fall into matter, admixture with other languages, maturity, decay, and finally death,108 so the primitive speech of the most civilized Atlantean races – that language, which is referred to as “Râkshasi Bhasa,†in old Sanskrit works – decayed and almost died out. While the “cream†of the Fourth Race gravitated more and more toward the apex of physical and intellectual evolution, thus leaving as an heirloom to the nascent Fifth (the Aryan) Race the inflectional, highly developed languages, the agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil idiom, scattered now, and nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of America.
III. The inflectional speech – the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously called “the elder sister†of the Greek, instead of its mother – was the first language (now the mystery tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth Race). At any rate, the “Semitic†languages are the bastard descendants of the first phonetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit. The occult doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Aryan and the Semite, accepting even the Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites, especially the Arabs, are later Aryans -degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a tribe descended from the Tchandalas of India, the outcasts, many of them ex-Brahmins, who sought refuge in Chaldea, in Scinde, and Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father A-bram (No Brahmin) some 8,000 years B.C. The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those Aryans who would not go into India at the time of the dispersion of nations, some of whom remained on the borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan and Kabul,109 and along the Oxus, while others penetrated into and invaded Arabia.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE EARTH
But this was when A frica had already been raised as a continent. We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited space will permit, the gradual evolution of the now truly human species. It is in the suddenly arrested evolution of certain sub-races, and their forced and violent diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross-breeding, truly analogous to the hybridization, which we have now learned to utilize in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the anthropoids.
In these red-haired and hair-covered monsters, the fruit of the unnatural connection between men and animals, the “Lords of Wisdom†did not incarnate, as we see. Thus by a long series of transformations due to unnatural cross-breeding (unnatural “sexual selectionâ€) originated in due course of time the lowest specimens of humanity, while further bestiality and the fruit of their first animal efforts of reproduction begat a species which developed into mammalian apes ages later.110
As to the separation of sexes, it did not occur suddenly, as one may think. Nature proceeds slowly in whatever she does.
STANZA 37. THE ONE (androgyne) BECAME TWO; ALSO ALL THE LIVING AND CREEPING THINGS, THAT WERE STILL ONE, GIANT-FISH, BIRDS, AND SERPENTS WITH SHELL-HEADS (a).
This relates evidently to the so-called age of the amphibious reptiles, during which ages science maintains that no man existed! But what could the ancients know of antediluvian prehistoric animals and monsters! Nevertheless, in Book VI of the Commentaries is found a passage which says, freely translated:
“When the Third separated and fell into sin by breeding men-animals, these (the animals) became ferocious, and men and they mutually destructive. Till then, there was no sin, no life taken. After (the separation) the Satya (Yuga) was at an end. The eternal spring became constant change and seasons succeeded. Cold forced men to build shelters and devise clothing. Then man appealed to the superior Fathers (the higher gods or angels). The Nirmânakaya of the Nâgas, the wise Serpents and Dragons of Light came, and the precursors of the Enlightened (Buddhas). Divine Kings descended and taught men sciences and arts, for man could live no longer in the first land (Adi-Varsha, the Eden of the first Races), which had turned into a white frozen corpseâ€
The above is suggestive. We will see what can be inferred from this brief statement. Some may incline to think that there is more in it than is apparent at first sight.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 192–201
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95 It is next to impossible to translate verbally some of these old Commentaries. We are often obliged to give the meaning only, and thus retranslate the verbatim translations.
96 Rudra, as a Kumâra, is Lilalohita—red and blue.
97 This, regardless of modern materialistic evolution, which speculates in this wise: “The primitive human form, whence as we think all human species sprang, has perished this long time.†(This we deny; it has only decreased in size and changed in texture.) “But many facts point to the conclusion that it was hairy and dolichocephalic.†(African races are even now dolichocephalic in a great measure, but the Palæolithic Neanderthal skull, the oldest we know of, is of a large size, and no nearer to the capacity of the gorilla’s cranium than that of any other now-living man). “Let us, for the time being, call this hypothetical species Homo primigenius. . . . This first species, or the Ape-man, the ancestor of all the others, PROBABLY arose in the tropical regions of the old world from ANTHROPOID APES.†Asked for proofs, the evolutionist, not the least daunted, replies: “Of these NO FOSSIL REMAINS ARE AS YET KNOWN TO US, BUT THEY WERE probably AKIN TO THE GORILLA AND ORANG OF THE PRESENT DAY.†And then the Papuan negro is mentioned as the probable descendant in the first line (“Pedigree of Man,†p. 80).
Hæckel holds fast to Lemuria, which with East Africa and South Asia also, he mentions as the possible cradle of the primitive Ape-men, and so do many geologists. Mr. A. R. Wallace admits its reality, though in a rather modified sense, in his “Geographical Distribution of Animals.†But let not Evolutionists speak so lightly of the comparative size of the brains of man and the ape, for this is very unscientific, especially when they pretend to see no difference between the two, or very little at any rate. For Vogt himself showed that, while the highest of the Apes, the gorilla, has a brain of only 30 to 51 cubic inches, the brain of the lowest of the Australian aborigines amounts to 99.35 cubic inches. The former is thus “not half of the size of the brain of a new-born babe,†says Pfaff.
98 “Polynesian Researches,†Ellis, Vol. II, p. 38.
Missionaries seem to have pounced upon this name Ivi and made of it Eve. But, as shown by Professor Max Müller, Eve is not the Hebrew name but an European transformation of chavah, “life,†or “mother of all living,†while the Tahitian Ivi and the Maori Wheva meant bone and bone only.†(“False Analogiesâ€)
99 “Chaire d’Hébreu au collège de France,†p. 20.
100 Of such semi-animal creatures, the sole remnants known to Ethnology were the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China, the men and women of which are entirely covered with hair. They were the last descendants in a direct line of the semi-animal latter-day Lemurians referred to. There are, however, considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks— e.g. the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Aryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc.
The Australians of the Gulf of St. Vincent and the neighbourhood of Adelaide are very hairy, and the brown down on the skin of boys of five or six years of age assumes a furry appearance. They are, however, degraded men—not the closest approximation to the “pithecoid man,†as Hæckel so sweepingly affirms. Only a portion of these men are a Lemurian relic. (Cf. “Esoteric Buddhism,†p. 55.)
101 In calling the animal “Soulless,†it is not depriving the beast, from the humblest to the highest species, of a “soul,†but only of a conscious surviving Ego-soul, i.e. that principle which survives after a man and reincarnates in a like man. The animal has an astral body that survives the physical form for a short period, but its (animal) Monad does not re-incarnate in the same, but in a higher species, and has no “Devachan†of course. It has the seeds of all the human principles in itself, but they are latent.
102 “Manual of Geology,†p. 302.
103 The “fables†and “myths†about Leda and Jupiter, and such like, could never have sprung up in people’s fancy, had not the allegory rested on a fact in nature. Evolution, gradually transforming man into a mammal, did in his case only what it did in that of other animals. But this does not prevent man from having always stood at the head of the animal world and other organic species, and from having preceded the former.
104 To avoid confusion, let the reader remember that the term Root-Race applies to one of the seven great Races, sub-Race to one of its great Branches, and Family-Race to one of the sub-divisions, which include nations and large tribes.
105 In the Selection on the Divine Dynasties, the nature of these “Instructors†is explained.
106 Vide Selection attached to the “Divisions into Yugasâ€
107 The present yellow races are the descendants, however, of the early branches of the Fourth Race. Of the third, the only pure and direct descendants are, as said above, a portion of the fallen and degenerated Australians, whose far distant ancestors belonged to a division of the seventh Sub-race of the Third. The rest are of mixed Lemuro-Atlantean descent. They have since then entirely changed in stature and intellectual capacities.
108 Language is certainly coeval with reason and could never have been developed before men became one with the informing principles in them— those who fructified and awoke to life the manasic element dormant in primitive man For, as Professor Max Müller tells us in his “Science of Thought,†“Thought and language are identical.†Yet to add to this the reflection that thoughts which are too deep for words do not really exist at all, is rather risky, as thought impressed upon the astral tablets exists in eternity whether expressed or not. Logos is both reason and speech. But language, proceeding in cycles, is not always adequate to express spiritual thoughts. Moreover, in one sense, the Greek Logos is the equivalent of the Sanskrit Vâch, “the immortal (intellectual) ray of spirit.†And the fact that Vâch (as Devasena, an aspect of Saraswati, the goddess of hidden Wisdom) is the spouse of the eternal celibate Kumâra, unveils a suggestive, though veiled, reference to the Kumâras, those “who refused to create,†but who were compelled later on to complete divine Man by incarnating in him. All this will be fully explained in the Selections that follow.
109 Ptolemy, speaking in his ninth table of the Kabolitæ (Kabul tribes), calls them ΑÏιστόφυλοι., Aristophyli, the aristocratic or noble tribes. The Afghans call themselves Ben-Issrael (children of Is(sa)rael), from Issa, “woman and also earth,†Sons of Mother Earth. But if you call an Afghan Yahoudi (Jew), he will kill you. The subject is fully treated elsewhere. The names of the supposed twelve tribes and the names of the real tribes, the same in number, of the Afghans, are the same. The Afghans being far older (at any rate, their Arabic stock) than the Israelites, no one need be surprised to find such tribal names among them as Youssoufzic, “Sons of Joseph†in Punjcaure and Boonere; the Zablistanee (Zebulon); Ben-manasseh (sons of Manasseh) among the Khojar Tartars; Isaguri, or Issachar (now Ashnagor in Afghanistan), etc., etc. The whole twelve names of the so-called twelve tribes are names of the signs of the Zodiac, as is now well proven. At any rate, the names of the oldest Arabic tribes, re-transliterated, yield the names of the zodiacal signs and of the mythical sons of Jacob likewise. Where are the traces of the Jewish twelve tribes? Nowhere. But there is a trace, and a good one, that the Jews have tried to deceive people with the help of those names. For, see what happens ages after the ten tribes had wholly disappeared from Babylon. Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to have the Hebrew Law translated for him into Greek (the famous Septuagint), wrote to the high priest of the Jews, Eleazar, to send him six men from each of the twelve tribes; and the seventy-two representatives (of whom sixty were ghosts apparently) came to the king in Egypt and translated the Law amid miracles and wonders. See Butler’s “Horæ Biblicæ,†Josephus, and Philo Judæus.
110 The Commentary explains that the apes are the only species, among the animals, which has gradually and with every generation and variety tended more and more to return to the original type of its male forefather—the dark gigantic Lemurian and Atlantean.
Selection 16
MANY OF THE SO-CALLED MYTHICAL ANIMALS WERE CREATURES THAT REALLY ONCE EXISTED
Thus opens the introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting work by Mr. Charles Gould, called “Mythical Monsters,†He boldly states his belief in most of these monsters. He submits that, “Many of the so-called mythical animals, which, throughout long ages and in all nations, have been the fertile subjects of fiction and fable, come legitimately within the scope of plain matter-of-fact natural history; and that they may be considered, not as the outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and inaccurate descriptions have filtered down to us, probably very much refracted, through the mists of time. . . . Traditions of creatures once co-existing with man, some of which are so weird and terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible. For me the major part of those creatures are not chimeras but objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a creature evolved out of the imagination of an Aryan man by the contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew. . . . . To me the specific existence of the Unicorn seems not incredible, and in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth111 . . . For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from ‘the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature.’ It seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the utterance of these oft-told tales until their original appearance is almost unrecognisable, than that uncultured savages should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present day; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions are transformations than to believe them to be inventions.â€112
MAN CO-EXISTED WITH ANIMALS WHICH HAVE LONG SINCE BECOME EXTINCT
It is shown by the same geologist that man, “successively traced to periods variously estimated from thirty thousand to one million years...... co-existed with animals which have long since become extinct (p. 20).†These animals, “weird and terrible,†were, to give a few instances: (1) “Of the genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebræ show them to have attained a length of nearly two hundred feet......†The remains of such monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains; (2) The Titanosaurus montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet in length; (3) the Dinosaurians (in the Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains), of still more gigantic proportions; and (4) the Atlanto-Saurus immanis, a femur of which alone is over six feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet in length! But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the discovery of remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh-bone over twelve feet in length (p. 37). Then we read of the monstrous Sivatherium in the Himalayas, the four-horned stag, as large as an elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium; of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with crocodile jaws on a duck’s head, etc., etc. All these were co-existent with man, most probably attacked man, as man attacked them, and we are asked to believe that the said man was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that, surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a colossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? Is it with his stone hatchet that he had the best of a Sivatherium or a gigantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one great man of science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why man should not have been “contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and go back as far as the Secondary Period.â€113
“It appears,†writes the very conservative Professor Jukes, “that the flying dragons of romance had something like a real existence in †former ages of the world.â€114 “Does the written history of man,†the author goes on to ask, “comprising a few thousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldea and China, shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from others which, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization†(p. 17).
The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants, themselves smaller than their ancestors, the Mastodons, and Hippopotami, are the only surviving relics, and tend to disappear more entirely with every day. Even they have already had a few pioneers of their future genus, and have decreased in size in the same proportion as men did. For the remains of a pigmy elephant were found (E. Falconeri) in the cave deposits of Malta, and the same author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy Hippopotami, the former being “only two feet six inches high; or the still – existing Hippopotamus (ChÅ“ropsis) Liberiensis, which M. Milne-Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height.â€115
Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy-tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that “the things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically speaking, to the things that are unknown,â€116 and thus they laugh only at their own ignorance.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 217–219
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111 “The Unicorn: a Mythological Investigation,†Robert Brown, jun., F.S.A.
112 Pp. 3-4, Introduction to “Mythical Monstersâ€
113 “The Human Species,†p. 52.
114 “Manual of Geology,†p. 301.
115 “Recherches sur les Mammifères,†plate I.
116 Preface to “Wonders by Land and Sea,†(Shan Hai King).
Selection 17
THE GODS BECAME NO-GODS
STANZA 38. THUS TWO BY TWO, ON THE SEVEN ZONES, THE THIRD (Race) GAVE BIRTH TO THE FOURTH (Race men). THE GODS BECAME NO-GODS (Sura became a-Sura) (a).
STANZA 39. THE FIRST (Race) ON EVERY ZONE WAS MOON-COLOURED (yellow white); THE SECOND, YELLOW, LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD, RED; THE FOURTH, BROWN, WHICH BECAME BLACK WITH SIN.117 THE FIRST SEVEN (human) SHOOTS WERE ALL OF ONE COMPLEXION IN THE BEGINNING. THE NEXT (seven, the sub-races) BEGAN MIXING THEIR COLOURS (b).
(a) To understand this verse 38, it must be read together with the three verses of Stanza 9. Up to this point of evolution man belongs more to metaphysical than physical nature. It is only after the so-called FALL that the races began to develop rapidly into a purely human shape. And in order that he may correctly comprehend the full meaning of the Fall, so mystic and transcendental is it in its real significance, the student must be told at once the details which preceded this event, of which event modern theology has formed a pivot on which its most pernicious and absurd dogmas and beliefs are made to turn.
SOME EGOS REFUSED TO INCARNATE INTO THE THIRD RACE HUMANITY – THEIR LATER KARMIC PUNISHMENT
The archaic commentaries explain, as the reader must remember, that, of the Host of Dhyanis, whose turn it was to incarnate as the Egos of the immortal, but, on this plane, senseless monads – that some “obeyed†(the law of evolution) immediately when the men of the Third Race became physiologically and physically ready, i.e. when they had separated into sexes. These were those early conscious Beings who, now adding conscious knowledge and will to their inherent Divine purity, created by Kriyasakti the semi-Divine man, who became the seed on earth for future adepts. Those, on the other hand, who, jealous of their intellectual freedom (unfettered as it then was by the bonds of matter), said, “We can choose . . . we have wisdom†(see verse 24) and incarnated far later – these had their first Karmic punishment prepared for them. They got bodies (physiologically) inferior to their astral models, because their chhayas had belonged to progenitors of an inferior degree in the seven classes. As to those “Sons of Wisdom†who had “deferred†their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already tainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, they produced a terrible cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day. It was produced in themselves, and they became the carriers of that seed of iniquity for æons to come, because the bodies they had to inform had become defiled through their own procrastination. (See verses 32, 36.)
This was the “Fall of the angels,†because of their rebellion against Karmic Law. The “fall of man†was no fall, for he was irresponsible. But “Creation†having been invented on the dualistic system as the “prerogative of God alone,†the legitimate attribute patented by theology in the name of an infinite deity of their own making, this power had to be regarded as “Satanic,†and as an usurpation of divine rights. Thus, the foregoing, in the light of such narrow views, must naturally be considered as a terrible slander on man, “created in the image of God,†a still more dreadful blasphemy in the face of the dead-letter dogma. “Your doctrine,†the Occultists were already told, “makes of man, created out of dust in the likeness of his God, a vehicle of the Devil, from the first.†“Why did you make of your god a devil – both, moreover, created in your own image?†is our reply. The esoteric interpretation of the Bible, however, sufficiently refutes this slanderous invention of theology; the Secret Doctrine must some day become the just Karma of the Churches – more anti-Christian than the representative assemblies of the most confirmed Materialists and Atheists.
THE OLD DOCTRINE ABOUT THE TRUE MEANING OF THE “FALLEN ANGELS†EXPLAINS THE BIBLE
The old doctrine about the true meaning of the “Fallen Angels,†in its anthropological and evolutionary sense, is contained in the Kabala and explains the Bible. It is found pre-eminently in Genesis when the latter is read in a spirit of research for truth, with no eye to dogma, and in no mood of preconception. This is easily proven. In Genesis (vi.) the “Sons of God†– B’ne Aleim- become enamoured of the daughters of men, marry, and reveal to their wives the mysteries unlawfully learnt by them in heaven, according to Enoch; and this is the “Fall of Angels.â€118 But what is, in reality, the “Book of Enoch†itself, from which the author of Revelation and even the St. John of the Fourth Gospel have so profusely quoted? (e.g. verse 8, in Chp. 10, about all who have come before Jesus, being “thieves and robbers.â€) Simply a Book of Initiation, giving out in allegory and cautious phraseology the programme of certain archaic mysteries performed in the inner temples. The author of the “Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches†very justly suggests that the so-called “Visions†of Enoch relate to his (Enoch’s) experience at initiation and what he learned in the mysteries, while he very erroneously states his opinion that Enoch had learned them before being converted to Christianity (!!); furthermore, he believes that this book was written “at the beginning of the Christian era, when . . . the customs and religion of the Egyptians fell into decadencyâ€! This is hardly possible, since Jude quotes in his epistle from the “Book of Enoch†(verse 14); and, therefore, as Archbishop Laurence, the translator of the Book of Enoch from the Ethiopic version, remarks, it “could not have been the production of a writer who lived after . . . or was even coeval with†the writers of the New Testament, unless, indeed, Jude and the Gospels, and all that follows, was also a production of the already established Church – which, some critics say, is not impossible. But we are now concerned with the “Fallen Angels†of Enoch, rather than with Enoch himself.
In Indian exotericism, these angels (Asuras) are also denounced as “the enemies of the gods,†those who oppose sacrificial worship offered to the latter. In Christian theology they are broadly referred to as the “Fallen Spirits,†the heroes of various conflicting and contradictory legends about them, gathered from Pagan sources. The coluber tortuosus,â€the tortuous snake,†a qualification said to have originated with the Jews, had quite another meaning before the Roman Church distorted it: among others, a purely astronomical meaning.
The “Serpent†fallen from on high, “deorsumfluens,†was credited with the possession of the Keys of the Empire of the Dead, τοΰ θανάτου άÏξή, to that day, when Jesus saw it “falling like lightning from heaven†(Luke x. 17, 18), the Roman Catholic interpretation of cadebat ut fulgur to the contrary, notwithstanding; and it means indeed that even “the devils are subject†to the Logos- who is WISDOM, but who, as the opponent of ignorance, is Satan or Lucifer at the same time. This remark refers to divine Wisdom falling like lightning on, and quickening the intellects of those who fight the devils of ignorance and superstition. Up to the time when Wisdom, in the shape of the incarnating Spirits of MAHAT, descended from on high to animate and call the Third Race to real conscious life, humanity – if it can be so called in its animal, senseless state – was of course doomed to moral as well as to physical death. The Angels fallen into generation are referred to metaphorically as Serpents and Dragons of Wisdom. On the other hand, regarded in the light of the Logos, the Christian Saviour, like Krishna, whether as man or Logos, may be said to have saved those who believed in the secret teachings from “eternal death,†to have conquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or Hell, as every Initiate does. This in the human, terrestrial form of the Initiates, and also because the Logos is Christos, that principle of our inner nature which develops in us into the Spiritual Ego – the Higher-Self – being formed of the indissoluble union of Buddhi (the sixth) and the spiritual efflorescence of Manas, the fifth principle.119 “The Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven and Conscious, Self-Active Wisdom on Earth,†we are taught. It is the Marriage of “Heavenly man†with the “Virgin of the World†– Nature, as described in Pymander, the result of which is their progeny – immortal man. It is this which is called in St. John’s Revelation the marriage of the lamb with his bride. (xix. 7.) That “wife†is now identified with the Church of Rome owing to the arbitrary interpretations of her votaries. But they seem to forget that her linen may be fine and white outwardly (like the “whitened sepulchreâ€), but that the rottenness she is inwardly filled with is not “the righteousness of Saints†(v. 8, ibid), but rather the blood of the Saints she has “slain upon the earth†(Chp. xviii, 24.) Thus the remark made by the great Initiate (in Luke x, 18) – one that referred allegorically to the ray of Enlightenment and reason, falling like lightning from on high into the hearts and minds of the converts to that old wisdom-religion then presented in a new form by the wise Galilean Adept120 – was distorted out of recognition (as was his own personality), and made to fit in with one of the most cruel as the most pernicious of all theological dogmas. (Vide at the end of Stanza 11, “SATANIC MYTHS.â€)
But if Western theology alone holds the patent for, and copyright of SATAN Рin all the dogmatic horror of that fiction Рother nationalities and religions have committed equal errors in their misinterpretation of this tenet, which is one of the most profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of ancient thought. For they have both disfigured and hinted at the correct meaning of it in their numerous allegories touching the subject. Nor have the semi-esoteric dogmas of Pur̢nic Hinduism failed to evolve very suggestive symbols and allegories concerning the rebellious and fallen gods. The Pur̢nas teem with them, and we find a direct hint at the truth in the frequent allusions of Par̢sara (Vishnu Pur̢na) to all those Rudras, Rishis, Asuras, Kum̢ras, and Munis, having to be born in every age, to re-incarnate in every Manvantara. This (esoterically) is equivalent to saying that the FLAMES born of the Universal Mind (Mahat), owing to the mysterious workings of Karmic Will and an impulse of Evolutionary Law, had, as in Pymander Рwithout any gradual transition Рlanded on this Earth, having broken through the seven Circles of fire, or the seven intermediate Worlds, in short.
There is an eternal cyclic law of re-births, and the series is headed at every new Manvantaric dawn by those who had enjoyed their rest from re-incarnations in previous Kalpas for incalculable Æons- by the highest and the earliest Nirvanees. It was the turn of those “Gods†to incarnate in the present Manvantara; hence their presence on Earth, and the ensuing allegories; hence, also, the perversion of the original meaning.121 The Gods who had fallen into generation, whose mission it was to complete divine man, are found represented later on as Demons, evil Spirits, and fiends, at feud and war with Gods, or the irresponsible agents of the one Eternal law. But no conception of such creatures as the devils and Satan of the Christian, Jewish, and Mahomedan religions was ever intended under those thousand and one Aryan allegories.122(See “The Fallen Angels†and “The Mystic Dragons†in Part II.)
The Secret Doctrine, ii 227–232
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117 Strictly speaking, it is only from the time of the Atlantean, brown and yellow giant Races, that one ought to speak of man, since it was the Fourth race only which was the first completely human species, however much larger in size than we are now. In “Man†(by two chelas), all that is said of the Atlanteans is quite correct. It is chiefly that race which became “black with sin†that brought the divine names of the Asuras, the Râkshasas, and the Daityas into disrepute and passed them on to posterity as the names of fiends. For, as said, the Suras (gods) or Devas, having incarnated in the wise men of Atlantis, the names of Asuras and Râkshasas were given to the Atlanteans; which names, owing to their incessant conflicts with the last remnants of the Third Race and the “Sons of Will and Yoga,†have led to the later allegories about them in the Purânas. “Asura was the generic appellation of all the Atlanteans who were the enemies of the spiritual heroes of the Aryans (gods).†(“Man,†p. 97.)
118 In general, the so-called orthodox Christian conceptions about the “fallen†angels or Satan, are as remarkable as they are absurd. About a dozen could be cited, of the most various character as to details, and all from the pen of educated lay authors, “University graduates†of the present quarter of our century. Thus, the author of “Earth’s Earliest Ages,†J. H. Pember, M.A., devotes a thick volume to proving Theosophists, Spiritualists, Metaphysicians, Agnostics, Mystics, poets, and every contemporary author on oriental speculations, to be the devoted servants of the “Prince of the Air,†and irretrievably damned. He describes Satan and his Antichrist in this wise:
“Satan is the Anointed Cherub’ of old. . . . God created Satan, the fairest and wisest of all his creatures in this part of His Universe, and made him Prince of the World, and of the Power of the Air. . . . He was placed in an Eden, which was both far anterior to the Eden of Genesis. . . . and of an altogether different and more substantial character, resembling the New Jerusalem. Thus, Satan being perfect in wisdom, and beauty, His vast empire is our earth, if not the whole solar system. . . . Certainly no other angelic power of greater or even equal dignity has been revealed to us. The Archangel Michael himself is quoted by Jude as preserving towards the Prince of Darkness the respect due to a superior, however wicked he may be, until God has formally commanded his deposition.†Then we are informed that “Satan was from the moment of his creation surrounded by the insignia of royalty†(!!): that he “awoke to consciousness to find the air filled with the rejoicing music of those whom God had appointed . . . .†Then the Devil “passes from the royalty to his priestly dignity†(!!!) “Satan was also a priest of the Most High,†etc., etc. And now—â€Antichrist will be Satan incarnate†(pp. 56–59). The Pioneers of the coming Apollyon have already appeared—they are the Theosophists, the Occultists, the authors of the “Perfect Way†of “Isis Unveiled†of the “Mystery of the Ages†and even of the “LIGHT OF ASIA†!! The author notes the “avowed origin†(of Theosophy) from the “descending angels,†from the “Nephilim†or the angels of the 6th Chp. of Genesis, and the Giants. He ought to note his own descent from them also, as the present Secret Doctrine endeavours to show— unless he refuses to belong to the present humanity.
119 It is not correct to refer to Christ— as some Theosophists do— as the sixth principle in man— Buddhi. The latter per se is a passive and latent principle, the spiritual vehicle of Atman, inseparable from the manifested Universal Soul. It is only in union and in conjunction with Self-consciousness that Buddhi becomes the Higher Self and the divine, discriminating Soul. Christos is the seventh principle, if anything.
120 To make it plainer, any one who reads that passage in Luke, will see that the remark follows the report of the seventy, who rejoice that “even the devils (the spirit of controversy and reasoning, or the opposing power, since Satan means simply “adversary†or opponent) are subject unto us through thy name.†(Luke x, 17) Now, “thy name†means the name of Christos, or Logos, or the spirit of true divine wisdom, as distinct from the spirit of intellectual or mere materialistic reasoning— the higher self in short. And when Jesus remarks to this that he has “beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven,†it is a mere statement of his clairvoyant powers, notifying then that he already knew it, and a reference to the incarnation of the divine ray (the gods or angels) which falls into generation. For not all men, by any means, benefit by that incarnation, and with some the power remains latent and dead during the whole life. Truly “No man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son†as added by Jesus then and there (Ibid v. 22)—the Church “of Christ†less than any one else. The Initiates alone understood the secret meaning of the term “Father and the Son,†and knew that it referred to Spirit and Soul on the Earth. For the teachings of Christ were occult teachings, which could only be explained at the initiation. They were never intended for the masses, for Jesus forbade the twelve to go to the Gentiles and the Samaritans (Matt. x, 8), and repeated to his disciples that the “mysteries of Heaven†were for them alone, not for the multitudes (Mark iv, II).
121 So, for instance, in the Purânas, “Pulastya,†a Prajâpati, or son of Brahmâ—the progenitor of the Râkshasas, and the grandfather of Ravana, the Great King of Lanka (see Ramayana)— had, in a former birth, a son named Dattoli, “who is now known as the sage Agastya‗ says Vishnu Purâna. This name of Dattoli alone, has six more variants to it, or seven meanings. He is called respectively, Dattoi, Dattâli, Dattotti, Dattotri, Dattobhri, Dambhobhi and Dambholi—which seven variants have each a secret sense, and refer in the esoteric comments to various ethnological classifications, and also to physiological and anthropological mysteries of the primitive races. For, surely, the Râkshasas are not demons, but simply the primitive and ferocious giants, the Atlanteans, who were scattered on the face of the globe as the Fifth Race is now. Vasishta is a warrant to this, if his words addressed to Parâsara, who attempted a bit of JADOO (sorcery), which he calls “sacrifice,†for the destruction of the Râkshasas, mean anything. For he says, “Let no more of these unoffending ‘Spirits of Darkness’ be destroyed†(see for details Adiparvan, s. 176, Mahabhârata; also the Linga Purâna “Purvârdha,†s. 64.)
122 We have a passage from a Master’s letter which has a direct bearing upon these incarnating angels. Says the letter: “Now there are, and there must be, failures in the ethereal races of the many classes of Dhyan Chohans, or Devas (progressed entities of a previous planetary period), as well as among men. But still, as the failures are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyan-Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower Kingdoms, this then happens. Where a new solar system has to be evolved, these Dhyan Chohans are borne in by influx ‘ahead’ of the Elementals (Entities . . . to be developed into humanity at a future time) and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual force, in the aura of a nascent world . . . until the stage of human evolution is reached. . . . Then they become an active force and commingle with the Elementals, to develop little by little the full type of humanity†That is to say, to develop in, and endow man with his Self-conscious mind, or Manas.
Selection 18
MAN, THE PALE SHADOW OF GOD
Now, as everything proceeds cyclically, the evolution of man like everything else, the order in which he is generated is described fully in the Eastern teachings, whereas it is only hinted at in the Kabala. Says the Book of Dzyan with regard to primeval man when first projected by the “Boneless,†the incorporeal Creator: “First, the Breath, then Buddhi, and the Shadow-Son (the Body) were ‘CREATED.’ But where was the pivot (the middle principle, Manas)? Man is doomed. When alone, the indiscrete (undifferentiated Element) and the Vahan (Buddhi) — the cause of the causeless — break asunder from manifested life†— “unless cemented and held together by the middle principle, the vehicle of the personal consciousness of JIVAâ€; explains the Commentary. In other words, the two higher principles can have no individuality on Earth, cannot be man, unless there is (a) the Mind, the Manas-Ego, to cognize itself, and (b) the terrestrial false personality, or the body of egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round a pivot (which it is, truly), to the physical form of man. It is the Fifth and the Fourth principles 123 — Manas and Kama rupa— that contain the dual personality: the real immortal Ego (if it assimilates itself to the two higher) and the false and transitory personality, the mayavi or astral body, so-called, or the animal-human Soul — the two having to be closely blended for purposes of a full terrestrial existence. Incarnate the Spiritual Monad of a Newton grafted on that of the greatest saint on earth — in a physical body the most perfect you can think of — i.e., in a two or even a three-principled body composed of its Sthula Sarira, prana (life principle), and linga sarira— and, if it lacks its middle and fifth principles, you will have created an idiot — at best a beautiful, soul-less, empty and unconscious appearance. “Cogito— ergo sum†— can find no room in the brain of such a creature, not on this plane, at any rate.
There are students, however, who have long ago understood the philosophical meaning underlying the allegory — so tortured and disfigured by the Roman Church — of the Fallen Angels. “The Kingdom of Spirits and spiritual action which flows from and is the product of Spirit Volition, is outside and contrasted with and in contradiction to the Kingdom of (divine) Souls and divine action.†124 As said in the text:
“Like produces like and no more at the Genesis of being, and evolution with its limited conditioned laws comes later. The Self-Existent 125 are called CREATIONS, for they appear in the Spirit Ray, manifested through the potency inherent in its UNBORN Nature, which is beyond time and (limited or conditioned) Space. Terrene products, animate and inanimate, including mankind, are falsely called creation and creatures: they are the development (evolution) of the discrete elements.†(Com. xiv.)
Again:
“The Heavenly rupa (Dhyan Chohan) creates (man) in his own form; it is a spiritual ideation consequent on the first differentiation and awakening of the universal (manifested) Substance; that form is the ideal shadow of Itself: and this is THE MAN OF THE FIRST RACE.“
To express it in still clearer form, limiting the explanation to this earth only, it was the duty of the first “differentiated Egos†— the Church calls them Archangels — to imbue primordial matter with the evolutionary impulse and guide its formative powers in the fashioning of its productions. This it is which is referred to in the sentences both in the Eastern and Western tradition —â€the Angels were commanded to create.†After the Earth had been made ready by the lower and more material powers, and its three Kingdoms fairly started on their way to be “fruitful and multiply,†the higher powers, the Archangels or Dhyanis, were compelled by the evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order to construct the crown of its evolution — MAN. Thus the “Self-created†and the “Self-existent†projected their pale shadows; but group the Third, the Fire-Angels, rebelled and refused to join their Fellow Devas.
Hindu exotericism represents them all as Yogins, whose piety inspired them to refuse creating, as they desired to remain eternally Kumâras,â€Virgin Youths,†in order to, if possible, anticipate their fellows in progress towards Nirvana— the final liberation. But, agreeably to esoteric interpretation, it was a self-sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. The “Rebels†would not create will-less irresponsible men, as the “obedient†angels did; nor could they endow human beings with only the temporary reflections of their own attributes; for even the latter, belonging to another and a so-much higher plane of consciousness, would leave man still irresponsible, hence interfere with any possibility of a higher progress. No spiritual and psychic evolution is possible on earth — the lowest and most material plane — for one who on that plane, at all events, is inherently perfect and cannot accumulate either merit or demerit. Man remaining the pale shadow of the inert, immutable, and motionless perfection, the one negative and passive attribute of the real I am that I am, would have been doomed to pass through life on earth as in a heavy dreamless sleep; hence a failure on this plane. The Beings, or the Being, collectively called Elohim, who first (if ever) pronounced the cruel words, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live for ever . . . †must have been indeed the Ilda-baoth, the Demiurge of the Nazarenes, filled with rage and envy against his own creature, whose reflection created Ophiomorphos. In this case it is but natural — even from the dead letter standpoint — to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was the “Harbinger of Light,†bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah, as alleged; and he who was the first to whisper: “in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good and evil†— can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An “adversary†to Jehovah the “personating spirit,†he still remains in esoteric truth the ever-loving “Messenger†(the angel), the Seraphim and Cherubim who both knew well, and loved still more, and who conferred on us spiritual, instead of physical immortality — the latter a kind of static immortality that would have transformed man into an undying “Wandering Jew.“
As narrated in King’s “Gnostics,†“Ilda-Baoth, whom several sects regarded as the God of Moses, was not a pure spirit, he was ambitious and proud, and rejecting the spiritual light of the middle space offered him by his mother Sophia-Achamoth, he set himself to create a world of his own. Aided by his sons, the six planetary genii, he fabricated man, but this one proved a failure. It was a monster, soulless, ignorant, and crawling on all fours on the ground like a material beast. Ilda-Baoth was forced to implore the help of his spiritual mother. She communicated to him a ray of her divine light, and so animated man and endowed him with a soul. And now began the animosity of Ilda-Baoth toward his own creature. Following the impulse of the divine light, man soared higher and higher in his aspirations; very soon he began presenting not the image of his creator Ilda-Baoth but rather that of the Supreme Being, the ‘primitive man,’ Ennoia. Then the Demiurgos was filled with rage and envy; and fixing his jealous eye on the abyss of matter, his looks envenomed with passion were suddenly reflected as in a mirror; the reflection became animate, and there arose out of the abyss Satan, serpent, Ophiomorphos—‘the embodiment of envy and cunning. He is the union of all that is most base in matter, with the hate, envy, and craft of a spiritual intelligence.’†This is the exoteric rendering of the Gnostics, and the allegory, though a sectarian version, is suggestive, and seems true to life. It is the natural deduction from the dead letter text of chapter iii. of Genesis.
Hence the allegory of Prometheus, who steals the divine fire so as to allow men to proceed consciously on the path of spiritual evolution, thus transforming the most perfect of animals on earth into a potential god, and making him free to “take the kingdom of heaven by violence.†Hence also, the curse pronounced by Zeus against Prometheus, and by Jehovah-Il-da-Baoth against his “rebellious son,†Satan. The cold, pure snows of the Caucasian mountain and the never-dying, singeing fire and flames of an extinguishable hell. Two poles, yet the same idea; the dual aspect of a refined torture: a fire producer — the personified emblem of “phosphoros†of the astral fire and light in the anima mundi— (that element of which the German materialist philosopher Moleschott said: “ohne phosphor kein gedanke,†i.e., without phosphorus no thought), burning in the fierce flames of his terrestrial passions; the conflagration fired by his Thought, discerning as it now does good from evil, and yet a slave to the passions of its earthly Adam; feeling the vulture of doubt and full consciousness gnawing at its heart — a Prometheus indeed, because a conscious, hence a responsible entity. 126 The curse of life is great, yet how few are those men, outside some Hindu and Sufi mystics, who would exchange all the tortures of conscious life, all the evils of a responsible existence, for the unconscious perfection of a passive (objectively) incorporeal being, or even the universal static Inertia personified in Brahmâ during his “night’s†rest. For, to quote from an able article by one 127 who, confusing the planes of existence and consciousness, fell a victim to it:
“Satan, or Lucifer, represents the active, or, as M. Jules Baissac calls it, the ‘Centrifugal Energy of the Universe’ in a cosmic sense. He is Fire, Light, Life, Struggle, Effort, Thought, Consciousness, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence. At the same time he is pain, which is the Re-action of the pleasure of action, and death — which is the revolution of life — Satan, burning in his own hell, produced by the fury of his own momentum — the expansive disintegration of the nebulæ which is to concentrate into new worlds. And fitly is he again and again baffled by the eternal Inertia of the passive energy of the Kosmos— the inexorable ‘I AM’ — the flint from which the sparks are beaten out. Fitly is he . . . and his adherents . . . consigned to the ‘sea of fire,’ because it is the Sun (in one sense only in the Cosmic allegory), the fount of life in our system, where they are purified (disintegrated) and churned up to re-arrange them for another life (the resurrection); that Sun which, as the origin of the active principle of our Earth, is at once the Home and the Source of the Mundane Satan. . .†To demonstrate furthermore the accuracy of Baissac’s general theory (in Le Diable et Satan) cold is known to have a ‘Centripetal’ effect. “Under the influence of cold everything contracts. . . . Under it life hybernates, or dies out, thought congeals, and fire is extinguished. Satan is immortal in his own Fire-Sea — it is only in the Nifl-heim’ (the cold Hell of the Scandinavian Eddas) of the ‘I AM’ that he cannot exist. But for all that there is a kind of Immortal Existence in the Nifl-heim, and that existence must be painless and peaceful, because it is Unconscious and Inactive. In the Kingdom of Jehovah (if this God were all that the Jews and Christians claim for him) there is no Misery, no War, no marrying and giving in marriage, no change, no Individual Consciousness. 128 All is absorbed in the spirit of the most Powerful. It is emphatically a kingdom of Peace and loyal Submission as that of the ‘Arch-Rebel’ is one of War and Revolution. . . It (the former) is in fact what Theosophy calls Nirvana. But then Theosophy teaches that separation from the Primal Source having once occurred, Re-union can only be achieved by Will Effort — which is distinctly Satanic in the sense of this essay.â€
It is “Satanic†from the standpoint of orthodox Romanism, for it is owing to the prototype of that which became in time the Christian Devil — to the Radiant Archangels, Dhyans-Chohans, who refused to create, because they wanted Man to become his own creator and an immortal god — that men can reach Nirvana and the haven of heavenly divine Peace.
To close this rather lengthy comment, the Secret Doctrine teaches that the Fire-Devas, the Rudras, and the Kumâras, the “Virgin-Angels,†(to whom Michael and Gabriel, the Archangels, both belong), the divine “Rebels†— called by the all-materializing and positive Jews, the Nahash or “Deprived†— preferred the curse of incarnation and the long cycles of terrestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery (even if unconscious) of the beings (evolved as shadows out of their Brethren) through the semi-passive energy of their too spiritual Creators. If “man’s uses of life should be such as neither to animalize nor to spiritualize, but to humanize Self,†129 before he can do so, he must be born human not angelic. Hence, tradition shows the celestial Yogis offering themselves as voluntary victims in order to redeem Humanity — created god-like and perfect at first — and to endow him with human affections and aspirations. To do this they had to give up their natural status and, descending on our globe, take up their abode on it for the whole cycle of the Mahayuga, thus exchanging their impersonal individualities for individual personalities — the bliss of sidereal existence for the curse of terrestrial life. This voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose nature was Knowledge and Love, was construed by the exoteric theologies into a statement that shows “the rebel angels hurled down from heaven into the darkness of Hell†— our Earth. Hindu philosophy hints at the truth by teaching that the Asuras hurled down by Siva, are only in an intermediate state in which they prepare for higher degrees of purification and redemption from their wretched condition; but Christian theology, claiming to be based on the rock of divine love, charity, and justice of him it appeals to as its Saviour — has invented, to enforce that claim paradoxically, the dreary dogma of hell, that Archimedean lever of Roman Catholic philosophy.
As to Rabbinical Wisdom — than which there is none more positive, materialistic, or grossly terrestrial, as it brings everything down to physiological mysteries — it calls these Beings, the “Evil One;†and the Kabalists — Nahash, “Deprived,†as just said, and the Souls, that have thrown themselves, after having been alienated in Heaven from the Holy One, into an abyss at the dawn of their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend on earth. (Zohar iii., 61, C.)
And let me explain at once that our quarrel is not with the Zohar and the Kabala in their right interpretation — for the latter is ours — but only with the gross, pseudo-esoteric explanations of the later, and especially those of the Christian Kabalists.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 241–247
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123 The Fourth, and the Fifth from below beginning by the physical body; the Third and the Fourth, if we reckon from Atma.
124 “New Aspects of Life.â€
125 Angelic, Spiritual Essences, immortal in their being because unconditioned in Eternity; periodical and conditioned in their Manvantaric manifestations.
126 The history of Prometheus, Karma, and human consciousness, is found further on.
127 By an Englishman whose erratic genius killed him. The son of a Protestant clergyman, he became a Mahomedan, then a rabid atheist, and after meeting with a master, a Guru, he became a mystic; then a theosophist who doubted, despaired; threw up white for black magic, went insane and joined the Roman Church. Then again turning round, anathematized her, re-became an atheist, and died cursing humanity, knowledge, and God, in whom he had ceased to believe. Furnished with all the esoteric data to write his “War in Heaven,†he made a semi-political article out of it, mixing Malthus with Satan, and Darwin with the astral light. Peace be to his – Shell. He is a warning to the chelas who fail. His forgotten tomb may now be seen in the Mussulman burial ground of the Joonagad, Kathiawar, in India.
128 The author talks of the active, fighting, damning Jehovah as though he were a synonym of Parabrahm! We have quoted from this article to show where it dissents from theosophic teachings; otherwise it would be quoted some day against us, as everything published in the Theosophist generally is.
129 Explaining the Kabala, Dr. H. Pratt says, “Spirit was to man (to the Jewish Rabbin, rather?) a bodiless, disembodied, or deprived, and degraded being, and hence was termed by the ideograph Nahash ‘Deprived;’ represented as appearing to and seducing the human race – men through the Woman. . . . In the picture from this Nahash, this spirit was represented by a serpent, because from its destitution of bodily members, the Serpent was looked upon as a deprived and depraved and degraded creature†(“New Aspects,†p. 235). Symbol for symbol there are those who would prefer that of the serpent – the symbol of wisdom and eternity, deprived of limbs as it is – to the Jod- the poetical ideograph of Jehovah in the Kabala – the god of the male symbol of generation.
Selection 19
THE HINDU PURÂNAS ARE QUITE IN ACCORDANCE WITH PHYSICAL SCIENCE
The writer cannot give too much proof that the system of Cosmogony and Anthropogeny as described actually existed, that its records are preserved, and that it is found mirrored even in the modern versions of ancient Scriptures.
The Purânas on the one hand, and the Jewish Scriptures on the other, are based on the same scheme of evolution, which, read esoterically and expressed in modern language, would be found to be quite as scientific as much of what now passes current as the final word of recent discovery. The only difference between the two schemes is, that the Purânas, giving as much and perhaps more attention to the causes than to the effects, allude to the pre-Cosmic and pre-Genetic periods rather than to those of so-called Creation, whereas the Bible, saying only a few words of the former period, plunges forthwith into material genesis, and, while nearly skipping the pre-Adamic races, proceeds with its allegories concerning the Fifth Race.
Now, whatever the onslaught made on the Order of creation in Genesis, and its dead letter account certainly lends itself admirably to criticism,130 he who reads the Hindu Pur̢nas- its allegorical exaggerations notwithstanding Рwill find them quite in accordance with physical Science.
Even what appears to be the, on the face of it, perfectly nonsensical allegory of Brahmâ assuming the form of a Boar to rescue the Earth from under the waters, finds in the Secret Commentaries a perfectly scientific explanation, relating as it does to the many risings and sinkings, and the constant alternation of water and land from the earliest to the latest geological periods of our globe; for Science teaches us now that nine-tenths of the stratified formations of the earth’s crust have been gradually constructed beneath water, at the bottom of the seas. The ancient Aryans are credited with having known nothing whatever of natural history, geology, and so on. The Jewish race is, on the other hand, proclaimed even by its severest critic, an uncompromising opponent of the Bible (see “Modern Science and Modern Thought,†p. 337), to have the merit of having conceived the idea of monotheism “earlier, and retained it more firmly, than any of the less philosophical and more immoral religions (! !) of the “ancient world.†Only, while we find in Biblical esotericism physiological sexual mysteries symbolised, and very little more (something for which very little real philosophy is requisite), in the Purânas one may find the most scientific and philosophical “dawn of creation,†which, if impartially analyzed and rendered into plain language from its fairy tale-like allegories, would show that modern zoology, geology, astronomy, and nearly all the branches of modern knowledge, have been anticipated in the ancient Science, and were known to the philosophers in their general features, if not in such detail as at present!
Purânic astronomy, with all its deliberate concealment and confusion for the purpose of leading the profane off the real track, was shown even by Bentley to be a real science, and those who are versed in the mysteries of Hindu astronomical treatises will prove that the modern theories of the progressive condensation of nebulæ, nebulous stars, and suns, with the most minute details about the cyclic progress of asterisms – far more correct than Europeans have even now – for chronological and other purposes, were known in India to perfection.
IN THE PRESENT ROUND, MAN WAS ON EARTH FROM THE BEGINNING AND PRECEDED THE MAMMALS
If we turn to geology and zoology we find the same. What are all the myths and endless genealogies of the seven Prajâpati and their sons, the seven Rishis or Manus, and of their wives, sons and progeny, but a vast detailed account of the progressive development and evolution of animal creation, one species after the other? Were the highly philosophical and metaphysical Aryans – the authors of the most perfect philosophical systems of transcendental psychology, of Codes of Ethics, and such a grammar as Pânini’s, of the Sankhya and Vedanta systems, and a moral code (Buddhism), proclaimed by Max Müller the most perfect on earth – such fools, or children, as to lose their time in writing fairy tales, such tales as the Purânas now seem to be in the eyes of those who have not the remotest idea of their secret meaning? What is the fable, the genealogy and origin of Kasyapa, with his twelve wives, by whom he had a numerous and diversified progeny of nagas (serpents), reptiles, birds, and all kinds of living things, and who was thus the father of all kinds of animals, but a veiled record of the order of evolution in this round? So far, we do not see that any Orientalist ever had the remotest conception of the truths concealed under the allegories and personifications. “The Satapatha Brâhmana,†says one, “gives a not very intelligible account of Kasyapa’s origin. . . He was the son of Marîchi, the Son of Brahmâ, the father of Vivasvat, the father of Manu, the progenitor of mankind. . . . Having assumed the form of a tortoise, Prajâpati created offspring. That which he created he made akarot, hence the word kûrma (tortoise). Kasyapa means tortoise; hence men say, ‘All creatures are descendants of Kasyapa,’ etc., etc. (Hindu Classical Dictionary).
He was all this; he was also the father of Garuda, the bird, the “King of the feathered tribe,†who descends from, and is of one stock with the reptiles, the nagas, and who becomes their mortal enemy subsequently- as he is also a cycle, a period of time, when in the course of evolution the birds which developed from reptiles in their “struggle for life,†– “survival of the fittest,†etc., etc., turned in preference on those they issued from, to devour them- perhaps prompted by natural law, in order to make room for other and more perfect species. (Vide Part II, “Symbolism.â€)
In that admirable epitome of “Modern Science and Modern Thought†a lesson in natural history is offered to Mr. Gladstone, showing the utter variance with it of the Bible. The author remarks that Geology, commencing with -
“. . . the earliest known fossil, the Eozoon Canadense of the Laurentian, continued in a chain, every link of which is firmly welded, through the Silurian, with its abundance of molluscous, crustacean, and vermiform life and first indication of fishes; the Devonian, with its predominance of fish and first appearance of reptiles; the Mesozoic with its batrachians (or frog family); the Secondary formations, in which reptiles of the sea, land and air preponderated, and the first humble forms of vertebrate land animals began to appear; and finally, the Tertiary, in which mammalian life has become abundant, and type succeeding to type and species to species, are gradually differentiated and specialized, through the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods, until we arrive at the Glacial and Pre-historic periods, and at positive proof of the existence of man.â€
The same order, plus the description of animals unknown to modern science, is found in the commentaries on the Purânas in general, and in the Book of Dzyan- especially. The only difference, a grave one, no doubt – as implying a spiritual and divine nature of man independent of his physical body in this illusionary world, in which the false personality and its cerebral basis alone is known to orthodox psychology – is as follows. Having been in all the so-called “Seven creations,†allegorizing the seven evolutionary changes, or the subraces, we may call them, of the First Root-Race of Mankind- MAN was on earth in this Round from the beginning. Having passed through all the kingdoms of nature in the previous three Rounds,131 his physical frame – one adapted to the thermal conditions of those early periods – was ready to receive the divine Pilgrim at the first dawn of human life, i.e. 18,000,000 years ago. It is only at the mid-point of the 3rd Root Race that man was endowed with Manas. Once united, the two and then the three made one; for though the lower animals, from the amÅ“ba to man, received their monads, in which all the higher qualities are potential, all have to remain dormant till each reaches its human form, before which stage Manas (mind) has no development in them.132 In the animals every principle is paralysed, and in a fÅ“tus-like state, save the second (vital) and the third (the astral) and the rudiments of the fourth (Kama, which is desire, instinct), whose intensity and development varies and changes with the species. To the materialist wedded to the Darwinian theory, this will read like a fairy-tale, a mystification; to the believer in the inner, spiritual man, the statement will have nothing unnatural in it.
Now the writer is certain to meet what will be termed insuperable objections. We shall be told that the line of embryology, the gradual development of every individual life, and the progress of what is known to take place in the order of progressive stages of specialization – that all this is opposed to the idea of man preceding mammals. Man begins asthe humblest and most primitive vermiform creature,“from the primitive speck of protoplasm and the nucleated cell in which all life originates,†and “is developed through stages undistinguishable from those of fish, reptile and mammal, until the cell finally attains the highly specialized development of the quadrumanous, and last of all, of the human type.†(Laing, op cit, p. 335.)
This is perfectly scientific, and we have nothing against that, for all this relates to the shell of man – his body, which in its growth is subject, of course, like every other (once called) morphological unit, to such metamorphoses. It is not those who teach the transformation of the mineral atom through crystallization – which is the same function, and bears the same relation to its inorganic (so-called) upadhi (or basis) as the formation of cells to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect, and animal into man – it is not they who will reject this theory, as it will finally lead to the recognition of a Universal Deity in nature, ever-present and as ever invisible, and unknowable, and of intra-Cosmic gods, who all were men.133
But we would ask, what does science and its exact and now axiomatic discoveries prove against our Occult theory? Those who believe in the law of Evolution and gradual progressive development from a cell (which from a vital has become a morphological cell, until it awoke as protoplasm pure and simple) – these can surely never limit their belief to one line of evolution. The types of life are innumerable, and the progress of evolution, moreover, does not go at the same rate in every kind of species. The constitution of primordial matter in the Silurian age – we mean “primordial†matter of science – is the same in every essential particular, save its degree of present grossness, as the primordial living matter of today. Nor do we find that which ought to be found, if the now orthodox theory of Evolution were quite correct, namely, a constant, ever-flowing progress in every species of being. Instead of that, what does one see? While the intermediate groups of animal being all tend toward a higher type, and while specializations, now of one type and now of another, develop through the geological ages, change forms, assume new shapes, appear and disappear with a kaleidoscopic rapidity in the description of palæontologists from one period to another, the two solitary exceptions to the general rule are those at the two opposite poles of life and type, namely – MAN and the lower genera of being!
“Certain well-marked forms of living beings have existed through enormous epochs, surviving not only the changes of physical conditions, but persisting comparatively unaltered, while other forms of life have appeared and disappeared. Such forms may be termed ‘persistent types’ of life, and examples of them are abundant enough in both the animal and the vegetable worlds†(Huxley, “Proc. of R. Inst.,†Vol. III, p. 151).
Nevertheless, we are not given any good reason why Darwin links together reptiles, birds, amphibians, fishes, mollusca, etc., etc., as offshoots of a moneric ancestry. Nor are we told whether reptiles, for instance, are direct descendants of the amphibia, the latter of fishes, and fishes of lower forms – which they certainly are. For the Monads have passed through all these forms of being up to man, on every planet, in the Three preceding Rounds; every Round, as well as every subsequent Globe, from A to G, having been, and still having to be the arena of the same evolution, only repeated each time on a more solid material basis. Therefore the question, “What relation is there between the Third Round astral prototypes and ordinary physical development in the course of the origination of pre-mammalian organic species?†is easily answered. One is the shadowy prototype of the other, the preliminary, hardly defined, and evanescent sketch on the canvas of objects which are destined to receive the final and vivid form under the brush of the painter. The fish evolved into an amphibian – a frog – in the shadows of ponds, and man passed through all his metamorphoses on this Globe in the Third Round as he did in this, his Fourth Cycle. The Third Round types contributed to the formation of the types in this one. On strict analogy, the cycle of Seven Rounds in their work of the gradual formation of man through every kingdom of Nature are repeated on a microscopical scale in the first seven months of gestation of a future human being. Let the student think over and work out this analogy. As the seven months’ old unborn baby, though quite ready, yet needs two months more in which to acquire strength and consolidate, so man, having perfected his evolution during seven Rounds, remains two periods more in the womb of mother-Nature before he is born, or rather reborn a Dhyani, still more perfect than he was before he launched forth as a Monad on the newly built chain of worlds. Let the student ponder over this mystery, and then he will easily convince himself that, as there are also physical links between many classes, so there are precise domains wherein the astral merges into physical evolution. Of this Science breathes not one word. Man has evolved with and from the monkey, it says. But now see the contradiction.
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF SCIENCE
Huxley proceeds to point out plants, ferns, club mosses, some of them generically identical with those now living, which are met with in the carboniferous epoch, for “The cone of the oolitic Araucaria is hardly distinguishable from that of existing species.....Sub-kingdoms of animals yield the same instances. The globigerina of the Atlantic soundings is identical with the cretaceous species of the same genus . . . the tabulate corals of the Silurian epoch are wonderfully like the millepores of our own seas. . . . The arachnida, the highest group of which, the scorpions, is represented in the coal by a genus differing only from its living congeners only in . . . the eyes,†etc., etc., all of which may be closed with Dr. Carpenter’s authoritative statement about the Foraminifera. “There is no evidence,†he says, “of any fundamental modification or advance in the Foraminiferous type from the palæozoic period to the present time. . . . The Foraminiferous Fauna of our own series probably present a greater range of variety than existed at any previous period; but there is no indication of any tendency to elevation towards a higher type.†(“Introduction to the Study of the Foraminifera,†p. xi.)
Now, if there is no indication of change in the Foraminifera, a protozoon of the lowest type of life, mouthless and eyeless, except its greater variety now than before, man, who is on the uppermost rung of the ladder of being, indicates still less change, as we have seen, the skeleton of his Palæolithic ancestor being even found superior in some respects to his present frame. Where is, then, the claimed uniformity of law, the absolute rule for one species shading off into another, and, by insensible gradations, into higher types? We see Sir William Thomson admitting as much as 400,000,000 of years in the earth’s history, since the surface of the globe became sufficiently cool to permit of the presence of living things;134 and during that enormous lapse of time in the Oolitic period alone, the so-called “age of reptiles,†we find a most extraordinary variety and abundance of Saurian forms, the Amphibian type reaching its highest developments. We learn of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri in the lakes and rivers, and of winged crocodiles or lizards flying in the air. After which, in the Tertiary period “we find the Mammalian type exhibiting remarkable divergences from previously existing forms . . . . Mastodons, Megatheriums, and other unwieldy denizens of the ancient forests and plains; and subsequently,†are notified of “the gradual modification of one of the ramifications of the Quadrumanous order, into those beings from whom primeval man himself may claim to have been evolved.†(“The Beginnings of Lifeâ€)
He may; but no one, except materialists, can see why he should, as there is not the slightest necessity for it, nor is such an evolution warranted by facts, for those most interested in the proofs thereof confess their utter failure to find one single fact to support their theory. There is no need for the numberless types of life to represent the members of one progressive series. They are “the products of various and different evolutional divergences, taking place now in one direction and now in another.†Therefore it is far more justifiable to say that the monkey evolved into the Quadrumanous order, than that primeval man, who has remained stationary in his human specialization ever since his fossil is found in the oldest strata, and of whom no variety is found save in colour and facial type has developed from a common ancestor together with the ape.
IDENTITY OF HUMAN AND ANIMAL EMBRYOS
That man originates like other animals in a cell and develops “through stages undistinguishable from those of fish, reptile, and mammal until the cell attains the highly specialized development of the quadrumanous and at last the human type,†is an Occult axiom thousands of years old. The Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a man; a man a God,†holds good throughout the ages. Hæckel, in his Shöpfungsgeschichte, shows a double drawing representing two embryos – that of a dog six weeks old, and that of a man, eight weeks. The two, except the slight difference in the head, larger and wider about the brain in the man, are undistinguishable. “In fact, we may say that every human being passes through the stage of fish and reptile before arriving at that of mammal and finally of man. If we take him up at the more advanced stage where the embryo has already passed the reptilian form . . . for a considerable time, the line of development remains the same as that of other mammalia. The rudimentary limbs are exactly similar, the five fingers and toes develop in the same way, and the resemblance after the first four weeks’ growth between the embryo of a man and a dog is such that it is scarcely possible to distinguish them. Even at the age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal with a tail hardly to be distinguished from an embryo puppy†(“Modern Science and Modern Thought,†p. 171).
Why, then, not make man and dog evolve from a common ancestor, or from a reptile – a Naga, instead of coupling man with the quadrumana? This would be just as logical as the other, and more so. The shape and the stages of the human embryo have not changed since historical times, and these metamorphoses were known to Æsculapius and Hippocrates as well as to Mr. Huxley. Therefore, since the Kabalists had remarked it since prehistoric times, it is no new discovery. In “Isis Unveiled,†Vol. I, p. 389, it is noticed and half explained.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 251 – 259
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130 Mr. Gladstone’s unfortunate attempt to reconcile the Genetic account with science (see “Nineteenth Century,†“Dawn of Creation,†and the “Proem to Genesis,†1886) has brought upon him the Jovian thunderbolt hurled by Mr. Huxley. The dead-letter account warranted no such attempt, and his fourfold order, or division of animated creation, has turned into the stone which, instead of killing the fly on the sleeping friend’s brow, killed the man instead. Mr. Gladstone killed Genesis for ever. But this does not prove that there is no esotericism in the latter. The fact that the Jews and all the Christians, the modern as well as the early sects, have accepted the narrative literally for two thousand years, shows only their ignorance, and shows the great ingenuity and constructive ability of the initiated Rabbis, who have built the two accounts— the Elohistic and the Jehovistic—esoterically, and have purposely confused the meaning by the vowelless glyphs or word-signs in the original text. The six days (yom) of creation do mean six periods of evolution, and the seventh that of culmination of perfection (not of rest), and refer to the seven Rounds and the seven Races with a distinct “creation†in each; though the use of the words boker, dawn or morning, and crib, evening twilight—which have esoterically the same meaning as sandhya, twilight, in Sanskrit—have led to a charge of the most crass ignorance of the order of evolution.
131 “Follow the law of analogy‗ the Masters teach Atma-Buddhi is dual and Manas is triple, inasmuch as the former has two aspects, and the latter three, i.e. as a principle per se, which gravitates, in its higher aspect, to Atma-Buddhi, and follows, in its lower nature, Kama, the seat of terrestrial and animal desires and passions. Now compare the evolution of the Races, the First and the Second, which are of the nature of Atma-Buddhi, their passive Spiritual progeny, and the Third Root-Race, which shows three distinct divisions or aspects physiologically and psychically: the earliest, sinless, the middle portions awakening to intelligence, and the third and last decidedly animal, i.e. Manas succumbs to the temptations of Kama.
132 Men are made complete only during their third, toward the fourth cycle (race). They are made “gods†for good and evil, and responsible only when the two arcs meet (after 3½ rounds towards the fifth Race). They are made so by the Nirmânakaya (spiritual or astral remains) of the Rudra -Kumâras, “cursed to be reborn on earth again, meaning— doomed in their natural turn to reincarnation in the higher ascending arc of the terrestrial cycle.†(Commentary IX)
133 The whole trouble is this: neither physiologists nor pathologists will recognize that the cell-germinating substance (the cytoblastema) and the mother-lye from which crystals originate, are one and the same essence, save in differentiation for purposes.
134 “Trans. of Geolog. Soc. of Glasgow,†Vol. III. Very strangely, however, he has just changed his opinion. The sun, he says, is only 1.5,000,000 old.
Selection 20
THE EMBRYO OF MAN CONTAINS IN ITSELF THE TOTALITY OF THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE
As the embryo of man has no more of the ape in it than of any other mammal, but contains in itself the totality of the kingdoms of nature, and since it seems to be “a persistent type†of life, far more so than even the Foraminifera, it seems as illogical to make him evolve from the ape as it would be to trace his origin to the frog or the dog. Both Occult and Eastern philosophies believe in evolution, which Manu and Kapila135 give with far more clearness than any scientist does at present. No need to repeat that which was fully debated in Isis Unveiled, as the reader may find all these arguments and the description of the basis on which all the Eastern doctrines of Evolution rested, in our earlier books.136 But no Occultist can accept the unreasonable proposition that all the now existing forms, “from the structureless Amœba to man,†are the direct lineal descendants of organisms which lived millions and millions of years before the birth of man, in the pre-Silurian epochs, in the sea or land-mud.
The Occultists believe in an inherent law of progressive development.137 Mr. Darwin never did, and says so himself.
On page 145 of the “Origin of Species†we find him stating that, since there can be no advantageâ€to the infusorian animalcule or an intestinal worm . . . to become highly organized,†therefore, “natural selection,†not including necessarily progressive development- leaves the animalcule and the worm (the “persistent typesâ€) quiet.
There does not appear much uniform law in such behaviour of Nature, and it looks more like the discriminative action of some Super-Natural selection, perhaps that aspect of Karma, which Eastern Occultists would call the “Law of Retardation,†may have something to do with it.
But there is every reason to doubt whether Mr. Darwin himself ever gave such an importance to his law – as is given to it now by his atheistic followers. The knowledge of the various living forms in the geological periods that have gone by is very meagre. The reasons given for this by Dr. Bastian are very suggestive: (1) On account of the imperfect manner in which the several forms may be represented in the strata pertaining to the period; (2) on account of the extremely limited nature of the explorations which have been made in these imperfectly representative strata; and (3) because so many parts of the record are absolutely inaccessible to us – nearly all beneath the Silurian system having been blotted out by time, whilst those two-thirds of the earth’s surface in which the remaining strata are to be found are now covered over by seas.†Hence Mr. Darwin says himself:
“For my part, following out Lyell’s metaphor, I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved, and of each page only here and there a few lines.â€
A “MISSING LINK†THAT WILL PROVE THE EXISTING THEORY WILL NEVER BE FOUND BY PALÆONTOLOGISTS
It is not on such meagre data, certainly, that the last word of Science can be said. Nor is it on any ground of human pride or unreasonable belief in man’s representing even here on earth – (in our period, perhaps) – the highest type of life, that Occultism denies that all the preceding forms of human life belonged to types lower than our own, for it is not so. But simply because the “missing link,†such as to prove the existing theory undeniably, will never be found by palæontologists. Believing as we do that man has evolved from, and passed through (during the preceding Rounds), the lowest forms of every life, vegetable and animal, on earth, there is nothing very degrading in the idea of having the orang-outang as an ancestor of our physical form. Quite the reverse; as it would forward the Occult doctrine with regard to the final evolution of everything in terrestrial nature into man, most irresistibly. One may even enquire how it is that biologists and anthropologists, having once firmly accepted the theory of the descent of man from the ape – how it is that they have hitherto left untouched the future evolution of the existing apes into man? This is only a logical sequence of the first theory, unless Science would make of man a privileged being and his evolution a non-precedent in nature, quite a special and unique case. And that is what all this leads physical Science to. The reason, however, why the Occultists reject the Darwinian, and especially the Hæckelian, hypothesis is because it is the ape which is, in sober truth, a special and unique instance, not man. The pithecoid is an accidental creation, a forced growth, the result of an unnatural process.
The occult doctrine is, we think, more logical. It teaches a cyclic, never varying law in nature, the latter having no personal “special design,†but acting on a uniform plan that prevails through the whole manvantaric period and deals with the land worm as it deals with man. Neither the one nor the other have sought to come into being, hence both are under the same evolutionary law, and both have to progress according to Karmic law. Both have started from the same neutral centre of Life and both have to re-merge into it at the consummation of the cycle.
It is not denied that in the preceding Round man was a gigantic ape-like creature; and when we say “man†we ought perhaps to say, the rough mould that was developing for the use of man in this Round only – the middle, or the transition point of which we have hardly reached. Nor was man what he is now during the first two and a half Root-Races. That point he reached, as said before, only 18,000,000 years ago, during the secondary period, as we claim.
Till then he was, according to tradition and Occult teaching, “a god on earth who had fallen into matter,†or generation. This may or may not be accepted, since the Secret Doctrine does not impose itself as an infallible dogma; and since, whether its prehistoric records are accepted or rejected, it has nothing to do with the question of the actual man and his inner nature, the Fall mentioned above having left no original sin on Humanity. But all this has been sufficiently dealt with.
Furthermore, we are taught that the transformations through which man passed on the descending arc – which is centrifugal for spirit and centripetal for matter – and those he prepares to go through, henceforward, on his ascending path, which will reverse the direction of the two forces – viz. matter will become centrifugal and spirit centripetal – that all such transformations are next in store for the anthropoid ape also, all those, at any rate, who have reached the remove next to man in this Round – and these will all be men in the Fifth Round, as present men inhabited ape-like forms in the Third, the preceding Round.
Behold, then, in the modern denizens of the great forests of Sumatra the degraded and dwarfed examples – “blurred copies,†as Mr. Huxley has it – of ourselves, as we (the majority of mankind) were in the earliest sub-races of the Fourth Root-Race during the period of what is called the “Fall into generation.†The ape we know is not the product of natural evolution but an accident, a cross-breed between an animal being, or form, and man. As has been shown in the present volume (Anthropogenesis), it is the speechless animal that first started sexual connection, having been the first to separate into males and females. Nor was it intended by Nature that man should follow the bestial example – as shown by the comparatively painless procreation of their species by the animals, and the terrible suffering and danger of the same in the woman. The Ape is, indeed, as remarked in Isis Unveiled (Vol. II, p. 278) “a transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family – a hybrid branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the latter†– or man. The apes are millions of years later than the speaking human being, and are the latest contemporaries of our Fifth Race. Thus, it is most important to remember that the Egos of the apes are entities compelled by their Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from the bestiality of the latest Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They are entities who had already reached the “human stage†before this Round. Consequently, they form an exception to the general rule. The numberless traditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of animal men. The animal “Eves†were their foremothers, and the human “Adams†their forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or Lilatu, Adam’s first wife, whom the Talmud describes as a charming woman, with long wavy hair, i.e. a female hairy animal of a character now unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic allegories is called the female reflection of Samael, Samael-Lilith, or man-animal united, a being called Hayo Bischat, the Beast or Evil Beast (Zohar). It is from this unnatural union that the present apes descended. The latter are truly “speechless men,†and will become speaking animals (or men of a lower order) in the Fifth Round, while the adepts of a certain school hope that some of the Egos of the apes of a higher intelligence will reappear at the close of the Sixth Root-Race. What their form will be is of secondary consideration. The form means nothing. Species and genera of the flora, fauna, and the highest animal, its crown – man, change and vary according to the environments and climatic variations, not only with every Round, but every Root-Race likewise, as well as after every geological cataclysm that puts an end to, or produces a turning point in the latter. In the Sixth Root-Race, the fossils of the Orang, the Gorilla, and the Chimpanzee will be those of extinct quadrumanous mammals, and new forms – though fewer and ever wider apart as ages pass on and the close of the Manvantara approaches – will develop from the “c ast off†types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of the mire of physical, life. There were none before man, and they will be extinct before the Seventh Race develops. Karma will lead on the monads of the unprogressed men of our race and lodge them in the newly evolved human frames of the thus physiologically regenerated baboon. (But see Part III, Addenda.)
This will take place, of course, millions of years hence. But the picture of this cyclic precession of all that lives and breathes now on earth, of each species in its turn, is a true one, and needs no “special creation†or miraculous formation of man, beast, and plant ex nihilo.
This is how Occult Science explains the absence of any link between ape and man, and shows the former evolving from the latter.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 259 – 263
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135 Hence the philosophy in the allegory of the 7, 10, and finally 21 Prajâpati, Rishis, Munis, etc., who all are made the fathers of various things and beings. The order of the seven classes or orders of plants, animals, and even inanimate things, given at random in the Purânas, is found in several commentaries in the correct rotation. Thus, Prithu is the father of the Earth. He milks her, and makes her bear every kind of grain and vegetable, all enumerated and specified. Kasyapa is the father of all the reptiles, snakes, demons, etc., etc.
136 See Vol. I, p. 151, et seq., about the tree of evolution, the “Mundane Tree.â€
137 Checked and modified, however, by the Law of Retardation, which imposes restriction on the advance of all species when a Higher Type makes its appearance.
Selection 21
THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER
STANZA X – (Cont’d)
40. THEN THE THIRD AND FOURTH (races) BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE. WE ARE THE KINGS, WE ARE THE GODS (a).
41. THEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK AT. WIVES FROM THE “MINDLESS,†THE NARROW-HEADED. THEY BRED MONSTERS, WICKED DEMONS, MALE AND FEMALE. ALSO KHADO (Dakini) WITH LITTLE MINDS (b).
42. THEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR HUMAN BODY. MALE AND FEMALE THEY WORSHIPPED (c). THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER (d).
(a) Such were the first truly physical men, whose first characteristic was – pride! It is the Third Race and the gigantic Atlanteans, the memory of whom lingered from one generation and race to another generation and race down to the days of Moses, and which found an objective form in those antediluvian giants, those terrible sorcerers and magicians, of whom the Roman Church has preserved such vivid and at the same time distorted legends. One who has read and studied the Commentaries on the archaic doctrine, will easily recognise in some Atlanteans, the prototypes of the Nimrods, the Builders of the Tower of Babel, the Hamites, and all these tutti quanti of “accursed memory,†as theological literature expresses it: of those, in short, who have furnished posterity with the orthodox types of Satan. And this leads us naturally to inquire into the religious ethics of these early races, mythical as these may be.
What was the religion of the Third and Fourth Races? In the common acceptation of the term, neither the Lemurians, nor yet their progeny, the Lemuro-Atlanteans, had any, as they knew no dogma, nor had they to believe on faith. No sooner had the mental eye of man been opened to understanding, than the Third Race felt itself one with the ever-present as the ever to be unknown and invisible ALL, the One Universal Deity. Endowed with divine powers, and feeling in himself his inner God, each felt he was a Man-God in his nature, though an animal in his physical Self. The struggle between the two began from the very day they tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Wisdom; a struggle for life between the spiritual and the psychic, the psychic and the physical. Those who conquered the lower principles by obtaining mastery over the body, joined the “Sons of Light.†Those who fell victims to their lower natures, became the slaves of Matter. From “Sons of Light and Wisdom†they ended by becoming the “Sons of Darkness.†They had fallen in the battle of mortal life with Life immortal, and all those so fallen became the seed of the future generations of Atlanteans. 138
At the dawn of his consciousness, the man of the Third Root Race had thus no beliefs that could be called religion. That is to say, he was equally as ignorant of “gay religions, full of pomp and gold†as of any system of faith or outward worship. But if the term is to be defined as the binding together of the masses in one form of reverence paid to those we feel higher than ourselves, of piety – as a feeling expressed by a child toward a loved parent – then even the earliest Lemurians had a religion – and a most beautiful one – from the very beginning of their intellectual life. Had they not their bright gods of the elements around them, and even within themselves? 139 Was not their childhood passed with, nursed and tendered by those who had given them life and called them forth to intelligent, conscious life? We are assured it was so, and we believe it. For the evolution of Spirit into matter could never have been achieved; nor would it have received its first impulse, had not the bright Spirits sacrificed their own respective super-ethereal essences to animate the man of clay, by endowing each of his inner principles with a portion, or rather, a reflection of that essence. The Dhyanis of the Seven Heavens (the seven planes of Being) are the NOUMENOI of the actual and the future Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven Powers of nature – the grosser effects of which are perceived by us in what Science is pleased to call the “modes of motion†– the imponderable forces and what not – are the still higher noumenoi of still higher Hierarchies.
THE GOLDEN AGE
It was the “Golden Age†in those days of old, the age when the “gods walked the earth, and mixed freely with the mortals.†Since then, the gods departed (i.e., became invisible), and later generations ended by worshipping their kingdoms – the Elements.
It was the Atlanteans, the first progeny of semi-divine man after his separation into sexes – hence the first-begotten and humanly-born mortals – who became the first “Sacrificers†to the god of matter. They stand in the far-away dim past, in ages more than prehistoric, as the prototype on which the great symbol of Cain was built, 140 as the first anthropomorphists who worshipped form and matter. That worship degenerated very soon into self-worship, thence led to phallicism, or that which reigns supreme to this day in the symbolisms of every exoteric religion of ritual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve became matter, or furnished the soil, Cain and Abel – the latter the life-bearing soil, the former “the tiller of that ground or field.“
Thus the first Atlantean races, born on the Lemurian Continent, separated from their earliest tribes into the righteous and the unrighteous; into those who worshipped the one unseen Spirit of Nature, the ray of which man feels within himself – or the Pantheists, and those who offered fanatical worship to the Spirits of the Earth, the dark Cosmic, anthropomorphic Powers, with whom they made alliance. These were the earliest Gibborim, “the mighty men of renown in those days†(Gen. vi.); who become with the Fifth Race the Kabirim: Kabiri with the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, Titans with the Greeks, and Râkshasas and Daityas with the Indian races.
Such was the secret and mysterious origin of all the subsequent and modern religions, especially of the worship of the later Hebrews for their tribal god. At the same time this sexual religion was closely allied to, based upon and blended, so to say, with astronomical phenomena. The Lemurians gravitated toward the North Pole, or the Heaven of their Progenitors (the Hyperborean Continent); the Atlanteans, toward the Southern Pole, the pit, cosmically and terrestrially – whence breathe the hot passions blown into hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. The two poles were denominated, by the ancients, Dragons and Serpents – hence good and bad Dragons and Serpents, and also the names given to the “Sons of God†(Sons of Spirit and Matter): the good and bad Magicians. This is the origin of this dual and triple nature in man. The legend of the “Fallen Angels†in its esoteric signification, contains the key to the manifold contradictions of human character; it points to the secret of man’s self-consciousness; it is the angle-iron on which hinges his entire life-cycle; – the history of his evolution and growth.
On a firm grasp of this doctrine depends the correct understanding of esoteric anthropogenesis. It gives a clue to the vexed question of the Origin of Evil; and shows how man himself is the separator of the ONE into various contrasted aspects.
The reader, therefore, will not be surprised if so considerable space is devoted in each case to an attempt to elucidate this difficult and obscure subject. A good deal must necessarily be said on its symbological aspect; because, by so doing, hints are given to the thoughtful student for his own investigations, and more light can thus be suggested than it is possible to convey in the technical phrases of a more formal, philosophical exposition. The “Fallen Angels,†so-called, are Humanity itself. The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, has never had any being before the appearance of physical conscious man. It is man who has begotten, nurtured, and allowed the fiend to develop in his heart; he, again, who has contaminated the indwelling god in himself, by linking the pure spirit with the impure demon of matter. And, if the Kabalistic saying, “Demon est Deus inversus†finds its metaphysical and theoretical corroboration in dual manifested nature, its practical application is found in Mankind alone.
NO DEVILS OUTSIDE HUMANITY
Thus it has now become self-evident that postulating as we do (a) the appearance of man before that of other mammalia, and even before the ages of the huge reptiles; (b) periodical deluges and glacial periods owing to the karmic disturbance of the axis; and chiefly (c) the birth of man from a Superior Being, or what materialism would call a supernatural Being, though it is only super-human – it is evident that our teachings have very few chances of an impartial hearing. Add to it the claim that a portion of the Mankind in the Third Race – all those Monads of men who had reached the highest point of Merit and Karma in the preceding Manvantara – owed their psychic and rational natures to divine Beings hypostasizing into their fifth principles, and the Secret Doctrine must lose caste in the eyes of not only Materialism but even of dogmatic Christianity. For, no sooner will the latter have learned that those angels are identical with their “Fallen†Spirits, than the esoteric tenet will be proclaimed most terribly heretical and pernicious. 141 The divine man dwelt in the animal, and, therefore, when the physiological separation took place in the natural course of evolution – when also “all the animal creation was untied,†and males were attracted to females -that race fell: not because they had eaten of the fruit of Knowledge and knew good from evil, but because they knew no better. Propelled by the sexless creative instinct, the early sub-races had evolved an intermediate race in which, as hinted in the Stanzas, the higher Dhyan Chohans had incarnated. 142 “When we have ascertained the extent of the Universe and learnt to know all that there is in it, we will multiply our race,†answer the Sons of Will and Yoga to their brethren of the same race, who invite them to do as they do. This means that the great Adepts and Initiated ascetics will “multiply,†i.e., once more produce Mind-born immaculate Sons – in the Seventh Root-Race.
It is so stated in the Purânas; in Adi Parvan (p. 115) and Brahmâ Purâna, etc. In one portion of the Pushkara Mahatmya, moreover, the separation of the sexes is allegorized by Daksha, who, seeing that his will-born progeny (the “Sons of passive Yogaâ€), will not create men, “converts half himself into a female by whom he begets daughters,†the future females of the Third Race which begat the giants of Atlantis, the Fourth Race, so called. In the Vishnu Purâna it is simply said that Daksha, the father of mankind, established sexual intercourse as the means of peopling the world.
Happily for the human race the “Elect Race†had already become the vehicle of incarnation of the (intellectually and spiritually) highest Dhyanis before Humanity had become quite material. When the last sub-races – save some lowest – of the Third Race had perished with the great Lemurian Continent, “the seeds of the Trinity of Wisdom†had already acquired the secret of immortality on Earth, that gift which allows the same great personality to step ad libitum from one worn-out body into another.
(b) The first war that earth knew, the first human gore shed, was the result of man’s eyes and senses being opened; which made him see that the daughters of his Brethren were fairer than his own, and their wives also. There were rapes committed before that of the Sabines, and Menelauses robbed of their Helens before the Fifth Race was born. Titans or giants were the stronger; their adversaries, the wiser. This took place during the Fourth Race – that of the giants.
For “there were giants†in the days of old, indeed 143 and the evolutionary series of the animal world is a warrant that the same thing took place within the human races. Lower still in the order of creation we find witnesses for the same in the flora going pari passu with the fauna in respect of size. The pretty ferns we collect and dry among the leaves of our favourite volumes are the descendants of the gigantic ferns which grew during the carboniferous period.
Scriptures, and fragments of philosophical and scientific works Рin short, almost every record that has come down to us from antiquity contain references to giants. No one can fail to recognize the Atlanteans of the Secret Doctrine in the R̢kshasas of Lanka Рthe opponents conquered by Rama. Are these accounts no better than the production of empty fancy? Let us give the subject a few moments of attention.
ARE GIANTS A FICTION?
Here, again, we come into collision with Science. The latter denies, so far, that man has ever been much larger than the average of the tall and powerful men one meets with occasionally now. Dr. Henry Gregor denounces such traditions as resting upon ill-digested facts. Instances of mistaken judgments are brought forward. Thus, in 1613, in a locality called from time immemorial the “Field of Giants†in the Lower Dauphine (France, four miles from St. Romans) enormous bones were found deeply buried in the sandy soil. They were attributed to human remains, and even to Teutobochus, the Teuton chief slain by Marius. But Cuvier’s later research proved them to be the fossil remains of the Dinotherium giganteum of the family of tapirs, 18 feet long. Ancient buildings are pointed to as an evidence that our earliest ancestors were not much larger than we are, the entrance doors being of no larger size then than they are now. The tallest man of antiquity known to us was the Roman Emperor Maximus, we are told, whose height was only seven and a half feet. Nevertheless, in our modern day we see every year men taller than this. The Hungarian who exhibited himself in the London Pavilion was nearly 9 feet high. In America a giant was shown 9½ feet tall; the Montenegrin Danilo was 8 feet 7 inches. In Russia and Germany one often sees men in the lower classes above 7 feet. And as the ape-theorists are told by Mr. Darwin that the species of animals which result from cross breeding “always betray a tendency to revert to the original type,†they ought to apply the same law to men. Had there been no giants as a rule in ancient days, there would be none now.
All this applies only to the historic period. And if the skeletons of the prehistoric ages have failed so far (which is positively denied) to prove undeniably in the opinion of science the claim here advanced, it is but a question of time. Moreover, as already stated, human stature is little changed since the last racial cycle. The Giants of old are all buried under the Oceans, and hundreds of thousands of years of constant friction by water would reduce to dust and pulverize a brazen, far more a human skeleton. But whence the testimony of well-known classical writers, of philosophers and men who, otherwise, never had the reputation for lying? Let us bear in mind, furthermore, that before the year 1847, when Boucher de Perthes forced it upon the attention of Science, almost nothing was known of fossil man, for archaeology complacently ignored his existence. Of Giants who were “in the earth in those days†of old, the Bible alone had spoken to the wise men of the West, the Zodiac being the solitary witness called upon to corroborate the statement in the persons of Atlas or Orion, whose mighty shoulders are said to support the world.
Nevertheless, even the “Giants†have not been left without their witnesses, and one may as well examine both sides of the question. The three Sciences – Geological, Sidereal and Scriptural (the latter in its Universal character) – may furnish us with the needed proofs. To begin with geology; it has already confessed that the older the excavated skeletons, the larger, taller and the more powerful their structure. This is already a certain proof in hand. “All those bones†writes Frederic de Rougemont – who, though believing too piously in Noah’s ark and the Bible, is none the less a Scientific witness – “all those skeletons found in the Departments of the Gard, in Austria, Liege, etc., etc. . . those skulls which remind all of the negro type. . . and which by reason of that type might be mistaken for animals, have all belonged to men of very high stature“. . . (“Histoire de la Terre,†p. 154) The same is repeated by Lartet, an authority, who attributes a tall stature to those who were submerged in the deluge (not necessarily “Noah’sâ€) and a smaller stature to the races which lived subsequently.
As for the evidence furnished by ancient writers, we need not stop at that of Tertullian, who assures us that in his day a number of giants were found at Carthage – for, before his testimony can be accepted, his own identity 144 and actual existence would have to be proven. But we may turn to the scientific journals of 1858, which spoke of a sarcophagus of giants found that year on the site of that same city. As to the ancient pagan writers – we have the evidence of Philostratus, who speaks of a giant skeleton twenty-two cubits long, as well as of another of twelve cubits, seen by himself at Sigeus. This skeleton may perhaps not have belonged, as believed by Protesilaus, to the giant killed by Apollo at the siege of Troy; nevertheless, it was that of a giant, as well as that other one discovered by Messecrates of Stire, at Lemnos – “horrible to behold,†according to Philostratus (Heroica, p. 35). Is it possible that prejudice would carry Science so far as to class all these men as either fools or liars?
Pliny speaks of a giant in whom he thought he recognised Orion, the son of Ephialtes (Nat. Hist., vol. VII, ch. xvi.). Plutarch declares that Sertorius saw the tomb of Antæus, the giant; and Pausanias vouches for the actual existence of the tombs of Asterius and of Geryon, or Hillus, son of Hercules – all giants, Titans and mighty men. Finally the Abbé Pègues (cited in de Mirville’s Pneumatologie) affirms in his curious work on “The Volcanoes of Greece†that “in the neighbourhood of the volcanoes of the isle of Thera, giants with enormous skulls were found laid out under colossal stones, the erection of which must have necessitated everywhere the use of titanic powers, and which tradition associates in all countries with the ideas about giants, volcanoes and magic.†(Page 48.)
In the same work above cited of the Abbé Pègues, the author wonders why in Bible and tradition the Gibborim, (Giants, the mighty ones) the Rephaim, or the spectres (Phantoms), the Nephilim, or the fallen ones – (irruentes) – are shown “as if identical, though they are all men, since the Bible calls them the primitive and the mighty ones†– e.g., Nimrod. The “Doctrine†explains the secret. These names, which belong by right only to the four preceding races and the earliest beginning of the Fifth, allude very clearly to the first two Phantom (astral) races; to the fallen one – the Third; and to the race of the Atlantean Giants – the Fourth, after which “men began to decrease in stature.“
Bossuet (Elevations, p. 56) sees the cause of subsequent universal idolatry in the “original sin.†“Ye shall be as gods,†says the serpent of Genesis to Eve, thus laying the first germ of the worship of false divinities. Hence, he thinks, came idolatry, or the cult and adoration of images, of anthropomorphized or human figures. But, if it is the latter that idolatry is made to rest upon, then the two Churches, the Greek and the Latin especially, are as idolatrous and pagan as any other religion. 145 It is only in the Fourth Race that men, who had lost all right to be considered divine, resorted to body worship, in other words to phallicism. Till then, they had been truly gods, as pure and as divine as their progenitors, and the expression of the allegorical serpent does not, as sufficiently shown in the preceding pages, refer at all to the physiological fall of men, but to their acquiring the knowledge of good and evil, which knowledge comes to them prior to their fall. It must not be forgotten that it is only after his forced expulsion from Eden that “Adam knew Eve his wife†(Genesis, iv.). It is not, however, by the dead-letter of the Hebrew Bible that we shall check the tenets of the Secret Doctrine; but point out, rather, the great similarities between the two in their esoteric meaning.
It is only after his defection from the Neo-Platonists, that Clement of Alexandria began to translate gigantes by serpentes, explaining that “Serpents and Giants signify Demons.†(Genesis, chapter v.) 146
We may be told that, before we draw parallels between our tenets and those of the Bible, we have to show better evidence of the existence of the giants of the Fourth Race than the reference to them found in Genesis. We answer, that the proofs we give are more satisfactory, at any rate they belong to a more literary and scientific evidence, than those of Noah’s Deluge will ever be. Even the historical works of China are full of such reminiscences about the Fourth Race. In Shoo-King (4th part, chap. XXVII, p. 291), anyone can read in the French translation, “When the Mao-tse†(“that antediluvian and perverted race,†explains the Annotator, “which had retired in the days of old to the rocky caves, and the descendants of whom are said to be still found in the neighbourhood of Cantonâ€), 147 “according to our ancient documents, had, owing to the beguilements of Tchy-Yeoo, troubled all the earth, it became full of brigands.†The Lord Chang-ty (a king of the divine dynasty) saw that his people had lost the last vestiges of virtue. Then he commanded Tehong and Lhy (two lower Dhyan Chohans) to cut away every communication between heaven and earth. Since then, there was no more going up and down!†148
“Going up and down†means an untrammelled communication and intercourse between the two worlds. Not being in a position to give out a full and detailed history of the Third and Fourth Races, as many isolated facts concerning them as are permitted must be now collated together; especially those corroborated by direct as well as by inferential evidence found in ancient literature and history. As the “coats of skin†of men thickened, and they fell more and more into physical sin, the intercourse between physical and ethereal divine man was stopped. The veil of matter between the two planes became too dense for even the inner man to penetrate. The mysteries of Heaven and Earth, revealed to the Third Race by their celestial teachers in the days of their purity, became a great focus of light, the rays from which became necessarily weakened as they were diffused and shed upon an uncongenial, because too material soil. With the masses they degenerated into Sorcery, taking later on the shape of exoteric religions, of idolatry full of superstitions, and man-, or hero-worship. Alone a handful of primitive men – in whom the spark of divine Wisdom burnt bright, and only strengthened in its intensity as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age in those who turned it to bad purposes -remained the elect custodians of the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the divine Teachers. There were those among them, who remained in their Kumâric condition from the beginning; and tradition whispers, what the secret teachings affirm, namely, that these Elect were the germ of a Hierarchy which never died since that period:
“The inner man of the first * * * only changes his body from time to time; he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvana, spurning Devachan and remaining constantly on Earth for the salvation of mankind.. . .†“Out of the seven virgin-men (Kumâra149) four sacrificed themselves for the sins of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain till the end of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they are ever present. When people say of one of them, “He is dead“; behold, he is alive and under another form. These are the Head, the Heart, the Soul, and the Seed of undying knowledge (Gnyana). Thou shalt never speak, O Lanoo, of these great ones (Maha. . .) before a multitude, mentioning them by their names. The wise alone will understand.†. . (Catechism of the Inner Schools.)
The Secret Doctrine, ii 271 – 282
________________
138 The name is used here in the sense of, and as a synonym of “sorcerers.†The Atlantean races were many, and lasted in their evolution for millions of years: all were not bad. They became so toward their end, as we (the fifth) are fast becoming now.
139 The “Gods of the Elements†are by no means the Elementals. The latter are at best used by them as vehicles and materials in which to clothe themselves. . ..
140 Cain was the sacrificer, as shown at first in chap. iv. of Genesis, of “the fruit of the ground,†of which he was first tiller, while Abel “brought of the firstlings of his flock†to the Lord. Cain is the symbol of the first male, Abel of the first female humanity, Adam and Eve being the types of the third race. (See “The Mystery of Cain and Abel.“) The “murdering†is blood-shedding, but not taking life.
141 It is, perhaps, with an eye to this degradation of the highest and purest Spirits, who broke through the intermediate planes of lower consciousness (the “Seven circles of fire†of Pymander), that St. James is made to say that “this Wisdom (psüche in the original) descended not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish“; and Psüche is Manas, the “human soul,†the Spiritual Wisdom or Soul being Buddhi. Yet Buddhi per se, being so near the Absolute, is only latent consciousness.
142 This is the “undying race†as it is called in Esotericism, and exoterically the fruitless generation of the first progeny of Daksha, who curses Narada, the divine Rishi, alleged to have dissuaded the Haryaswas and the Sabalâswas, the sons of Daksha, from procreating their species, by saying “Be born in the womb; there shall not be a resting place for thee in all these regionsâ€; after this Narada, the representative of that race of fruitless ascetics, is said, as soon as he dies in one body, to be reborn in another.
143 The traditions of every country and nation point to this fact. Donnelly quotes from Father Duran’s Historia Antigua de la Nueva Espana of 1885, in which a native of Cholula, a centenarian, accounts for the building of the great pyramid of Cholula, by saying as follows: “In the beginning, before the light of the Sun had been created, this land (Cholula) was in obscurity and darkness . . . but immediately after the light of the Sun arose in the East, there appeared gigantic men . . .who built the said pyramid, its builders being scattered after that to all parts of the Earth.“
“A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the doings of an ancient race of giants called Quinanes,†says the author of “Atlantis†(p. 204.)
144 There are critics who, finding no evidence about the existence of Tertullian save in the writings of Eusebius “the veracious,†are inclined to doubt it.
145 And that, notwithstanding the formal prohibition at the great Church Council of Elyrus in A.D. 303, when it was declared that “the form of God, which is immaterial and invisible, shall not be limited by figure or shape.†In 692, the council of Constantinople had similarly prohibited “to paint or represent Jesus as a lamb,†as also “to bow the knee in praying, as it is the act of idolatry.†But the council of Nicæa (787) brought this idolatry back, while that of Rome (883) excommunicated John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, for his showing himself a declared enemy of image worship.
146 Treating of the Chinese Dragon and the literature of China, Mr. Ch. Gould writes in his “Mythical Monsters†on p. 212: – “Its mythologies, histories, religions, popular stories and proverbs, all teem with references to a mysterious being who has a physical nature and spiritual attributes. Gifted with an accepted form, which he has the supernatural power of casting off for the assumption of others, he has the power of influencing the weather, producing droughts or fertilizing rains at pleasure, of raising tempests and allaying them. Volumes could be compiled from the scattered legends which everywhere abound relating to this subject. . . “
This “mysterious being†is the mythical Dragon, i.e., the symbol of the historical, actual Adept, the master and professor of occult sciences of old. It is stated already elsewhere, that the great “magicians†of the Fourth and Fifth Races were generally called the “Serpents†and the “Dragons†after their progenitors. All these belonged to the hierarchy of the so-called “Fiery Dragons of Wisdom,†the Dhyan Chohans, answering to the Agnishwatta Pitris, the Maruts and Rudras generally, as the issue of Rudra their father, identified with the god of fire. More is said in the text. Now Clement, an initiated Neo-Platonist, knew, of course, the origin of the word “Dragon,†and why the initiated Adepts were so-called, as he knew the secret of Agathodæmon, the Christ, the seven-vowelled Serpent of the Gnostics. He knew that the dogma of his new faith required the transformation of all the rivals of Jehovah, the angels supposed to have rebelled against that Elohim as the Titan-Prometheus rebelled against Zeus, the usurper of his father’s kingdom; and that “Dragon†was the mystic appellation of the “Sons of Wisdom“; from this knowledge came his definition, as cruel as it was arbitrary, “Serpents and Giants signify Demons,†i.e., not “Spirits,†but Devils, in Church parlance.
147 “What would you say to our affirmation that the Chinese – I speak of the inland, the true Chinaman, not of the hybrid mixture between the Fourth and Fifth Races now occupying the throne, the aborigines who belong in their unallied nationality wholly to the highest and last branch of the Fourth Race – reached their highest civilization when the Fifth had hardly appeared in Asia†(Esoteric Buddhism, p. 67). And this handful of the inland Chinese are all of a very high stature. Could the most ancient MSS. in the Lolo language (that of the aborigines of China) be got at and translated correctly, many a priceless piece of evidence would be found. But they are as rare as their language is unintelligible. So far, one or two European archæologists only have been able to procure such priceless works.
148 Remember the same statement in the Book of Enoch, as also the ladder seen by Jacob in his dream. The “two worlds†mean of course the “two planes of Consciousness and Being.†A seer can commune with beings of a higher plane than the earth, without quitting his arm-chair.
149 Vide supra the Commentary on the Four Races – and on the “Sons of Will and Yoga,†the immaculate progeny of the Androgynous Third Race.
Selection 22
NEITHER THE HUMAN ATLANTEAN GIANTS NOR THE “ANIMALS†WERE THE PHYSIOLOGICALLY PERFECT MEN AND MAMMALIANS THAT ARE NOW KNOWN TO US
Yet the “Lemurians†and the Atlanteans, “those children of Heaven and Earth,†were indeed marked with a character of SORCERY, for the Esoteric doctrine charges them precisely with that, which, if believed, would put an end to the difficulties of science with regard to the origin of man, or rather, his anatomical similarities to the Anthropoid Ape. It accuses them of having committed the (to us) abominable crime of breeding with so-called “animals,†and thus producing a truly pithecoid species, now extinct. Of course, as in the question of spontaneous generation – in which Esoteric Science believes, and which it teaches – the possibility of such a cross-breed between man and an animal of any kind will be denied. But apart from the consideration that in those early days, as already remarked, neither the human Atlantean giants, nor yet the “animals,†were the physiologically perfect men and mammalians that are now known to us, the modern notions upon this subject – those of the physiologists included – are too uncertain and fluctuating to permit them an absolute denial a priori of such a fact.
A careful perusal of the Commentaries would make one think that the Being that the new “incarnate†bred with, was called an “animal,†not because he was no human being, but rather because he was so dissimilar physically and mentally to the more perfect races, which had developed physiologically at an earlier period. Remember Stanza 7 and what is said in its first verse (24th), that when the “Sons of Wisdom†came to incarnate the first time, some of them incarnated fully, others projected into the forms only a spark, while some of the shadows were left over from being filled and perfected, till the Fourth Race. Those races, then, which “remained destitute of knowledge,†or those again which were left “mindless,†remained as they were, even after the natural separation of the sexes. It is these who committed the first crossbreeding, so to speak, and bred monsters, and it is from the descendants of these that the Atlanteans chose their wives. Adam and Eve were supposed, with Cain and Abel, to be the only human family on Earth. Yet we see Cain going to the land of Nod and taking there a wife. Evidently one race only was supposed perfect enough to be called human, and, even in our own day, while the Singhalese regard the Veddhas of their jungles as speaking animals and no more, some British people believe firmly, in their arrogance, that every other human family – especially the dark Indians – is an inferior race. Moreover there are naturalists who have sincerely considered the problem whether some savage tribes – like the Bushmen for instance – can be regarded as men at all. The Commentary says, in describing that species (or race) of animals “fair to look at†as a biped, “Having human shape, but having the lower extremities, from the waist down, covered with hair.†Hence the race of the satyrs, perhaps.
If men existed two million years ago, they must have been – just as the animals were – quite different physically and anatomically from what they have become; and they were nearer then to the type of pure mammalian animal than they are now. Anyhow, we learn that the animal world breeds strictly inter se, i.e. in accordance with genus and species – only since the appearance on this earth of the Atlantean race. As demonstrated by the author of that able work, “Modern Science and Modern Thought,†this idea of the refusal to breed with another species, or that sterility is the only result of such breeding, “appears to be a primâ facie deduction rather than an absolute law†even now. He shows that “different species, do, in fact, often breed together, as may be seen in the familiar instance of the horse and ass. It is true that in this case the mule is sterile. . . . but this rule is not universal, and recently one new hybrid race, that of the leporine, or hare-rabbit, has been created which is perfectly fertile.†The progeny of wolf and dog is also instanced, as that of several other domestic animals (p. 101), “like foxes and dogs again, and the modern Swiss cattle shown by Rutimeyer as descended from three distinct species of fossil-oxen, the Bos primigenius, Bos longifrons and Bos frontosus.†Yet some of those species, as the ape family, which so clearly resembles man in physical structure, contain, we are told, “numerous branches, which graduate into one another, but the extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the highest of the ape series†– the gorilla and chimpanzee, for instance (see Addenda).
Thus Mr. Darwin’s remark – or shall we say the remark of Linnæus? – natura non facit saltum, is not only corroborated by Esoteric Science but would – were there any chance of the real doctrine being accepted by any others than its direct votaries – reconcile in more than one way, if not entirely, the modern Evolution theory with facts, as also with the absolute failure of the anthropologists to meet with the “missing link†in our Fourth Round geological formations.
We will show elsewhere that, however unconsciously to itself, modern Science pleads our case upon its own admissions, and that de Quatrefages is perfectly right, when he suggests in his last work, that it is far more likely that the anthropoid ape should be discovered to be the descendant of man, than that these two types should have a common, fantastic and nowhere-to-be-found ancestor. Thus the wisdom of the compilers of the old Stanzas is vindicated by at least one eminent man of Science, and the Occultist prefers to believe as he ever did that -
“Man was the first and highest (mammalian) animal that appeared in this (Fourth Round) creation. Then came still huger animals; and last of all the dumb man who walks on all fours.†For, the Râkshasas (giant-demons) and Daityas (Titans) of the “White Dwipa†(continent) spoiled his (the dumb man’s) Sires.†(Commentary)
Furthermore, as we see, there are anthropologists who have traced man back to an epoch which goes far to break down the apparent barrier that exists between the chronologies of modern science and the Archaic Doctrine. It is true that English scientists generally have declined to commit themselves to the sanction of the hypothesis of even a Tertiary Man. They, each and all, measure the antiquity of Homo primigenius by their own lights and prejudices. Huxley, indeed, ventures to speculate on a possible Pliocene or Miocene Man. Prof. Seeman and Mr. Grant Allen have relegated his advent to the Eocene, but speaking generally, English scientists consider that we cannot safely go beyond the Quaternary. Unfortunately, the facts do not accommodate the too cautious reserve of these latter. The French school of anthropology, basing their views on the discoveries of l’Abbé Bourgeois, Capellini, and others, has accepted, almost without exception, the doctrine that the traces of our ancestors are certainly to be found in the Miocene, while M. de Quatrefages now inclines to postulate a Secondary-Age Man. Further on we shall compare such estimates with the figures given in the Brahminical exoteric books which approximate to the esoteric teaching.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 286 – 288
Selection 23
IT WAS THE BELIEF OF ENTIRE ANTIQUITY, PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN, THAT THE EARLIEST MANKIND WAS A RACE OF GIANTS
It was the belief of entire antiquity, Pagan and Christian, that the earliest mankind was a race of giants. Certain excavations in America in mounds and in caves, have already yielded in isolated cases groups of skeletons of nine and twelve feet high.150 These belong to tribes of the early Fifth Race, now degenerated to an average size of between five and six feet. But we can easily believe that the Titans and Cyclopes of old really belonged to the Fourth (Atlantean) Race, and that all the subsequent legends and allegories found in the Hindu Pur̢nas and the Greek Hesiod and Homer were based on the hazy reminiscences of real Titans Рmen of a superhuman tremendous physical power, which enabled them to defend themselves, and hold at bay the gigantic monsters of the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic times Рand of actual Cyclopes Рthree-eyed mortals.
It has been often remarked by observant writers that the “origin of nearly every popular myth and legend could be traced invariably to a fact in Nature.â€
In these fantastic creations of an exuberant subjectivism, there is always an element of the objective and real. The imagination of the masses, disorderly and ill-regulated as it may be, could never have conceived and fabricated ex nihilo so many monstrous figures, such a wealth of extraordinary tales, had it not had, to serve it as a central nucleus, those floating reminiscences, obscure and vague, which unite the broken links of the chain of time to form with them the mysterious, dream foundation of our collective consciousness.151
The evidence for the Cyclopes – a race of giants – will be pointed out in forthcoming Sections, in the Cyclopean remnants, so called to this day. An indication that, during its evolution and before the final adjustment of the human organism – which became perfect and symmetrical only in the Fifth Race – the early Fourth Race may have been three-eyed, without having necessarily a third eye in the middle of the brow, like the legendary Cyclops, is also furnished by Science.
To the Occultists who believe that spiritual and psychic involution proceeds on parallel lines with physical evolution; that the inner senses – innate in the first human races – atrophied during racial growth and the material development of the outer senses; to the student of Esoteric symbology, finally, this statement is no conjecture or possibility, but simply a phase of the law of growth, a proven fact in short. They understand the meaning of this passage in the Commentaries which says:
“There were four-armed human creatures in those early days of the male-females (hermaphrodites); with one head yet three eyes. They could see before them and behind them.152 A Kalpa later (after the separation of the sexes) men having fallen into matter, their spiritual vision became dim, and coördinately the third eye commenced to lose its power. . . . When the Fourth (Race) arrived at its middle age, the inner vision had to be awakened and acquired by artificial stimuli, the process of which was known to the old sages.153 . . . The third eye likewise, getting gradually PETRIFIED154, SOON DISAPPEARED. THE DOUBLE-FACED BECAME THE ONE-FACED, AND THE EYE WAS DRAWN DEEP INTO THE HEAD AND IS NOW BURIED UNDER THE HAIR. DURING THE ACTIVITY OF THE INNER MAN (DURING TRANCES AND SPIRITUAL VISIONS) THE EYE SWELLS AND EXPANDS. THE ARHAT SEES AND FEELS IT AND REGULATES HIS ACTION ACCORDINGLY. . . THE UNDEFILED LANOO (DISCIPLE, CHELA) NEED FEAR NO DANGER; HE WHO KEEPS HIMSELF NOT IN PURITY (WHO IS NOT CHASTE) WILL RECEIVE NO HELP FROM THE DEVA EYE.’â€
THE THIRD EYE IS DEAD AND ACTS NO LONGER, BUT IT HAS LEFT BEHIND A WITNESS TO ITS EXISTENCE
Unfortunately not. The “deva-eye†exists no more for the majority of mankind. The third eye is dead, and acts no longer, but it has left behind a witness to its existence. This witness is now the PINEAL GLAND. As for the “four-armed†men, it is they who become the prototypes of the four-armed Hindu gods, as shown in a preceding footnote.
Such is the mystery of the human eye that, in their vain endeavours to explain and account for all the difficulties surrounding its action, some scientists have been forced to resort to occult explanations. The development of the Human eye gives more support to the occult anthropology than to that of the materialistic physiologists. “The eyes in the human embryo grow from within without†out of the brain, instead of being part of the skin, as in the insects and cuttlefish. Professor Lankester, thinking the brain a queer place for the eye, and attempting to explain the phenomenon on Darwinian lines, suggests the curious view that “our†earliest vertebrate ancestor was a transparent creature and hence did not mind where the eye was! And so was man “a transparent creature†once upon a time, we are taught; hence our theory holds good. But how does the Lankester hypothesis square with the Haeckelian view that the vertebrate eye originated by changes in the epidermis? If it started inside, the theory goes into the wastebasket. This seems to be proved by embryology. Moreover, Professor Lankester’s extraordinary suggestion – or shall we say admission? – is rendered perhaps necessary by evolutionist necessities. Occultism with its teaching as to the gradual development of senses “FROM WITHIN WITHOUT,†from astral prototypes, is far more satisfactory: The third eye retreated inwards when its course was run – another point in favour of Occultism.
The allegorical expression of the Hindu mystics when speaking of the “eye of Siva,†the Tri-bochana (“three-eyedâ€), thus receives its justification and raison d’être- the transference of the pineal gland (once that “third eyeâ€) to the forehead, being an exoteric licence. This throws also a light on the mystery – incomprehensible to some – of the connection between abnormal, or Spiritual Seership, and the physiological purity of the Seer. The question is often asked, “Why should celibacy and chastity be a sine quâ non rule and condition of regular chelaship, or the development of psychic and occult powers? The answer is contained in the Commentary. When we learn that the “third eye†was once a physiological organ, and that later on, owing to the gradual disappearance of spirituality and increase of materiality (Spiritual nature being extinguished by the physical), it became an atrophied organ, as little understood now by physiologists as the spleen is; when we learn this, the connection will become clear. During human life the greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and especially to the acquirement of Yoga powers, is the activity of our physiological senses. Sexual action being closely connected, by interaction, with the spinal cord and the grey matter of the brain, it is useless to give any longer explanation. Of course, the normal and abnormal state of the brain and the degree of active work in the medulla oblongata reacts powerfully on the pineal gland, for, owing to the number of “centres†in that region, which controls by far the greater majority of the physiological actions of the animal economy, and also owing to the close and intimate neighbourhood of the two, there must be exerted a very powerful “inductive†action by the medulla on the pineal gland.
All this is quite plain to the Occultist, but is very vague in the sight of the general reader. The latter must then be shown the possibility of a three-eyed man in nature, in those periods when his formation was yet in a comparatively chaotic state. Such a possibility may be inferred from anatomical and zoological knowledge, first of all, then it may rest on the assumptions of materialistic science itself.
It is asserted upon the authority of Science, and upon evidence, which is not merely a fiction of theoretical speculation this time, that many of the animals – especially among the lower orders of the vertebrata – have a third eye, now atrophied, but necessarily active in its origin.155 The Hatteria species, a lizard of the order Lacertilia, recently discovered in New Zealand (a part of ancient Lemuria so called, mark well), presents this peculiarity in a most extraordinary manner, and not only the Hatteria punctata, but the chameleon, certain reptiles, and even fishes. It was thought, at first, that it was no more than the prolongation of the brain ending with a small protuberance, called epiphysis, a little bone separated from the main bone by a cartilage, and found in every animal. But it was soon found to be more than this. It offered – as its development and anatomical structure showed – such an analogy with that of the eye, that it was found impossible to see in it anything else. There were and are palaeontologists who feel convinced to this day that this “third eye†has functioned in its origin, and they are certainly right. For this is what is said of the pineal gland in Quains Anatomy (Vol. II, 9th Ed., pp. 830 – 851, “Thalamencephalon†Interbrain):
“It is from this part, constituting at first the whole and subsequently the hinder part of the anterior primary encephalic vesicle, that the optic vesicles are developed in the earliest period, and the fore part is that in connection with which the cerebral hemispheres and accompanying parts are formed. The thalamus opticus of each side is formed by a lateral thickening of the medullary wall, while the interval between, descending towards the base, constitutes the cavity of the third ventricle with its prolongation in the infundibulum. The grey commissure afterwards stretches across the ventricular cavity. . . . . The hinder part of the roof is developed by a peculiar process, to be noticed later, into the pineal gland, which remains united on each side by its pedicles to the thalamus, and behind these a transverse band is formed as posterior commissure.
“The lamina terminalis (lamina cinerea) continues to close the third ventricle in front, below it the optic commissure forms the floor of the ventricle, and further back the infundibulum descends to be united in the sella turcica with the tissue adjoining the posterior lobe of the pituitary body.
“The two optic thalami formed from the posterior and outer part of the anterior vesicle, consist at first of a single hollow sac of nervous matter, the cavity of which communicates on each side in front with that of the commencing cerebra hemispheres, and behind with that of the middle cephalic vesicle (corpora quadrigemina). Soon, however, by increased deposit taking place in their interior, behind, below, and at the sides, the thalami become solid, and at the same time a cleft or fissure appears between them above, and penetrates down to the internal cavity, which continues open at the back part opposite the entrance of the Sylvian aqueduct. This cleft or fissure is the third ventricle. Behind, the two thalami continue united by the posterior commissure, which is distinguishable about the end of the third month, and also by the peduncles of the pineal gland.....
“At an early period the optic tracts may be recognised as hollow prolongations from the outer part of the wall of the thalami while they are still vesicular. At the fourth month these tracts are distinctly formed. They subsequently are prolonged backwards into connection with the corpora quadrigemina.
“The formation of the pineal gland and pituitary body presents some of the most interesting phenomena which are connected with the development of the Thalamencephalonâ€
THE CYCLOPS IS NO MYTH
The above is specially interesting when it is remembered that, were it not for the development of the hinder part of the cerebral hemispheres backwards, the pineal gland would be perfectly visible on the removal of the parietal bones. It is very interesting also to note the obvious connection to be traced between the (originally) hollow optic tracts and the eyes anteriorly, the pineal gland and its peduncles behind, and all of these with the optic thalami. So that the recent discoveries in connection with the third eye of Hatteria punctata have a very important bearing on the developmental history of the human senses, and on the occult assertions in the text.
It is well known (and also regarded as a fiction now, by those who have ceased to believe in the existence of an immortal principle in man) that Descartes saw in the pineal gland the Seat of the Soul. Although it is joined to every part of the body, he said, there is one special portion of it in which the Soul exercises its functions more specially than in any other. And, as neither the heart, nor yet the brain could be that “special†locality, he concluded that it was that little gland tied to the brain, yet having an action independent of it, as it could easily be put into a kind of swinging motion “by the animal Spirits156 which, cross the cavities of the skull in every sense.â€
Unscientific as this may appear in our day of exact learning, Descartes was yet far nearer the occult truth than is any Hæckel. For the pineal gland, as shown, is far more connected with Soul and Spirit than with the physiological senses of man. Had the leading Scientists a glimmer of the real processes employed by the Evolutionary Impulse, and the winding cyclic course of this great law, they would know instead of conjecturing, and feel as certain of the future physical transformations of the human kind by the knowledge of its past forms. Then, would they see the fallacy and all the absurdity of their modern “blind-force†and mechanical processes of nature, realizing, in consequence of such knowledge, that the said pineal gland, for instance, could not but be disabled for physical use at this stage of our cycle. If the odd “eye†in man is now atrophied, it is a proof that, as in the lower animal, it has once been active, for nature never creates the smallest, the most insignificant form without some definite purpose and use. It was an active organ, we say, at that stage of evolution when the spiritual element in man reigned supreme over the hardly nascent intellectual and psychic elements. And, as the cycle ran down toward that point when the physiological senses were developed by, and went pari passu with, the growth and consolidation of the physical man, the interminable and complex vicissitudes and tribulations of zoological development, that median “eye†ended by atrophying along with the early spiritual and purely psychic characteristics in man. The eye is the mirror and also the window of the soul, says popular wisdom,157and Vox populi Vox Dei.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE EYE
In the beginning, every class and family of living species was hermaphrodite and objectively one-eyed. In the animal, whose form was as ethereal (astrally) as that of man, before the bodies of both began to evolve their coats of skin, viz. to evolve from within without the thick coating of physical substance or matter with its internal physiological mechanism, the third eye was primarily, as in man, the only seeing organ. The two physical front eyes developed158 later on in both brute and man, whose organ of physical sight was, at the commencement of the Third Race, in the same position as that of some of the blind vertebrata, in our day, i.e. beneath an opaque skin.159 Only the stages of the odd, or primeval eye, in man and brute, are now inverted, as the former has already passed that animal non-rational stage in the Third Round, and is ahead of mere brute creation by a whole plane of consciousness. Therefore, while the “Cyclopean†eye was, and still is, in man the organ of spiritual sight, in the animal it was that of objective vision. And this eye, having performed its function, was replaced, in the course of physical evolution from the simple to the complex, by two eyes, and thus was stored and laid aside by nature for further use in Æons to come.
This explains why the pineal gland reached its highest development proportionately with the lowest physical development. It is the vertebrata in which it is the most prominent and objective, and in man it is most carefully hidden and inaccessible, except to the anatomist. No less light is thrown thereby on the future physical, spiritual, and intellectual state of mankind, in periods corresponding on parallel lines with other past periods, and always on the lines of ascending and descending cyclic evolution and development. Thus, a few centuries before the Kali yuga- the black age which began nearly 5,000 years ago – it was said (paraphrased into comprehensible sentences):
“We (the Fifth Root-Race) in our first half (of duration) onward (on the now ASCENDING arc of the cycle) are on the mid point of (or between) the First and the Second Races – falling downward (i.e. the races were then on the descending arc of the cycle). . . . Calculate for thyself, Lanoo, and see†(Commentary XX.).
Calculating as advised, we find that during that transitional period – namely, in the second half of the First Spiritual ethero-astral race – nascent mankind was devoid of the intellectual brain element. As it was on its descending line, and as we are parallel to it, on the ascending, we are, therefore, devoid of the Spiritual element, which is now replaced by the intellectual. For, remember well, as we are in the Manasa period of our cycle of races, or in the Fifth, we have, therefore, crossed the meridian point of the perfect adjustment of Spirit and Matter – or that equilibrium between brain intellect and Spiritual perception. One important point has, however, to be borne in mind.
EVOLUTION OF ROOT RACES IN THE FOURTH ROUND
MERIDIAN OF RACES
THE “ODD EYE†HAS BEEN GRADUALLY TRANSFORMED INTO A SIMPLE GLAND
We are only in the Fourth Round, and it is in the Fifth that the full development of Manas, as a direct ray from the Universal MAHAT - a ray unimpeded by matter – will be finally reached. Nevertheless, as every sub-race and nation have their cycles and stages of developmental evolution repeated on a smaller scale, it must be the more so in the case of a Root-Race. Our race then has, as a Root-Race, crossed the equatorial line and is cycling onward on the Spiritual side, but some of our sub-races still find themselves on the shadowy descending arc of their respective national cycles, while others again – the oldest – having crossed their crucial point, which alone decides whether a race, a nation, or a tribe will live or perish, are at the apex of spiritual development as sub-races.
It becomes comprehensible now why the “odd eye†has been gradually transformed into a simple gland, after the physical Fall of those we have agreed to call the “Lemurians.â€
It is a curious fact that it is especially in human beings that the cerebral hemispheres and the lateral ventricles have been developed, and that the optic thalami, corpora quadrigemina, and corpora striata are the principal parts which are developed in the mammalian brain. Moreover it is asserted that the intellect of any man may to some extent be gauged by the development of the central convolutions and the fore part of the cerebral hemispheres. It would seem a natural corollary that if the development and increased size of the pineal gland may be considered to be an index of the astral capacities and spiritual proclivities of any man, there will be a corresponding development of that part of the cranium, or an increase in the size of the pineal gland at the expense of the hinder part of the cerebral hemispheres. It is a curious speculation which would receive a confirmation in this case. We should see, below and behind, the cerebellum which has been held to be the seat of all the animal proclivities of a human being, and which is allowed by science to be the great centre for all the physiologically coordinated movements of the body, such as walking, eating, etc., etc., in front, the fore-part of the brain – the cerebral hemispheres – the part especially connected with the development of the intellectual powers in man, and in the middle, dominating them both, and especially the animal functions, the developed pineal gland, in connection with the more highly evolved, or spiritual man.
It must be remembered that these are only physical correspondences, just as the ordinary human brain is the registering organ of memory, but not memory itself.
This is, then, the organ which gave rise to so many legends and traditions, among others to that of man with one head but two faces. These may be found in several Chinese works, besides being referred to in the Chaldean fragments. Apart from the work already cited – the Shan Hai King, compiled by King Chia from engravings on nine urns made 2,255 B.C. by the Emperor Yü. They may be found in another work, called the “Bamboo Books†and in a third one, the “Rh Ya†– “initiated according to tradition by Chow Kung, uncle of Wu Wang, the first Emperor of the Chow Dynasty, B.C. 1,122†– says Mr. Ch. Gould in his “Mythical Monsters.†The Bamboo Books contain the ancient annals of China, found A.D. 279 at the opening of the grave of King Seang of Wai, who died B.C. 295. Both these works mention men with two faces on one head – one in front and one behind (p. 27).
Now that which the students of Occultism ought to know is that THE “THIRD EYE†IS INDISSOLUBLY CONNECTED WITH KARMA. The tenet is so mysterious that very few have heard of it.
The “eye of Siva†did not become entirely atrophied before the close of the Fourth Race. When spirituality and all the divine powers and attributes of the deva-man of the Third had been made the handmaidens of the newly-awakened physiological and psychic passions of the physical man, instead of the reverse, the eye lost its powers. But such was the law of Evolution, and it was, in strict accuracy, no FALL. The sin was not in using those newly-developed powers, but in misusing them, in making of the tabernacle, designed to contain a god, the fane of every spiritual iniquity. And if we say “sin,†it is merely that everyone should understand our meaning, as the term Karma160 would be the right one to use in this case; while the reader who would feel perplexed at the use of the term “spiritual†instead of “physical†iniquity is reminded of the fact that there can be no physical iniquity. The body is simply the irresponsible organ, the tool of the psychic, if not of the “Spiritual man.†While in the case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the Spiritual being which sinned, the Spirit element being still the “Master†principle in man, in those days. Thus it is in those days that the heaviest Karma of the Fifth Race was generated by our Monads.
As this sentence may again be found puzzling, it is better that it should be explained for the benefit of those who are ignorant of the Theosophical teachings.
THE NUMBER OF MONADS IS LIMITED
Questions with regard to Karma and re-births are constantly offered, and a great confusion seems to exist upon this subject. Those who are born and bred in the Christian faith, and have been trained in the idea that a new soul is created by God for every newly-born infant, are among the most perplexed. They ask whether in such case the number of incarnating Monads on earth is limited, to which they are answered in the affirmative. For, however countless, in our conceptions, the number of the incarnating monads – even if we take into account the fact that ever since the Second Race, when their respective seven groups were furnished with bodies, several births and deaths may be allowed for every second of time in the aeons already passed -still, there must be a limit. It was stated that Karma-Nemesis, whose bond-maid is Nature, adjusted everything in the most harmonious manner, and that, therefore, the fresh pouring-in, or arrival of new Monads, had ceased as soon as Humanity had reached its full physical development. No fresh Monads have incarnated since the middle-point of the Atlanteans. Hence, remembering that, save in the case of young children and of individuals whose lives were violently cut off by some accident, no Spiritual Entity can re-incarnate before a period of many centuries has elapsed, such gaps alone must show that the number of Monads is necessarily finite and limited. Moreover, a reasonable time must be given to other animals for their evolutionary progress.
Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects of the evil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. The Law of KARMA is inextricably interwoven with that of Re-incarnation.
It is only the knowledge of the constant re-births of one and the same individuality throughout the life-cycle, the assurance that the same MONADS - among whom are many Dhyan Chohans, or the “Gods†themselves – have to pass through the “Circle of Necessity,†rewarded or punished by such rebirth for the suffering endured or crimes committed in the former life, that those very Monads, which entered the empty, senseless shells, or astral figures of the First Race emanated by the Pitris, are the same who are now amongst us – nay, ourselves, perchance; it is only this doctrine, we say, that can explain to us the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honour paid fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all his intellect and noble virtues – far more deserving in every way – perishing of want and for lack of sympathy; when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one’s ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around him – that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as their supposed Creator.161
Of all the terrible blasphemies and accusations virtually thrown on their God by the Monotheists, none is greater or more unpardonable than that (almost always) false humility which makes the presumably “pious†Christian assert, in connection with every evil and undeserved blow, that “such is the will of God.â€
Dolts and hypocrites! Blasphemers and impious Pharisees, who speak in the same breath of the endless merciful love and care of their God and creator for helpless man, and of that God scourging the good, the very best of his creatures, bleeding them to death like an insatiable Moloch! Shall we be answered to this, in Congreve’s words:
“But who shall dare to tax Eternal Justice?†Logic and simple common sense, we answer: if we are made to believe in the “original Sin,†in one life, on this Earth only, for every Soul, and in an anthropomorphic Deity, who seems to have created some men only for the pleasure of condemning them to eternal hell-fire (and this whether they are good or bad, says the Predestinarian),162 why should not every man endowed with reasoning powers condemn in his turn such a villainous Deity? Life would become unbearable, if one had to believe in the God created by man’s unclean fancy. Luckily he exists only in human dogmas, and in the unhealthy imagination of some poets, who believe they have solved the problem by addressing him as -
“Thou great Mysterious Power, who hast involved
The pride of human wisdom, to confound
The daring scrutiny and prove the faith
Of thy presuming creatures!
Truly a robust “faith†is required to believe that it is “presumption†to question the justice of one who creates helpless little man but to “perplex†him and to test a “faith†with which that “Power,†moreover, may have forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as happens sometimes.
KARMA-NEMESIS, OR THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION, PREDESTINES NOTHING AND NO ONE
Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every reasonable evidence and life-experience, in Karma-Nemesis, or the Law of Retribution. This Law – whether Conscious or Unconscious – predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is ETERNITY itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is ACTION itself. It is not the Wave which drowns a man, but the personal action of the wretch, who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the Ocean’s motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say that it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the God invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man, nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinise its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. KARMA is an Absolute and Eternal law in the World of manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as One eternal ever present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists or materialists – still less as fatalists,163 for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect in its effects in the phenomenal world.
Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the law of re-birth, or of the re-incarnation of the same spiritual individuality in a long, almost interminable, series of personalities. The latter are like the various costumes and characters played by the same actor, with each of which that actor identifies himself and is identified by the public, for the space of a few hours. The inner, or real man, who personates those characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet for the brief space of a few acts, which represent, however, on the plane of human illusion the whole life of Hamlet. And he knows that he was, the night before, King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the Othello of a still earlier preceding night; but the outer, visible character is supposed to be ignorant of the fact. In actual life that ignorance is, unfortunately, but too real. Nevertheless, the permanent individuality is fully aware of the fact, though, through the atrophy of the “spiritual†eye in the physical body, that knowledge is unable to impress itself on the consciousness of the false personality.
The possession of a physical third eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the men of the Third Root-Race down to nearly the middle period of Third SUB-race of the Fourth Root-Race, when the consolidation and perfection of the human frame made it disappear from the outward anatomy of man. Psychically and spiritually, however, its mental and visual perceptions lasted till nearly the end of the Fourth Race, when its functions, owing to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out altogether before the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean continent. And now we may return to the Deluges and their many “Noahs.â€
The student has to bear in mind that there were many such deluges as that mentioned in Genesis, and three far more important ones, which will be mentioned and described in the Section devoted to the subject of pre-historic continents. To avoid erroneous conjectures, however, with regard to the claim that the esoteric doctrine has much in it of the legends contained in the Hindu Scriptures; that, again, the chronology of the latter is almost that of the former, only explained and made clear; and that finally the belief that “Vaivasvata Manuâ€- a generic name indeed! – was the Noah of the Aryans and his prototype; all this, which is also the belief of the Occultists, necessitates at this juncture a new explanation. (Vide Part III, “Submerged Continentsâ€)
The Secret Doctrine, ii 293 – 306
________________
150 Darwinian Evolutionists who are so wont to refer to the evidence of reversion to type— the full meaning of which, in the case of human monsters, is embraced in the esoteric solution of the embryological problem—as proof of their arguments, would do well to inquire into those instances of modern giants who are often 8, 9, and even 11 feet high. Such reversions are imperfect, yet undeniable reproductions of the original towering man of primeval times.
151 See “Mythical Monsters,†by Ch. Gould, from whose interesting and scientific volume a few passages are quoted further on. See in Mr. Sinnett’s “Occult World†the description of a cavern in the Himalayas filled with relics of human and animal giant bones.
152 Viz. the third eye was at the back of the head. The statement that the latest hermaphrodite humanity was “four-armed†unriddles probably the mystery of all the representations and idols of the exoteric gods of India. On the Acropolis of Argos, there was a ξόνον, a rudely carved wooden statue (attributed to Dædalus), representing a three-eyed colossus, which was consecrated to Zeus Triopas (three-eyed). The head of the “god†has two eyes in its face and one above on the top of the forehead. It is considered the most archaic of all the ancient statues (Schol. Vatic. ad Eurip. Troad. 14).
153 The Inner sight could henceforth be acquired only through training and initiation, save in the cases of “natural and born magicians,†sensitives and mediums, as they are called now.
154 This expression “petrified†instead of “ossified†is curious. The “back eye,†which is of course the pineal gland, now so-called, the small pea-like mass of grey nervous matter attached to the back of the third ventricle of the brain, is said to almost invariably contain mineral concretions and sand, and “nothing more†(Vide Infra.)
155 “Deeply placed within the head, covered by thick skin and muscles, true eyes that cannot see are found in certain animals.†Also, says Hæckel, “Vertebrate . . . blind moles and field mice, blind snakes and lizards. . . . They shun daylight . . . dwelling under the ground. They were not originally blind but have evolved from ancestors that lived in the light and had well-developed eyes. The atrophied eye beneath the opaque skin may be found in these blind beings in every stage of reversion.†(“Sense Organs,†Hæckel.) And if two eyes could become so atrophied in lower animals, why not one eye— the pineal gland—in man, who is but a higher animal in his physical aspect?
156 The “Nervous Ether†of Dr. B.W. Richardson. F.R.S.—the nerve-aura of occultism. The “animal spirits†(?) are equivalent to the currents of nerve-auric compound circulation.
157 Let us remember that the First Race is shown in Occult sciences as spiritual within and ethereal without; the Second, psycho-spiritual mentally, and ethero-physical bodily; the Third, still bereft of intellect in its beginning, is astro-physical in its body, and lives an inner life, in which the psycho-spiritual element is in no way interfered with as yet by the hardly nascent physiological senses. Its two front eyes look before them without seeing either past or future. But the “third eye†“embraces ETERNITY.â€
158 But in a very different manner to that pictured by Hæckel as an “evolution by natural selection in the struggle for existence†(“Pedigree of Man,†Sense Organs, p. 335). The mere “thermal sensibility of the skin,†to hypothetical light-waves, is absurdly incompetent to account for the beautiful combination of adaptations present in the eye. It has, moreover, been previously shown that “natural Selection†is a pure myth when credited with the origination of variations (vide infra, Part III, on Darwinian mechanical causation), as the “survival of the fittest†can only take place after useful variations have sprung up, together with improved organisms. Whence came the “useful variations,†which developed the eye? Only from “blind forces . . . without aim, without design?†The argument is puerile. The true solution of the mystery is to be found in the impersonal Divine Wisdom, in its IDEATION — reflected through matter.
159 Palæontology has ascertained that in the animals of the Cenozoic age— the Saurians especially, such as the antediluvian Labyrinthodon, whose fossil skull exhibits a perforation otherwise inexplicable— the third, or odd eye must have been much developed. Several naturalists, among others E. Korscheldt, feel convinced that whereas, notwithstanding the opaque skin covering it, such an eye in the reptiles of the present period can only distinguish light from darkness (as the human eyes do when bound with a handkerchief, or even tightly closed), in the now extinct animals that eye functioned and was a real organ of vision.
160 Karma is a word of many meanings, and has a special term for almost every one of its aspects. It means, as a synonym of sin, the performance of some action for the attainment of an object of worldly, hence selfish, desire, which cannot fail to be hurtful to somebody else. Karma is action, the Cause; and Karma again is “the law of ethical causation,†the effect of an act produced egotistically, when the great law of harmony depends on altruism.
161 Objectors to the doctrine of Karma should recall the fact that it is absolutely out of the question to attempt a reply to the Pessimists on other data. A firm grasp of the principles of Karmic Law knocks away the whole basis of the imposing fabric reared by the disciples of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.
162 The doctrine and theology of Calvinists. “The purpose of God from eternity respecting all events†(which becomes fatalism and kills free will, or any attempt of exerting it for good).....â€It is the pre-assignment or allotment of men to everlasting happiness or misery.†(Catechism) A noble and encouraging Doctrine this!
163 Some Theosophists, in order to make Karma more comprehensible to the Western mind, as being better acquainted with the Greek than with Aryan philosophy, have made an attempt to translate it by Nemesis. Had the latter been known to the profane in antiquity, as it was understood by the Initiate, this translation of the term would be unobjectionable. As it is, it has been too much anthropomorphised by Greek fancy to permit our using it without an elaborate explanation. With the early Greeks, “from Homer to Herodotus, she was no goddess, but a moral feeling rather,†says Decharme, the barrier to evil and immorality. He who transgresses it, commits a sacrilege in the eyes of the gods and is pursued by Nemesis. But, with time, that “feeling†was deified, and its personification became an ever-fatal and punishing goddess. Therefore, if we would connect Karma with Nemesis, it has to be done in the triple character of the latter, viz. as Nemesis, Adrasteia, and Themis. For, while the latter is the goddess of Universal Order and Harmony, who, like Nemesis, is commissioned to repress every excess and keep man within the limits of Nature and righteousness under severe penalty, Adrasteia—â€the inevitable“—represents Nemesis as the immutable effect of causes created by man himself. Nemesis, as the daughter of Dikè, is the equitable goddess reserving her wrath for those alone who are maddened with pride, egoism, and impiety. (See Mesomed. Hymn. Nemes., Vol. 2, Brunck, Analecta II, p. 292; Mythol. de la Grèce Antique, p. 304.) In short, while Nemesis is a mythological, exoteric goddess, or Power, personified and anthropomorphised in its various aspects, Karma is a highly philosophical truth, a most divine noble expression of the primitive intuition of man concerning Deity. It is a doctrine which explains the origin of Evil, and ennobles our conceptions of what divine immutable Justice ought to be, instead of degrading the unknown and unknowable Deity by making it the whimsical, cruel tyrant, which we call Providence.
Selection 24
SCIENCE IS AS INCONSISTENT AS WAS ANCIENT AND MEDIÆVAL THEOLOGY IN THEIR INTERPRETATIONS OF THE SO-CALLED REVELATION
It is just what we can never repeat too often, though the voices of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised in the desert. Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as inconsistent, to say the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and mediæval theology in its interpretations of the so-called Revelation. Science would have men descend from the pithecoid ape – a transformation requiring millions of years – and yet fears to make mankind older than 100,000 years! Science teaches the gradual transformation of species, natural selection, and evolution from the lowest form to the highest, from mollusc to fish, from reptile to bird and mammalian. Yet it refuses to man, who physiologically is only a higher mammal and animal, such transformation of his external form. But if the monstrous iguanodon of the Wealden may have been the ancestor of the diminutive iguana of today, why could not the monstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become the modern man – the link between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more unscientific in thisâ€theory,†than in that of refusing to man any spiritual immortal Ego, making of him an automaton, and ranking him, at the same time, as a distinct genus in the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific than the present exact Sciences, they are withal more logical and consistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and natural affinities of atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal, but it requires more than a mere interplay between certain material aggregates and their environment to call to life a fully conscious man, even though he were no more indeed than a ramification between two “poor cousins†of the Quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Hæckel that (objective) life on our globe “is a logical postulate of Scientific natural history,†but add that the rejection of alike Spiritual involution, from within without, of invisible subjective Spirit-life – eternal and a Principle in Nature – is more illogical, if possible, than to say that the Universe and all in it has been gradually built by blind forces inherent in matter, without any external help.
Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a cathedral had come originally into being in the following manner. First, there was a progressive and gradual elaboration in Space of an organizable material, which resulted in the production of a state of matter named organic PROTEIN. Then, under the influence of incident forces, those states having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and majestically evolved into and resulted in new combinations of carved and polished wood, of brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind-pipes and bellows. After which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart’s Requiem. This was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc. ad infinitum, its keys playing of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own inherent force and fancy. . . . . What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it is precisely in such wise that the materialistic savants tell us that the Universe was formed, with its millions of beings, and man, its spiritual crown.
IT TAKES A GOD TO BECOME A MAN
Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when writing on the subject of the gradual transformation of species, what he says in it applies to our doctrine. “Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a pre-existing kind of being.†(“Essays on Physiology,†p. 144.) Then why, in this case, should not historical man be the product of a modification on a pre-existent and pre-historical kind of man, even supposing for argument’s sake that there is nothing within him to last longer than, or live independently of, his physical structure? But this is not so! For, when we are told that “organic matters are produced in the laboratory by what we may literally call artificial evolution (Appendix to “Principles of Biology,†p. 482), we answer the distinguished English philosopher that Alchemists and great adepts have done as much, and, indeed, far more, before the chemists ever attempted to “build out of dissociated elements complex combinations.†The Homunculi of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one in Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein will have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no chemist, or Alchemist either, will ever endow such a “Frankenstein’s Monster†with more than animal instinct, unless indeed he does that which the “Progenitors†are credited with, namely, if he leaves his own physical body, and incarnates in the “empty form.†But even this would be an artificial, not a natural man, for our “Progenitors†had, in the course of eternal evolution, to become gods before they became men.
The above digression, if one, is an attempt at justification before the few thinking men of the coming century who may read this. But this accounts also for the reason why the best and most spiritual men of our present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science or theology, and why they prefer any such “psychic craze†to the dogmatic assertions of both, neither of the two having anything better to offer than blind faith in their respective infallibility. Universal tradition is indeed the far safer guide in life. And universal tradition shows primitive man living for ages together with his Creators and first instructors – the Elohim- in the World’s “Garden of Eden,†or “Delight.†We shall treat of the Divine Instructors in Stanza 12.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 347 – 349
Selection 25
A GENEALOGICAL TREE OF THE HUMAN FAMILY
Let the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root Races and the evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and concisely in Mr. Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism.†1. There are seven ROUNDS in every Manvantara; this one is the Fourth, and we are in the Fifth Root-Race, at present. 2. Each Root-Race has seven sub-races. 3. Each sub-race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be called Branch or “Family†races. 4. The little tribes, shoots, and offshoots of the last-named are countless and depend on Karmic action. Examine the “genealogical tree†hereto appended, and you will understand. The illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist the reader in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the confusion which exists between the terms which have been used at different times for the divisions of Humanity. It is also here attempted to express in figures – but only within approximate limits, for the sake of comparison – the duration of time through which it is possible to definitely distinguish one division from another. It would only lead to hopeless confusion if any attempt were made to give accurate dates to a few, for the Races, Sub-Races, etc., etc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap and are entangled with each other until it is nearly impossible to separate them.
The human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably as an illustration.
The main stem of a tree may be compared to the ROOT-RACE (A). Its larger limbs to the various SUB-RACES; seven in number (B1, B2).
On each of these limbs are seven BRANCHES, OR FAMILY-RACES (C).
After this, the cactus-plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy “leaves†are covered with sharp spines, each of which may be compared to a nation or tribe of human beings.
THE EUROPEAN “FAMILY RACE†HAS MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS YET TO RUN
Now our Fifth Root-Race has already been in existence – as a race sui generis and quite free from its parent stem – about 1,000,000 years; therefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding Sub-Races has lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each Family-Race has an average existence of about 30,000 years. Thus the European “Family Race†has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or the innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding “season†of three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the comparative approximation of duration between the lives of a “Family-Race†and a “Sidereal year.â€
The knowledge of the foregoing, and the accurately correct division, formed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were taught to the disciples, and where they were transmitted by one hierophant to another. Everyone is aware that the European astronomers assign (arbitrarily enough) the date of the invention of the Egyptian Zodiac to the years 2000 or 2400 B.C. (Proctor), and insist that this invention coincides in its date with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid. This, to an Occultist and Eastern astronomer, must appear quite absurd. The year of the Kaliyuga is said to have begun between the 17th and 18th of February in the year 3102 B.C. Now the Hindus claim that in the year 20,400 before Kaliyugam, the origin of their Zodiac coincided with the spring equinox – there being at the time a conjunction of the Sun and Moon – and Bailly proved by a lengthy and careful computation of that date, that, even if fictitious, the epoch from which they had started to establish the beginning of their Kaliyug was very real. That “epoch is the year 3102 before our era,†he writes. (See Part III, Book I, “Hindu Astronomy defended by an Academicianâ€.) The lunar eclipse arriving just a fortnight after the beginning of the black Age – it took place in a point situated between the Wheat Ear of Virgo and the star θ (θ) of the same constellation. One of their most esoteric Cycles is based upon certain conjunctions and respective positions of Virgo and the Pleiades (Krittika). Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern India and Lanka,164 the esoteric meaning was evidently identical. The three “Virgins,†or Virgo in three different positions, meant, with both, the record of the first three “divine or astronomical Dynasties,†who taught the Third Root-Race, and after having abandoned the Atlanteans to their doom, returned (or redescended, rather) during the third Sub-Race of the Fifth, in order to reveal to saved humanity the mysteries of their birth-place – the sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical record of the human races and the three Dynasties (G ods, Manes – semi-divine astrals of the Third and Fourth – and the “Heroes†of the Fifth Race), which preceded the purely human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and passages of the Egyptian Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles of course changed the face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed each time. In Mackey’s “Sphinxiad†the speculations of the bold author must have horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, as he says, fantastically enough:
THE EGYPTIAN ZODIAC IS BETWEEN 75 – 80,000 YEARS OLD
“But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by those monuments (the Labyrinth, the Pyramids, and the Zodiacs) does not exceed five millions of years (which is not so)165, which falls short of the records given us both by the (esoteric) Chinese and Hindus, which latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or eight millions of years166, which I have seen upon a talisman of porcelain....â€
The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura-Maya, as the modern Hindus still have. As stated in “Esoteric Buddhism,†the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and “Romans†some thousand years ago, were “remnants of the Atlanto-Aryans,†i.e. the former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans; the last-named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose sudden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The human Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning, with Menes, had all the knowledge of the Atlanteans, though there was no more Atlantean blood in their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic records. All this has been shown long ago.167 And it is just because the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75 and 80,000 years old that the Zodiac of the Greeks is far later. Volney has correctly pointed out in his “Ruins of Empires†(p. 360) that it is only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.168
The Secret Doctrine, ii 434 – 436
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164 Ceylon.
165 The forefathers of the Aryan Brahmins had their Zodiacal calculations and Zodiac from those born by Kriyasakti power, the “Sons of Yogaâ€, the Egyptians from the Atlanteans of Ruta.
166 The former, therefore, may have registered time for seven or eight millions of years, but the Egyptians could not.
167 This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed and answered. See “Five Years of Theosophy†(Article “Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism,†pp. 325–46).
168 Volney says that, as Aries was in its 15th degree 1447 B.C., it follows that the first degree of “Libra†could not have coincided with the vernal equinox more lately than 15,194 years B.C., to which if you add 1790 since Christ, when Volney wrote this, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the (Greek or rather Hellenic) origin of the Zodiac.
Selection 26
SCIENCE CANNOT EXPLAIN THE MYSTERIOUS NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, OF SOUL, SPIRIT IN MAN
It is this divergence among men of Science, their mutual, and often their self-contradictions, that gave the writer of the present volumes the courage to bring to light other and older teachings, if only as hypotheses for future scientific appreciation. Though not in any way very learned in modern sciences, so evident, even to the humble recorder of this archaic clearing, are the said scientific fallacies and gaps, that she determined to touch upon all these, in order to place the two teachings on parallel lines. For Occultism, it is a question of self-defence, and nothing more.
So far, the “Secret Doctrine†has concerned itself with metaphysics, pure and simple. It has now landed on Earth, and finds itself within the domain of physical science and practical anthropology, or those branches of study which materialistic Naturalists claim as their rightful domain, coolly asserting, furthermore, that the higher and more perfect the working of the Soul, the more amenable it is to the analysis and explanations of the zoologist and the physiologist alone. (Hæckel on “Cell-Souls and Soul-Cellsâ€) This stupendous pretension comes from one, who, to prove his pithecoid descent, has not hesitated to include among the ancestors of man the Lemuridæ, which have been promoted by him to the rank of Prosimiæ, indeciduate mammals, to which he very incorrectly attributes a decidua and a discoidal placenta.169 For this Hæckel was taken severely to task by de Quatrefages and criticised by his own brother materialists and agnostics, as great, if not greater, authorities than himself, namely, by Virchow and du Bois-Reymond.170
Such opposition notwithstanding, Hæckel’s wild theories are, to this day, called scientific and logical by some. The mysterious nature of Consciousness, of Soul, Spirit in Man being now explained as a mere advance on the functions of the protoplasmic molecules of the lively Protista, and the gradual evolution and growth of human mind and “social instincts†toward civilization having to be traced back to their origin in the civilization of ants, bees, and other creatures, the chances left for an impartial hearing of the doctrines of archaic Wisdom, are few indeed. The educated profane is told that “the social instincts of the lower animals have, of late, been regarded as being clearly the origin of morals, even of those of man†(!) and that our divine consciousness, our soul, intellect, and aspirations have “worked their way up from the lower stages of the simple cell-soul†of the gelatinous Bathybius (see Hæckel’s “Present Position of Evolution†Notes), and he seems to believe it. For such men, the metaphysics of Occultism must produce the effect that our grandest orchestral and vocal oratorios produce on the Chinaman: a sound that jars upon their nerves.
PHYSICAL EVOLUTION, AS MODERN SCIENCE TEACHES IT, IS A SUBJECT FOR OPEN CONTROVERSY
Yet, are our esoteric teachings about “angels,†the first three pre-animal human Races, and the downfall of the Fourth, on a lower level of fiction and self-delusion than the Hæckelian “plastidular,†or the inorganic “molecular Souls of the Protista� Between the evolution of the spiritual nature of man from the above Amœbian Souls, and the alleged development of his physical frame from the protoplastic dweller in the Ocean slime, there is an abyss which will not be easily crossed by any man in the full possession of his intellectual faculties. Physical evolution, as modern Science teaches it, is a subject for open controversy; spiritual and moral development on the same lines is the insane dream of a crass materialism.
Furthermore, past as well as present daily experience teaches that no truth has ever been accepted by the learned bodies unless it dovetailed with the habitual preconceived ideas of their professors. “The crown of the innovator is a crown of thornsâ€, said G. St. Hilaire. It is only that which fits in with popular hobbies and accepted notions that, as a general rule, gains ground. Hence the triumph of the Hæckelian ideas, notwithstanding their being proclaimed by Vir chow, du Bois Reymond, and others as the “testimonium paupertatis of natural Science.â€
Diametrically opposed as may be the materialism of the German Evolutionists to the spiritual conceptions of Esoteric philosophy, radically inconsistent as is their accepted anthropological system with the real facts of nature, the pseudo-idealistic bias now colouring English thought is almost more pernicious. The pure materialistic doctrine admits of a direct refutation and appeal to the logic of facts. The idealism of the present day not only contrives to absorb, on the one hand, the basic negations of Atheism, but lands its votaries in a tangle of unreality, which culminates in a practical Nihilism. Argument with such writers is almost out of the question. Idealists, therefore, will be still more antagonistic to the Occult teachings now given than even the Materialists. But as no worse fate can befall the exponents of Esoteric Anthropo-Genesis than being openly called by their foes by their old and time-honoured names of “lunatics†and “ignoramuses,†the present archaic theories may be safely added to the many modern speculations, and bide their time for their full or even partial recognition. Only, as the existence itself of these “archaic theories†will probably be denied, we have to give our best proofs and stand by them to the bitter end.
In our race and generation the one “temple in the Universe†is in rare cases – within us; but our body and mind have been too defiled by both Sin and Science to be outwardly now anything better than a fane of iniquity and error. And here our mutual position – that of Occultism and Modern Science – ought to be once for all defined.
We, Theosophists, would willingly bow before such men of learning as the late Prof. Balfour Stewart, Messrs. Crookes, Quatrefages, Wallace, Agassiz, Butlerof, and several others, though we may not agree, from the stand-point of esoteric philosophy, with all they say. But nothing could make us consent to even a show of respect for the opinions of other men of science, such as Hæckel, Carl Vogt, or Ludwig Büchner, in Germany; or even of Mr. Huxley and his co-thinkers in materialism in England, the colossal erudition of the first named, notwithstanding. Such men are simply the intellectual and moral murderers of future generations; especially Hæckel, whose crass materialism often rises to the height of idiotic naivetés in his reasonings. One has but to read his “Pedigree of Man, and Other Essays†(Aveling’s translation) to feel a desire, in the words of Job, that his remembrance should perish from the earth, and that he “shall have no name in the streets.†Hear him deriding the idea of the origin of the human race “as a supernatural (?) phenomenon,†as one “that could not result from simple mechanical causes, from physical and chemical forces, but requires the direct intervention of a creative personality. . .â€
. . . . “Now the central point of Darwin’s teaching,†. . goes on the creator of the mythical Sozura,â€lies in this, that it demonstrates the simplest mechanical causes, purely physico-chemical phenomena of nature, as wholly sufficient to explain the highest and most difficult problems. Darwin puts in the place of a conscious creative force, building and arranging the organic bodies of animals and plants on a designed plan, a series of natural forces working blindly (or we say) without aim, without design. In place of an arbitrary act of operation, we have a necessary law of Evolution . . . .†(So had Manu and Kapila, and, at the same time, guiding, conscious and intelligent Powers). . . “Darwin had very wisely . . . put on one side the question as to the first appearance of life. But very soon that consequence, so full of meaning, so wide reaching, was openly discussed by able and brave scientific men, such as Huxley, Carl Vogt, Ludwig Büchner. A mechanical origin of the earliest living form, was held as the necessary sequence to Darwin’s teaching. . . and we are at present concerned with a single consequence of the theory, the natural origin of the human race through ALMIGHTY EVOLUTION (pp. 34, 37).
To which, unabashed by this scientific farrago, Occultism replies: In the course of Evolution, when the physical triumphed over, and nearly crushed under its weight, spiritual and mental evolutions, the great gift of Kriyasakti171 remained the heirloom of only a few elect men in every age . . . . Spirit strove vainly to manifest itself in its fullness in purely organic forms (as has been explained in Part I of this Volume), and the faculty, which had been a natural attribute in the early humanity of the Third Race, became one of the class regarded as simply phenomenal by the Spiritualists and Occultists, and as scientifically impossible by the materialists.
In our modern day the mere assertion that there exists a power which can create human forms – ready-made sheaths for the “conscious monads†or Nirmânakâyas of past Manvantaras to incarnate within – is, of course, absurd, ridiculous! That which is regarded as quite natural, on the other hand, is the production of a Frankenstein’s monster, plus moral consciousness, religious aspirations, genius, and a feeling of one’s own immortal nature within one’s self – by “physico-chemical forces, guided by blind Almighty Evolution†(“Pedigree of Manâ€).
THE ESOTERIC TEACHING IS ABSOLUTELY OPPOSED TO THE DARWINIAN EVOLUTION AS APPLIED TO MAN
As to the origin of that man, not ex nihilo, cemented by a little red clay, but from a living divine Entity consolidating the astral body with surrounding materials – this conception is too absurd even to be mentioned in the opinion of the materialists. Nevertheless, Occultists and Theosophists are ready to have their claims and theories -however unscientific and superstitious at first glance – compared as to their intrinsic value and probability, with those of the modern evolutionists. Hence the esoteric teaching is absolutely opposed to the Darwinian evolution, as applied to man, and partially so with regard to other species.
It would be interesting to obtain a glimpse of the mental representation of Evolution in the Scientific brain of a materialist. What is EVOLUTION? If asked to define the full and complete meaning of the term, neither Huxley nor Hæckel will be able to do it any better than Webster does: “the act of unfolding; the process of growth, development; as the evolution of a flower from a bud, or an animal from the egg.†Yet the bud must be traced through its parent-plant to the seed, and the egg to the animal or bird that laid it, or at any rate to the speck of protoplasm from which it expanded and grew. And both the seed and the speck must have the latent potentialities in them for the reproduction and gradual development, the unfolding of the thousand and one forms or phases of evolution, through which they must pass before the flower or the animal are fully developed? Hence, the future plan, if not a DESIGN, must be there. Moreover, that seed has to be traced, and its nature ascertained. Have the Darwinists been successful in this? Or will the Moneron be cast in our teeth? But this atom of the Watery Abysses is not homogeneous matter, and there must be something or somebody that had moulded and cast it into being.
Here Science is once more silent. But since there is no self-consciousness as yet in either speck, seed, or germ, according to both Materialists and Psychologists of the modern school – Occultists agreeing in this for once with their natural enemies – what is it that guides the force or forces so unerringly in this process of evolution? Blind force? As well call blind the brain which evolved in Hæckel his “Pedigree of Man†and other lucubrations. We can easily conceive that the said brain lacks an important centre or two. For, whoever knows anything of the anatomy of the human, or even of any animal, body, and is still an atheist and a materialist, must be “hopelessly insane,†according to Lord Herbert, who rightly sees in the frame of man’s body and the coherence of its parts, something so strange and paradoxical that he holds it “to be the greatest miracle of nature.†Blind forces, and no design†in anything under the Sun; when no sane man of Science would hesitate to say that, even from the little he knows and has hitherto discovered of the forces at work in Kosmos, he sees very plainly that every part, every speck and atom are in harmony with their fellow atoms, and these with the whole, each having its distinct mission throughout the life-cycle. But, fortunately, the greatest, the most eminent thinkers and Scientists of the day are now beginning to rise against this “Pedigree,†and even Darwin’s natural selection theory, though its author had never, probably, contemplated such widely stretched conclusions. The remarkable work of the Russian Scientist N. T. Danilevsky – “Darwinism, a Critical Investigation of the Theory†– upsets it completely and without appeal, and so does de Quatrefages in his last work. Our readers are recommended to examine the learned paper by Dr. Bourges – read by its author, a member of the Paris Anthropological Society at a recent official meeting of the latter – called “Evolutionary Psychology; the Evolution of Spirit, etc.†in which he reconciles entirely the two teachings – namely those of the physical and spiritual evolutions. He explains the origin of the variety of organic forms, made to fit their environments with such evident intelligent design, by the existence and the mutual help and interaction of two principles in (manifest) nature, the inner Conscious Principle adapting itself to physical nature and the innate potentialities in the latter. Thus the French Scientist has to return to our old friend – Archæus, or the life-Principle – without naming it, as Dr. Richardson has done in England in his “Nerve-Force,†etc. The same idea was recently developed in Germany by Baron Hellenbach, in his remarkable work, “Individuality in the Light of Biology and Modern Philosophy.â€
We find the same conclusions arrived at in still another excellent volume of another Russian deep thinker, N. N. Strachof – who says in his “Fundamental Conceptions of Psychology and Physiology,†“The most clear, as the most familiar, type of development may be found in our own mental or physical evolution, which has served others as a model to follow . . . . If organisms are entities. . . then it is only just to conclude and assert that the organic life strives to beget psychic life; but it would be still more correct and in accordance with the spirit of these two categories of evolution to say, that the true cause of organic life is the tendency of spirit to manifest in substantial forms, to clothe itself in substantial reality. It is the highest form which contains the complete explanation of the lowest, never the reverse.†This is admitting, as Bourges does in the Mémoire above quoted, the identity of this mysterious, integrally acting and organizing Principle with the Self-Conscious and Inner Subject, which we call the EGO and the world at large – the Soul. Thus, gradually, all the best scientists and thinkers are approaching the Occultists in their general conclusions.
THE ONE UNPARDONABLE SIN
But such metaphysically inclined men of Science are out of court and will hardly be listened to. Schiller, in his magnificent poem on the Veil of Isis, makes the mortal youth who dared to lift the impenetrable covering fall down dead after beholding naked Truth in the face of the stern goddess. Have some of our Darwinians, so tenderly united in natural selection and affinity, also gazed at the Saitic Mother bereft of her veils? One might almost suspect it after reading their theories. Their great intellects must have collapsed while gauging too closely the uncovered face of Nature, leaving only the grey matter and ganglia in their brain, to respond to blind physico-chemical forces. At any rate, Shakespeare’s lines apply admirably to our modern Evolutionist who symbolizes that “proud man,†who -
“Dress’d in a little brief authority;
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured
His glassy essence – like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the Angels weep! . . . . “
These have nought to do with the “angels.†Their only concern is the human ancestor, the pithecoid Noah who gave birth to three sons – the tailed Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape, and the “arboreal†Palaeolithic man. On this point, they will not be contradicted. Every doubt expressed is immediately set down as an attempt to cripple scientific inquiry. The insuperable difficulty at the very foundation of the evolution theory, namely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an approximate definition of the period at which, and the form in which, the first man appeared, is smoothed down to a trifling impediment, which is “really of no account.†Every branch of knowledge is in the same predicament, we are informed. The chemist bases his most abstruse calculations simply “upon a hypothesis of atoms and molecules, of which not one has ever been seen isolated, weighed, or defined. The electrician speaks of magnetic fluids which have never intangibly revealed themselves. No definite origin can be assigned either to molecules or magnetism. Science cannot and does not pretend to any knowledge of the beginnings of law, matter or life, . . .†etc., etc. (Knowledge, January, 1882.)
And, withal, to reject a scientific hypothesis, however absurd, is to commit the one unpardonable sin! We risk it.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 649 – 655
________________
169 Vide infra, M. de Quatrefages’ exposé of Hæckel, in § II, “The Ancestors Mankind is offered by Science.â€
170 Strictly speaking du Bois-Reymond is an agnostic, and not a materialist. He has protested most vehemently against the materialistic doctrine, which affirms mental phenomena to be merely the product of molecular motion. The most accurate physiological knowledge of the structure of the brain leaves us “nothing but matter in motion,†he asserts; “we must go further, and admit the utterly incomprehensible nature of the psychical principle which it is impossible to regard as a mere outcome of material causes.â€
171 For explanation of the term Kriyasakti, see Commentary 2 in Stanza 26.
Selection 27
THE ANCESTORS MANKIND IS OFFERED BY SCIENCE
“The question of questions for mankind – the problem
which underlies all others and is more deeply
interesting than any other – is the ascertainment
of the place which man occupies in nature, and of
his relations to the universe of things.†Huxley
The world stands divided this day, and hesitates between divine progenitors – be they Adam and Eve or the lunar Pitris- and Bathybius Hæckelii, the gelatinous hermit of the briny deep. Having explained the occult theory, it may now be compared with that of the modern Materialism. The reader is invited to choose between the two after having judged them on their respective merits.
We may derive some consolation for the rejection of our divine ancestors, in finding that the Hæckelian speculations receive no better treatment at the hands of strictly exact Science than do our own. Hæckel’s phylogenesis is no less laughed at by the foes of his fantastic evolution, by other and greater Scientists, than our primeval races will be. As du Bois-Reymond puts it, we may believe him easily when he says that “ancestral trees of our race sketched in the ‘Schöpfungsgeschichte’ are of about as much value as are the pedigrees of the Homeric heroes in the eyes of the historical critic.â€
This settled, everyone will see that one hypothesis is as good as another. And as we find that German naturalist (Hæckel) himself confessing that neither geology (in its history of the past) nor the ancestral history of organisms will ever “rise to the position of a real exact Science,â€172 a large margin is thus left to Occult Science to make its annotations and lodge its protests. The world is left to choose between the teachings of Paracelsus, the “Father of Modern Chemistry,†and those of Hæckel, the Father of the mythical Sozura. We demand no more.
Without presuming to take part in the quarrel of such very learned naturalists as du Bois-Reymond and Hæckel à propos of our blood relationship to “those ancestors (of ours) which have led up from the unicellular classes, Vermes, Acrania, Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia to the Aves,†one may put in a few words, a question or two, for the information of our readers. Availing ourselves of the opportunity, and bearing in mind Darwin’s theories of natural selection, etc., we would ask Science – with regard to the origin of the human and animal species – which theory of evolution of the two herewith described is the more scientific, or the more unscientific, if so preferred.
(1) . Is it that of an Evolution which starts from the beginning with sexual propagation?
(2) . Or that teaching which shows the gradual development of organs, their solidification, and the procreation of each species, at first by simple easy separation from one into two or even several individuals. Then follows a fresh development – the first step to a species of separate distinct sexes – the hermaphrodite condition; then again, a kind of Parthenogenesis, “virginal reproduction,†when the egg-cells are formed within the body, issuing from it in atomic emanations and becoming matured outside of it; until, finally, after a definite separation into sexes, the human beings begin procreating through sexual connection?
Of these two, the former “theory†– rather, a “revealed fact†– is enunciated by all the exoteric Bibles (except the Purânas), preeminently by the Jewish Cosmogony. The last one, is that which is taught by the Occult philosophy, as explained all along. An answer is found to our question in a volume just published by Mr. S. Laing – the best lay exponent of Modern Science.173 In Chp. VIII of his latest work, “A Modern Zoroastrian,†the author begins by twitting “all ancient religions and philosophies†for “assuming a male and female principle for their gods.†At first sight, he says “the distinction of sex appears as fundamental as that of plant and animal.“. . . “The Spirit of god brooding over Chaos and producing the world,†he goes on to complain, “is only a later edition, revised according to monotheistic ideas, of the far older Chaldean legend which describes the creation of Kosmos out of Chaos by the co-operations of great gods, male and female . .†Thus, in the orthodox Christian creed, we are taught to repeat “begotten, not made,†a phrase which is absolute nonsense, an instance of using words like counterfeit notes, which have no solid value of an idea behind them. For “begotten†is a very definite term which “implies the conjunction of two opposite sexes to produce a new individual.â€
However, we may agree with the learned author as to the inadvisability of using wrong words, and the terrible anthropomorphic and phallic element in the old Scriptures – especially in the orthodox Christian Bible - nevertheless, there may be two extenuating circumstances in the case. Firstly, all these “ancient philosophies†and “modern religions†are – as sufficiently shown in these two volumes – an exoteric veil thrown over the face of esoteric truth; and – as the direct result of this – they are allegorical, i.e. mythological in form; but still they are immensely more philosophical in essence than any of the new scientific theories, so-called. Secondly, from the Orphic theogony down to Ezra’s last remodeling of the Pentateuch, every old Scripture having in its origin borrowed its facts from the East, it has been subjected to constant alterations by friend and foe, until of the original version there remained but the name, a dead shell from which the Spirit had been gradually eliminated.
This alone ought to show that no religious work now extant can be understood without the help of the Archaic wisdom, the primitive foundation on which they were all built.
SCIENCE MAKES SAD HAVOC WITH THIS IMPRESSION OF SEXUAL GENERATION BEING THE ORIGINAL AND ONLY MODE OF REPRODUCTION
But to return to the direct answer expected from Science to our direct question. It is given by the same author, when, following his train of thought on the unscientific euhemerization of the powers of Nature in ancient creeds, he pronounces a condemnatory verdict upon them in the following terms:
“Science, however, makes sad havoc with this impression of sexual generation being the original and only mode of reproduction,174 and the microscope and dissecting knife of the naturalist introduce us to new and altogether unsuspected (?) worlds of life.†So little “unsuspected,†indeed, that the original a-sexual “modes of reproduction†must have been known – to the ancient Hindus, at any rate – Mr. Laing’s assertion to the contrary, notwithstanding. In view of the statement in the Vishnu Purâna, quoted by us elsewhere, that Daksha “established sexual intercourse as the means of multiplication,†only after a series of other “modes,†which are all enumerated therein, (Vol. II, p. 12, Wilson’s Translation), it becomes difficult to deny the fact. This assertion, moreover, is found, note well, in an EXOTERIC work. Then, Mr. S. Laing goes on to tell us that:
. . . . “By far the larger proportion of living forms, in number . . . . have come into existence, without the aid of sexual propagation.†He then instances Hæckel’s monera . . . . “multiplying by self-division†The next stage the author shows in the nucleated cell, “which does exactly the same thing.†The following stage is that in “which the organism does not divide into two equal parts, but a small portion of it swells out. . . . and finally parts company and starts on separate existence, which grows to the size of the parent by its inherent faculty of manufacturing fresh protoplasm from surrounding inorganic materials.â€175
This is followed by a many-celled organism which is formed by “germ-buds reduced to spores, or single cells, which are emitted from the parentâ€. . . . when “we are at the threshold of that system of sexual propagation, which has (now) become the rule in all the higher families of animals†. . . . It is when an “organism, having advantages in the struggle for life, established itself permanently†. . . that special organs developed to meet the altered condition ............when a distinction “would be firmly established of a female organ or ovary containing the egg or primitive cell from which the new being was to be developed.“. . . . “This is confirmed by a study of embryology, which shows that in the HUMAN and higher animal species the distinction of sex is not developed until a considerable progress has been made in the growth of the embryo . . . .†In the great majority of plants, and in some lower families of animals . . . the male and female organs are developed within the same being . . . a hermaphrodite. Moreover, in the “virginal reproduction – germ-cells apparently similar in all respects to egg-cells, develop themselves into new individuals without any fructifying element,†etc., etc. (pp. 103 – 107).
Of all which we are as perfectly well aware as of this – that the above was never applied by the very learned English popularizer of Huxleyo-Hæckelian theories to the genus homo. He limits this to specks of protoplasm, plants, bees, snails, and so on. But if he would be true to the theory of descent, he must be as true to ontogenesis, in which the fundamental biogenetic law, we are told, runs as follows: “the development of the embryo (ontogeny) is a condensed and abbreviated repetition of the evolution of the race (phylogeny). This repetition is the more complete, the more the true original order of evolution (palingenesis) has been retained by continual heredity. On the other hand, this repetition is the less complete, the more by varying adaptations the later spurious development (cænogenesis) has obtained.†(Anthropogeny, 3rd Ed., p. 11.)
This shows to us that every living creature and thing on earth, including man, evolved from one common primal form. Physical man must have passed through the same stages of the evolutionary process in the various modes of procreation as other animals have: he must have divided himself; then, hermaphrodite, have given birth parthenogenetically (on the immaculate principle) to his young ones; the next stage would be the oviparous- at first “without any fructifying element,†then “with the help of the fertilitary spore“; and only after the final and definite evolution of both sexes, would he become a distinct “male and female,†when reproduction through sexual union would grow into universal law. So far, all this is scientifically proven. There remains but one thing to be ascertained: the plain and comprehensively described processes of such ante-sexual reproduction. This is done in the Occult books, a slight outline of which was attempted by the writer in Part I of this Volume.
MAN HAS A DISTINCTLY DUAL NATURE
Either this, or – man is a distinct being. Occult philosophy may call him that, because of his distinctly dual nature. Science cannot do so, once that it rejects every interference save mechanical laws, and admits of no principle outside matter. The former – the archaic Science – allows the human physical frame to have passed through every form, from the lowest to the very highest, its present one, or from the simple to the complex – to use the accepted terms. But it claims that in this cycle (the fourth), the frame having already existed among the types and models of nature from the preceding Rounds – that it was quite ready for man from the beginning of this Round.176 The Monad had but to step into the astral body of the progenitors, in order that the work of physical consolidation should begin around the shadowy prototype.177
What would Science say to this? It would answer, of course, that as man appeared on earth as the latest of the mammalians, he had no need, no more than those mammals, to pass through the primitive stages of procreation as above described. His mode of procreation was already established on Earth when he appeared. In this case, we may reply: since to this day not the remotest sign of a link between man and the animal has yet been found, then (if the Occultist doctrine is to be repudiated) he must have sprung miraculously in nature, like a fully armed Minerva from Jupiter’s brain. And in such case the Bible is right, along with other national “revelations.†Hence the scientific scorn, so freely lavished by the author of “A Modern Zoroastrian†upon ancient philosophies and exoteric creeds, becomes premature and uncalled for. Nor would the sudden discovery of a “missing-linkâ€-like fossil mend matters at all. For neither one such solitary specimen nor the scientific conclusions thereupon, could insure its being the long-sought-for relic, i.e. that of an undeveloped, still a once speaking MAN. Something more would be required as a final proof (vide infra, Note). Besides which, even Genesis takes up man, her Adam of dust, only where the Secret Doctrine leaves her “Sons of God and Wisdom†and picks up the physical man of the THIRD Race. Eve is notâ€begotten,†but is extracted out of Adam on the manner of “AmÅ“ba A,†contracting in the middle and splitting into AmÅ“ba B – by division. (See p. 103, in “The Modern Zoroastrianâ€) Nor has human speech developed from the various animal sounds.
WHERE ARE THE “MISSING LINKS�
Hæckel’s theory that “speech arose gradually from a few simple, crude animal sounds . . . .†as such “speech still remains amongst a few races of lower rank†(Darwinian theory in “Pedigree of Man,†p. 22) is altogether unsound, as argued by Professor Max Müller, among others. He contends that no plausible explanation has yet been given as to how the “roots†of language came into existence. A human brain is necessary for human speech. And figures relating to the size of the respective brains of man and ape show how deep is the gulf which separates the two. Vogt says that the brain of the largest ape, the gorilla, measures no more than 30.51 cubic inches, while the average brains of the flat-headed Australian natives – the lowest now in the human races – amount to 99.35 cubic inches! Figures are awkward witnesses and cannot lie. Therefore, as truly observed by Dr. F. Pfaff, whose premises are as sound and correct as his biblical conclusions are silly: “The brain of the apes most like man, does not amount to quite a third of the brain of the lowest races of men: it is not half the size of the brain of a new-born child†(†The Age and Origin of Manâ€) From the foregoing it is thus very easy to perceive that in order to prove the Huxley-Hæckelian theories of the descent of man, it is not one, but a great number of “missing links†– a true ladder of progressive evolutionary steps – that would have to be first found and then presented by Science to thinking and reasoning humanity, before it would abandon belief in gods and the immortal Soul for the worship of Quadrumanic ancestors. Mere myths are now greeted as “axiomatic truths.†Even Alfred Russel Wallace maintains with Hæckel that primitive man was a speechless ape-creature. To this Joly answers, “Man never was, in my opinion, this pithecanthropus alalus whose portrait Hæckel has drawn as if he had seen and known him, whose singular and completely hypothetical genealogy he has even given, from the mere mass of living protoplasm to the man endowed with speech and a civilization analogous to that of the Australians and Papuans.†(“Man before Metals,†p. 320, N. Joly. Inter. Scient. Series)
Hæckel, among other things, often comes into direct conflict with the Science of languages. In the course of his attack on Evolutionism (“Mr. Darwin’s Philosophy of Language,†1873), Prof. Max Müller stigmatized the Darwinian theory as “vulnerable at the beginning and at the end.†The fact is, that only the partial truth of many of the secondaryâ€laws†of Darwinism is beyond question – M. de Quatrefages evidently accepting “Natural Selection,†the “struggle for existence†and transformation within species, as proven not once and for ever, but pro tem. But it may not be amiss, perhaps, to condense the linguistic case against the “Ape ancestor†theory.
Languages have their phases of growth, etc., like all else in nature. It is almost certain that the great linguistic families pass through three stages.
(1) All words are roots and merely placed in juxtaposition (Radical languages).
(2) One One root defines the other, and becomes merely a determinative element (Agglutinative).
(3) The determinative element (the determinating meaning of which has longed lapsed) unites into a whole with the formative element (Inflected).
The problem then is: Whence these ROOTS? Max Müller argues that the existence of these ready-made materials of speech is a proof that man cannot be the crown of a long organic series. This potentiality of forming roots is the great crux which materialists almost invariably avoid.
Von Hartmann explains it as a manifestation of the “Unconscious,†and admits its cogency versus mechanical Atheism. Hartmann is a fair representative of the Metaphysician and Idealist of the present age.
The argument has never been met by the non-pantheistic Evolutionists. To say with Schmidt, “Forsooth are we to halt before the origin of language?“, is an avowal of dogmatism and of speedy defeat. (Cf his “Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,†p. 304.)
We respect those men of science who, wise in their generation, say: “Prehistoric Past being utterly beyond our powers of direct observation, we are too honest, too devoted to the truth – or what we regard as truth – to speculate upon the unknown, giving out our unproven theories along with facts absolutely established in modern Science.†. . . . “The borderland of (metaphysical) knowledge is best left to time, which is the best test as to truth†(“A Modern Zoroastrian,†p. 136).
PROOFS OF HUMANITY’S “NOBLE DESCENTâ€
This is a wise and an honest sentence in the mouth of a materialist. But when a Hæckel, after just saying that “historical events of past time. . .†having “occurred many millions of years ago,178. . . are for ever removed from direct observation,†and that neither geology nor phylogeny179can or will “rise to the position of a real exact science,†then insists on the development of all organisms – “from the lowest vertebrate to the highest, from Amphioxus to man†– we ask for a weightier proof than he can give. Mere “empirical sources of knowledge,†so extolled by the author of “Anthropogeny†– when he has to be satisfied with the qualification for his own views – are not competent to settle problems lying beyond their domain, nor is it the province of exact science to place any reliance on them.180 If “empirical†– and Hæckel declares so himself repeatedly – then they are no better, nor any more reliable, in the sight of exact research, when extended into the remote past, than our Occult teachings of the East, both having to be placed on quite the same level. Nor are his phylogenetic and palingenetic speculations treated in any better way by the real scientists, than are our cyclic repetitions of the evolution of the Great in the minor races, and the original order of evolutions. For the province of exact, real Science, materialistic though it be, is to carefully avoid anything like guesswork, speculation which cannot be verified, in short, all suppressio veri and all suggestio falsi. The business of the man of exact Science is to observe, each in his chosen department, the phenomena of nature, to record, tabulate, compare and classify the facts, down to the smallest minutiæ which are presented to the observation of the senses with the help of all the exquisite mechanism that modern invention supplies, not by the aid of metaphysical flights of fancy. All that he has a legitimate right to do, is to correct by the assistance of physical instruments the defects or illusions of his own coarser vision, auditory powers, and other senses. He has no right to trespass on the grounds of metaphysics and psychology. His duty is to verify and to rectify all the facts that fall under his direct observation, to profit by the experiences and mistakes of the Past in endeavouring to trace the working of a certain concatenation of cause and effects, which, but only by its constant and unvarying repetition, may be called A LAW. This it is which a man of science is expected to do, if he would become a teacher of men and remain true to his original programme of natural or physical sciences. Any sideway path from this royal road becomes speculation.
SOME SCIENTISTS DEMAND THEIR WILD THEORIES BE TAKEN
ON BLIND FAITH AS THE OUTCOME OF SCIENCE.
Instead of keeping to this, what does many a so-called man of science do in these days? He rushes into the domains of pure metaphysics, while deriding it. He delights in rash conclusions and calls it “a deductive law from the inductive law†of a theory based upon and drawn out of the depths of his own consciousness, that consciousness being perverted by, and honeycombed with, one-sided materialism. He attempts to explain the “origin†of things, which are yet embosomed only in his own conceptions. He attacks spiritual beliefs and religious traditions millenniums old, and denounces everything, save his own hobbies, as superstition. He suggests theories of the Universe, a Cosmogony developed by blind, mechanical forces of nature alone, far more miraculous and impossible than even one based upon the assumption of fiat lux out of nihil- and tries to astonish the world by such a wild theory; which, being known to emanate from a scientific brain, is taken on blind faith as very scientific and the outcome of SCIENCE.
Are those the opponents Occultism would dread? Most decidedly not. For such theories are no better treated by real (not empirical) Science than our own. Hæckel, hurt in his vanity by du Bois Reymond, never tires of complaining publicly of the latter’s onslaught on his fantastic theory of descent. Rhapsodizing on “the exceedingly rich storehouse of empirical evidence,†he calls those “recognised physiologists†who oppose every speculation of his drawn from the said “storehouse†– ignorant men. “If many men,†he declares – “and among them even some scientists of repute – hold that the whole of phylogeny is a castle in the air, and genealogical trees (from monkeys?) are empty plays of phantasy, they only in speaking thus demonstrate their ignorance of that wealth of empirical sources of knowledge to which reference has already been made†(“Pedigree of Man,†p. 273).
We open Webster’s Dictionary and read the definitions of the word “empiricalâ€: “Depending upon experience or observation alone, without due regard to modern science and theory†This applies to the Occultists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc., etc. Again, “an Empiric:†One who confines himself to applying the results of his own observations†(only) (which is Hæckel’s case); “one wanting Science. . . . an ignorant and unlicensed practitioner; a quack; a CHARLATAN.â€
No Occultist or “magician,†has ever been treated to any worse epithets. Yet the Occultist remains on his own metaphysical grounds, and does not endeavour to rank his knowledge, the fruits of his personal observation and experience, among the exact sciences of modern learning. He keeps within his legitimate sphere, where he is master. But what is one to think of a rank materialist, whose duty is clearly traced before him, who uses such an expression as this:
“The origin of man from other mammals, and most directly from the catarrhine ape, is a deductive law, that follows necessarily from the inductive law of the THEORY OF DESCENT. (“Anthropogeny,†p. 392).
A “theory†is simply a hypothesis, a speculation, and no law. To say otherwise is only one of the many liberties taken now-a-days by scientists. They enunciate an absurdity, and then hide it behind the shield of Science. Any deduction from theoretical speculation is no better than a speculation on a speculation. Now Sir W. Hamilton has already shown that the word theory is now used “in a very loose and improper sense†. . . . “that it is convertible into hypothesis, and hypothesis is commonly used as another term for conjecture, whereas the terms ‘theory’ and ‘theoretical’ are properly used in opposition to the term practice and practical.â€
But modern Science puts an extinguisher on the latter statement, and mocks at the idea. Materialistic philosophers and Idealists of Europe and America may be agreed with the Evolutionists as to the physical origin of man – yet it will never become a general truth with the true metaphysician, and the latter defies the materialists to make good their arbitrary assumptions. That the ape-theory theme181 of Vogt and Darwin, on which the Huxley-Hæckelians have composed of late such extraordinary variations, is far less scientific – because clashing with the fundamental laws of that theme itself – than ours can ever be shown to be, is very easy of demonstration. Let the reader only turn to the excellent work on “Human Species†by the great French naturalist de Quatrefages, and our statement will at once be verified.
Moreover, between the esoteric teaching concerning the origin of man and Darwin’s speculations, no man, unless he is a rank materialist, will hesitate. This is the description given by Mr. Darwin of “the earliest ancestors of man.â€
“They were without doubt once covered with hair; both sexes having beards; their ears were pointed and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail, having the proper muscles. Their limbs and bodies were acted on by many muscles which now only occasionally reappear in man, but which are still normally present in the quadrumana. . . . The foot, judging from the condition of the great toe in the fœtus, was then prehensile, and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm forest-clad land, and the males were provided with canine teeth which served as formidable weapons. . . .†182
Darwin connects him with the type of the tailed catarrhines, “and consequently removes him a stage backward in the scale of evolution. The English naturalist is not satisfied to take his stand upon the ground of his own doctrines, and, like Hæckel, on this point places himself in direct variance with one of the fundamental laws which constitute the principal charm of Darwinism . . .†And then the learned French naturalist proceeds to show how this fundamental law is broken. “In fact,†he says, “in the theory of Darwin, transmutations do not take place, either by chance or in every direction. They are ruled by certain laws which are due to the organization itself. If an organism is once modified in a given direction, it can undergo secondary or tertiary transmutations, but will still preserve the impress of the original. It is the law of permanent characterization, which alone permits Darwin to explain the filiation of groups, their characteristics, and their numerous relations. It is by virtue of this law that all the descendants of the first mollusc have been molluscs; all the descendants of the first vertebrate have been vertebrates. It is clear that this constitutes one of the foundations of the doctrine. . . . It follows that two beings belonging to two distinct types can be referred to a common ancestor, but the one cannot be the descendant of the other†(p. 106).
A WALKING ANIMAL CANNOT BE DESCENDED FROM A CLIMBING ONE
“Now man and ape present a very striking contrast in respect to type. Their organs. . . correspond almost exactly term for term, but these organs are arranged after a very different plan. In man they are so arranged that he is essentially a walker, while in apes they necessitate his being a climber. . . . There is here an anatomical and mechanical distinction. . . . A glance at the page where Huxley has figured side by side a human skeleton and the skeletons of the most highly developed apes is a sufficiently convincing proof.“
The consequence of these facts, from the point of view of the logical application of the law of permanent characterizations, is that man cannot be descended from an ancestor who is already characterized as an ape, any more than a catarrhine tailless ape can be descended from a tailed catarrhine. A walking animal cannot be descended from a climbing one.
“Vogt, in placing man among the primates, declares without hesitation that the lowest class of apes have passed the landmark (the common ancestor), from which the different types of this family have originated and diverged.†(This ancestor of the apes, Occult science sees in the lowest human group during the Atlantean period, as shown before.) . . . “We must, then, place the origin of man beyond the last apes,†goes on de Quatrefages, thus corroborating our Doctrine, “if we would adhere to one of the laws most emphatically necessary to the Darwinian theory. We then come to the prosimiæ of Hæckel, the loris, indris, etc. But those animals also are climbers; we must go further, therefore, in search of our first direct ancestor. But the genealogy by Hæckel brings us from the latter to the marsupials. . . . From men to the Kangaroo, the distance is certainly great. Now neither living nor extinct fauna show the intermediate types which ought to serve as landmarks. This difficulty causes but slight embarrassment to Darwin.183 We know that he considers the want of information upon similar questions as a proof in his favour. Hæckel doubtless is as little embarrassed. He admits the existence of an absolutely theoretical pithecoid man.â€
“Thus, since it has been proved that, according to Darwinism itself, the origin of man must be placed beyond the eighteenth stage, and since it becomes, in consequence, necessary to fill up the gap between marsupials and man, will Hæckel admit the existence of four unknown intermediate groups instead of one?†asks de Quatrefages. “Will he complete his genealogy in this manner? It is not for me to answer.†(“The Human Species,†p. 107 – 108.)
But see Hæckel’s famous genealogy, in “The Pedigree of Man,†called by him “Ancestral Series of Man.†In the “Second Division†(Eighteenth Stage) he describes “Prosimiæ, allied to the Loris (Stenops) and Makis (Lemur) as without marsupial bones and cloaca, but with placenta.†And now turn to de Quatrefages’ “The Human Species,†pp. 109 – 110, and see his proofs, based on the latest discoveries, to show that “the prosimiae of Hæckel have no decidua and a diffuse placenta.†They cannot be the ancestors of the apes even, let alone man, according to a fundamental law of Darwin himself, as the great French Naturalist shows. But this does not dismay the “animal theorists†in the least, for self-contradiction and paradoxes are the very soul of modern Darwinism. Witness – Mr. Huxley. Having himself shown, with regard to fossil man and the “missing link,†that “neither in quaternary ages nor at the present time does any intermediary being fill the gap which separates man from the Troglodyte,†and that to “deny the existence of this gap would be as reprehensible as absurd,†the great man of Science denies his own words in actu by supporting with all the weight of his scientific authority that most “absurd†of all theories – the descent of man from an ape!
“This genealogy,†says de Quatrefages, “is wrong throughout, and is founded on a material error.†Indeed, Hæckel bases his descent of man on the 17th and 18th stages (See Aveling’s “Pedigree of Man,†p. 77), the marsupialia and prosimiæ (genus Hæckelii?). Applying the latter term to the Lemuridæ - hence making of them animals with a placenta- he commits a zoological blunder. For after having himself divided mammals according to their anatomical differences into two groups, the indeciduata, which have no decidua (or special membrane uniting the placentæ), and the deciduata, those who possess it, he includes the prosimiæ in the latter group. Now we have shown elsewhere what other men of science had to say to this. As de Quatrefages says, “The anatomical investigations of . . . Milne Edwards and Grandidier upon these animals . . . place it beyond all doubt that the prosimiæ of Hæckel have no decidua and a diffuse placenta. They are indeciduata. Far from any possibility of their being the ancestors of the apes, according to the principles laid down by Hæckel himself, they cannot be regarded even as the ancestors of the zonoplacental mammals. . . and ought to be connected with the pachydermata, the edentata, and the cetacea†(p. 110). And yet Hæckel’s inventions pass off with some as exact science!
AGREEMENT WITH THE DARWINIAN SCHOOL: THE LAW OF GRADUAL AND EXTREMELY SLOW EVOLUTION, EMBRACING MANY MILLIONS OF YEARS
The above mistake, if indeed, one, is not even hinted at in Hæckel’s “Pedigree of Man,†translated by Aveling. If the excuse may stand good that at the time the famous “genealogies†were made, “the embryogenesis of the prosimiæ was not known,†it is familiar now. We shall see whether the next edition of Aveling’s translation will have this important error rectified, or if the 17th and 18th stages remain as they are to blind the profane, as one of the real intermediate links. But, as the French naturalist observes, “their (Darwin’s and Hæckel’s) process is always the same, considering the unknown as a proof in favour of their theory.†(ibid)
It comes to this. Grant to man an immortal Spirit and Soul; endow the whole animate and inanimate creation with the monadic principle gradually evolving from the latent and passive into active and positive polarity – and Hæckel will not have a leg to stand upon, whatever his admirers may say.
But there are important divergences even between Darwin and Hæckel. While the former makes us proceed from the tailed catarrhine, Hæckel traces our hypothetical ancestor to the tailless ape, though, at the same time, he places him in a hypothetical “stage†immediately preceding this, “Menocerca with tails†(19th stage).
Nevertheless, we have one thing in common with the Darwinian school: it is the law of gradual and extremely slow evolution, embracing many million years. The chief quarrel, it appears, is with regard to the nature of the primitive “Ancestor.†We shall be told that the Dhyan Chohan, or the “progenitor†of Manu, is a hypothetical being unknown on the physical plane. We reply that it was believed in by the whole of antiquity, and by nine-tenths of the present humanity, whereas not only is the pithecoid man, or “ape-man,†a purely hypothetical creature of Hæckel’s creation, unknown and untraceable on this earth, but further its genealogy – as invented by him – clashes with scientific facts and all the known data of modern discovery in Zoology. It is simply absurd, even as a fiction. As de Quatrefages demonstrates in a few words, Hæckel “admits the existence of an absolutely theoretical pithecoid man†– a hundred times more difficult to accept than any Deva ancestor. And it is not the only instance in which he proceeds in a similar manner in order to complete his genealogical table; he admits very naively his inventions himself. Does he not confess the non-existence of his sozura (14th stage) – a creature entirely unknown to science- by confessing over his own signature, that, “The proof of its existence arises from the necessity of an intermediate type between the 13th and the 14th stagesâ€!
If so, we might maintain with as much scientific right, that the proof of the existence of our three ethereal races, and the three-eyed men of the Third and Fourth Root-Races “arises also from the necessity of an intermediate type†between the animal and the gods. What reason would the Hæckelians have to protest in this special case?
Of course there is a ready answer: “Because we do not grant the presence of the monadic essence.†The manifestation of the Logos as individual consciousness in the animal and human creation is not accepted by exact science, nor does it cover the whole ground, of course. But the failures of science and its arbitrary assumptions are far greater on the whole than* any “extravagant†esoteric doctrine can ever furnish. Even thinkers of the school of Von Hartmann have become tainted with the general epidemic. They accept the Darwinian anthropology (more or less), though they also postulate the individual Ego as a manifestation of the Unconscious (the Western presentation of the Logos or Primeval Divine Thought). They say the evolution of the physical man is from the animal, but that mind in its various phases is altogether a thing apart from material facts, though organism (as an upadhi) is necessary for ITS manifestation.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 656 – 670
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172 “Pedigree of Man,†The Proofs of Evolution, p. 273.
173 Author of “Modern Science and Modern Thought.â€
174 Vide Part I of this volume, page 183, Stanza VIII.
175 In this, as shown in Part I, Modern Science was again anticipated, far beyond its own speculations in this direction, by Archaic Science.
176 Theosophists will remember that, according to Occult teaching, Cyclic pralayas so-called are but obscurations, during which periods Nature, i.e. everything visible and invisible on a resting planet, remains in statu quo. Nature rests and slumbers, no work of destruction going on on the globe even if no active work is done. All forms, as well as their astral types, remain as they were at the last moment of its activity. The “night†of a planet has hardly any twilight preceding it. It is caught like a huge mammoth by an avalanche, and remains slumbering and frozen till the next dawn of its new day – a very short one indeed in comparison to the “Day of Brahmâ.“
177 This will be pooh-poohed, because it will not be understood by our modern men of science, but every Occultist and Theosophist will easily realize the process. There can be no objective form on Earth (nor in the Universe either) without its astral prototype being first formed in Space. From Phidias down to the humblest workman in the ceramic art—a sculptor has had to create first of all a model in his mind, then sketch it in one and two dimensional lines, and then only can he reproduce it in a three dimensional or objective figure. And if human mind is a living demonstration of such successive stages in the process of evolution—how can it be otherwise when NATURE’S MIND and creative powers are concerned?
178 It thus appears that in its anxiety to prove our noble descent from the catarrhine “baboon,†Hæckel’s school has pushed the times of pre-historic man millions of years back. (See “Pedigree of Man,†p. 273.) Occultists render thanks to science for such corroboration of our claims!
179 This seems a poor compliment to pay Geology, which is not a speculative but as exact a science as astronomy— save, perhaps its too risky chronological speculations. It is mainly a “Descriptive†as opposed to an “Abstract†Science.
180 Such newly-coined words as “perigenesis of plastids,†“plastidule Souls†(!), and others less comely, invented by Hæckel, may be very learned and correct in so far as they may express very graphically the ideas in his own vivid fancy. As a fact, however, they remain for his less imaginative colleagues painfully cænogenetic— to use his own terminology; i.e. for true Science they are spurious speculations so long as they are derived from “empirical sources.†Therefore, when he seeks to prove that “the origin of man from other mammals, and most directly from the catarrhine ape, is a deductive law that follows necessarily from the inductive law of the theory of descent†(“Anthropogeny,†p. 392)— his no less learned foes (du Bois Reymond— for one) have a right to see in this sentence a mere jugglery of words; a “testimonium paupertatis of natural science‗ as he himself complains, calling them, in return, ignoramuses (see “Pedigree of Man,†Notes).
181 The mental barrier between man and ape, characterized by Huxley as an “enormous gap, a distance practically immeAsurableâ€! ! is, indeed, in itself conclusive. Certainly it constitutes a standing puzzle to the materialist, who relies on the frail reed of “natural selection.†The physiological differences between Man and the Apes are in reality—despite a curious community of certain features—equally striking. Says Dr. Schweinfurth, one of the most cautious and experienced of naturalists:—
“In modern times there are no animals in creation that have attracted more attention from the scientific student than the great quadrumana (the anthropoids), bearing such a striking resemblance to the human form as to have justified the epithet of anthropomorphic being conferred on them. . . . But all investigation at present only leads human intelligence to a confession of its insufficiency; and nowhere is caution more to be advocated, nowhere is premature judgment more to be deprecated than in the attempt to bridge over the MYSTERIOUS CHASM which separates man and beast†“Heart of Africa†I, 520.
182 A ridiculous instance of evolutionist contradictions is afforded by Schmidt (“Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,†p. 292). He says, “Man’s kinship with the apes is not impugned by the bestial strength of the teeth of the male orang or gorilla.†Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, endows this fabulous being with teeth used as weapons!
183 According even to a fellow-thinker, Professor Schmidt, Darwin has evolved “a certainly not flattering, and perhaps in many points an incorrect, portrait of our presumptive ancestors in the dawn of humanity.†(“Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,†p. 284.)
Selection 28
THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE ANTHROPOID APE
The data derived from scientific research as to “primeval man†and the ape lend no countenance to theories deriving the former from the latter. “Where, then, must we look for primeval man?†still queries Mr. Huxley, after having vainly searched for him in the very depths of the quaternary strata. “Was the oldest Homo sapiens Pliocene or Miocene, or yet more ancient? In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an ape more anthropoid, or a man more pithecoid than any yet known, await the researches of some unborn palæontologist? Time will show . . . .†(“Man’s Place in Nature,†p. 159).
It will – undeniably – and thus vindicate the anthropology of the Occultists. Meanwhile, in his eagerness to vindicate Mr. Darwin’s Descent of Man, Mr. Boyd Dawkins believes he has all but found the “missing link†– in theory. It was due to theologians more than to geologists that, till nearly 1860, man had been considered a relic no older than the Adamic orthodox 6,000 years. As Karma would have it though, it was left to a French Abbé – l’abbé Bourgeois – to give this easy-going theory even a worse blow than had been given to it by the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes. Everyone knows that the Abbé discovered and brought to light good evidence that man already existed during the Miocene period, for flints of undeniably human making were excavated from Miocene strata. In the words of the author of “Modern Science and Modern Thoughtâ€:
“They must either have been chipped by man, or, as Mr. Boyd Dawkins supposes, by the Dryopithecus or some other anthropoid ape which had a dose of intelligence so much superior to the gorilla, or chimpanzee, as to be able to fabricate tools. But in this case the problem would be solved and the missing link discovered, for such an ape might well have been the ancestor of Palæolithic man.â€
Or – the descendant of Eocene Man, which is a variant offered to the theory. Meanwhile, the Dryopithecus with such fine mental endowments is yet to be discovered. On the other hand, Neolithic and even Palæolithic man having become an absolute certainty – and, as the same author justly observes: “If 100,000,000 years have elapsed since the earth became sufficiently solidified to support vegetable and animal life, the Tertiary period may have lasted for 5,000,000, or for 10,000,000 years, if the life-sustaining order of things has lasted, as Lyell supposes, for at least 200,000,000 years†– why should not another theory be tried? Let us carry man, as an hypothesis, to the close of Mesozoic times – admitting argumenti causâ that the (much more recent) higher apes then existed! This would allow ample time to man and the modern apes to have diverged from the mythical “ape more anthropoid,†and even for the latter to have degenerated into those that are found mimicking man in using “branches of trees as clubs, and cracking cocoanuts with hammer and stones.â€184 Some savage tribes of hillmen in India build their abodes on trees, just as the gorillas build their dens. The question, which of the two, the beast or the man, has become the imitator of the other, is scarcely an open one, even granting Mr. Boyd Dawkins’ theory. The fanciful character of his hypothesis, is, however, generally admitted. It is argued that, while in the Pliocene and Miocene periods, there were true apes and baboons, and man was undeniably contemporaneous with the former of those times – though as we see orthodox anthropology still hesitates in the teeth of facts to place him in the era of the Dryopithecus, which latter “has been considered by some anatomists as in some respects superior to the chimpanzee or the gorilla†– yet, in the Eocene there have been no other fossil primates unearthed and no pithecoid stocks found save a few extinct Lemurian forms. And we find it also hinted that the Dryopithecus may have been the “missing link,†though the brain of the creature no more warrants the theory than does the brain of the modern gorilla. (Vide also Gaudry’s speculations.)
Now we would ask who among the Scientists is ready to prove that there was no man in existence in the early Tertiary period? What is it that prevented his presence? Hardly thirty years ago his existence any farther back than 6,000 or 7,000 years was indignantly denied. Now he is refused admission into the Eocene age. Next century it may become a question whether man was not contemporary with the “flying Dragons,†the pterodactyl, the plesiosaurus and iguanodon, etc., etc. Let us listen, however, to the echo of Science.
INSURMOUNTABLE DIFFICULTIES
“Now wherever anthropoid apes lived, it is clear that, whether as a question of anatomical structure, or of climate and surroundings, man, or some creature which was the ancestor of man, might have lived also. Anatomically speaking, apes and monkeys are as much special variations of the mammalian type as man, whom they resemble, bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, and the physical animal man is simply an instance of the quadrumanous type specialised for erect posture and a larger brain185 . . . . If he could survive, as we know he did, the adverse conditions and extreme vicissitudes of the Glacial period, there is no reason why he might not have lived in the semi-tropical climate of the Miocene period, when a genial climate extended even to Greenland and Spitzbergen . . .†(“Modern Science and Modern Thought,†p. 152)
While most of the men of Science, who are uncompromising in their belief in the descent of man from an “extinct anthropoid mammal,†will not accept even the bare tenability of any other theory than an ancestor common to man and the Dryopithecus, it is refreshing to find in a work of real scientific value such a margin for compromise. Indeed, it is as wide as it can be made under the circumstances, i.e. without immediate danger of getting knocked off one’s feet by the tidal wave of “science-adulation.†Believing that the difficulty of accounting “for the development of intellect and morality by evolution is not so great as that presented by the difference as to physical structure186 between man and the highest animal,†the same author says:
“But it is not so easy to see how this difference of physical structure arose, and how a being came into existence which had such a brain and hand, and such undeveloped capabilities for an almost unlimited progress. The difficulty is this: the difference in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the highest existing ape is too great to admit of the possibility of one being the direct descendant of the other. The negro in some respects makes a slight approximation towards the Simian type. His skull is narrower, his brain less capacious, his muzzle more projecting, his arm longer than those of the average European man. Still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or the gorilla. Even the idiot or cretin, whose brain is no larger and intelligence no greater than that of the chimpanzee, is an arrested man, not an ape.â€
“If, therefore, the Darwinian theory holds good in the case of man and ape, we must go back to some common ancestor from whom both may have originated . . . . But to establish this as a fact and not a theory we require to find that ancestral form, or, at any rate, some intermediate forms tending towards it . . . . in other words . . . . the missing link! Now it must be admitted that, hitherto, not only have no such missing links been discovered, but the oldest known human sculls and skeletons which date from the Glacial period, and are probably at least 100,000 years old, show no very decided approximation towards any such pre-human type. On the contrary, one of the oldest types, that of the men of the sepulchral cave of Cro-Magnon,187 is that of a fine race, tall in stature, large in brain, and on the whole superior to many of the existing races of mankind. The reply of course is that the time is insufficient, and if man and the ape had a common ancestor, that as a highly developed anthropoid ape, certainly, and man, probably, already existed in the Miocene period, such ancestor must be sought still further back at a distance compared with which the whole Quaternary period sinks into insignificance. . . . It may well make us hesitate before we admit that man. . . is alone an exception. . . . This is more difficult to believe, as the ape family which man (?) so closely resembles . . . . contains numerous branches which graduate into one another, but the extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the highest of the ape series. If a special creation is required for man, must there not have been special creations for the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orang, and for at least 100 different species of ape and monkeys which are all built on the same lines?†(“Modern Science and Modern Thought,†p. 182)
MATERIALISM IS PUZZLED
There was a “special creation†for man, and a “special creation†for the ape, his progeny, only on other lines than ever bargained for by Science. Albert Gaudry and others give some weighty reasons why man cannot be regarded as the crown of an ape-stock. When one finds that not only was the “primeval savage†(?) a reality in the Miocene times, but that, as de Mortillet shows, the flint relics he has left behind him were splintered by fire in that remote epoch; when we learn that the Dryopithecus, alone of the anthropoids, appears in those strata, what is the natural inference? That the Darwinians are in a quandary. The very manlike Gibbon is still in the same low grade of development, as it was when it co-existed with Man at the close of the Glacial Period. It has not appreciably altered since the Pliocene times. Now there is little to choose between the Dryopithecus and the existing anthropoids – gibbon, gorilla, etc. If, then, the Darwinian theory is all-sufficient, how are we to “explain†the evolution of this ape into Man during the first half of the Miocene? The time is far too short for such a theoretical transformation. The extreme slowness with which variation in species supervenes renders the thing inconceivable – more especially on the Natural Selection hypothesis. The enormous mental and structural gulf between a savage acquainted with fire and the mode of kindling it, and a brutal anthropoid, is too much to bridge even in idea, during so contracted a period. Let the Evolutionists push back the process into the preceding Eocene, if they prefer to do so; let them even trace both Man and Dryopithecus to a common ancestor; the unpleasant consideration has, nevertheless, to be faced that in Eocene strata the anthropoid fossils are as conspicuous by their absence, as is the fabulous pithecanthropus of Hæckel. Is an exit out of this cul de sac to be found by an appeal to the “unknown,†and a reference with Darwin to the “imperfection of the geological recordâ€? So be it; but the same right of appeal must be accorded equally to the Occultists, instead of remaining the monopoly of puzzled materialism. Physical man, we say, existed before the first bed of the Cretaceous rocks was deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary Age, the most brilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at a period when the Hæckelian man-ape is conceived to have roamed through the primeval forests, and Mr. Grant Allen’s putative ancestor to have swung himself from bough to bough with his hairy mates, the degenerated Liliths of the Third Race Adam. Yet there were no anthropoid apes in the brighter days of the civilization of the Fourth Race; but Karma is a mysterious law, and no respecter of persons. The monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean giants, “blurred copies†of their bestial sires, and hence of modern man (Huxley), now mislead and overwhelm with error the speculative anthropologist of European Science.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 675 – 679
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184 This is the way primitive man must have acted? We do not know of men, not even of savages, in our age, who are known to have imitated the apes who live side by side with them in the forests of America and the islands. We do know of large apes who, tamed and living in houses, will mimic men to the length of donning hats and coats. The writer had personally a chimpanzee who, without being taught, opened a newspaper and pretended to read in it. It is the descending generations, the children, who mimic their parents—not the reverse.
185 It is asked, whether it would change one iota of the scientific truth and fact contained in the above sentence if it were to read, “the ape is simply an instance of the biped type specialized for going on all fours, generally, and a smaller brain.†Esoterically speaking, this is the real truth, and not the reverse.
186 We cannot follow Mr. Laing here. When avowed Darwinists like Huxley point to “the great gulf which intervenes between the lowest ape and the highest man in intellectual power,†the “enormous gulf. . . between them,†the “immeAsurable and practically infinite divergence of the Human from the Simian stirps†(“Man’s Place in Nature,†pp. 102–3); when even the physical basis of mind— the brain—so vastly exceeds in size that of the highest existing apes; when men like Wallace are forced to invoke the agency of extra-terrestrial intelligences in order to explain the rise of such a creature as the Pithecanthropus alalus, or speechless savage of Hæckel to the level of the large-brained and moral man of today—it is idle to dismiss Evolutionist puzzles so lightly. If the structural evidence is so unconvincing and, taken as a whole, so hostile to Darwinism, the difficulties as to the “how†of the Evolution of the human mind by natural selection are ten-fold greater.
187 A race which MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy regard as a branch of the same stock whence the Canary Island Guanches sprung—offshoots of the Atlanteans, in short.
Selection 29
WHERE DID THE FIRST MEN LIVE?
Where did the first men live? Some Darwinists say in Western Africa, some in Southern Asia, others, again, believe in an independent origin of human stocks in Asia and America from a Simian ancestry (Vogt). Hæckel, however, advances gaily to the charge. Starting from his “prosimiæâ€. . . “the ancestor common to all other catarrhini, including man†– a “link†now, however, disposed of for good by recent anatomical discoveries! – he endeavours to find a habitat for the primeval Pithecanthropus alalus.†In all probability it (the transformation of animal into man) occurred in Southern Asia, in which region many evidences are forthcoming that here was the original home of the different species of men. Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest cradle of the human race, but LEMURIA, a continent that lay to the south of Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. (Vide infra, “Scientific and geological proofs of the former existence of several submerged continents.“) “T he period during which the evolution of the anthropoid apes into apelike men took place was probably the last part of the tertiary period, the Pliocene Age, and perhaps the Miocene, its forerunner.†(“Pedigree of Man,†p. 73)
Of the above speculations, the only one of any worth is that referring to Lemuria, which was the cradle of mankind – of the physical sexual creature who materialized through long æons out of the ethereal hermaphrodites. Only, if it is proved that Easter Island is an actual relic of Lemuria, we must believe that according to Hæckel the “dumb ape-men,†just removed from a brutal mammalian monster, built the gigantic portrait-statues, some of which are now in the British Museum. Critics are mistaken in terming Hæckelian doctrines “abominable, revolutionary, immoral†– though materialism is the legitimate outcome of the ape-ancestor myth – they are simply too absurd to demand disproof.
THE COMPARATIVE ANATOMY OF MAN AND ANTHROPOID IS NOT A CONFIRMATION OF DARWINISM
We are told that while every other heresy against modern science may be disregarded, this, our denial of the Darwinian theory as applied to Man, will be the one “unpardonable†sin. The Evolutionists stand firm as rock on the evidence of similarity of structure between the ape and the man. The anatomical evidence, it is urged, is quite overpowering in this case; it is bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, even the brain conformation being very much the same.
Well, what of that? All this was known before King Herod, and the writers of the Ramayana, the poets who sang the prowess and valour of Hanuman, the monkey-God, “whose feats were great and Wisdom never rivaled,†must have known as much about his anatomy and brain as does any Hæckel or Huxley in our modern day. Volumes upon volumes were written upon this similarity, in antiquity as in more modern times. Therefore, there is nothing new whatever given to the world or to philosophy, in such volumes as Mivart’s “Man and Apes,†or Messrs. Fiske and Huxley’s defence of Darwinism. But what are those crucial proofs of man’s descent from a pithecoid ancestor? If the Darwinian theory is not the true one- we are told – if man and ape do not descend from a common ancestor, then we are called upon to explain the reason of:
(I.) The similarity of structure between the two; the fact that the higher animal world – man and beast – is physically of one type or pattern.
(II.) The presence of rudimentary organs in man, i.e. traces of former organs now atrophied by disuse. Some of these organs, it is asserted, could not have had any scope for employment, except for a semi-animal, semi-arboreal monster. Why, again, do we find in Man those “rudimentary†organs (as useless as its rudimentary wing is to the Apteryx of Australia), the vermiform appendix of the cœcum, the ear muscles,188 the “rudimentary tail†(with which children are still sometimes born), etc., etc.?
Such is the war cry; and the cackle of the smaller fry among the Darwinians is louder, if possible, than even that of the scientific Evolutionists themselves!
Furthermore, the latter themselves – with their great leader Mr. Huxley, and such eminent zoologists as Mr. Romanes and others – while defending the Darwinian theory, are the first to confess the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of its final demonstration. And there are as great men of science as the above-named, who deny, most emphatically, the uncalled-for assumption, and loudly denounce the unwarrantable exaggerations on the question of this supposed similarity. It is sufficient to glance at the works of Broca, Gratiolet, of Owen, Pruner-Bey, and finally, at the last great work of de Quatrefages, “Introduction à l’Etude des Races humaines, Questions générales,†to discover the fallacy of the Evolutionists. We may say more: the exaggerations concerning such similarity of structure between man and the anthropomorphous ape have become so glaring and absurd of late, that even Mr. Huxley found himself forced to protest against the too sanguine expectations. It was that great anatomist personally who called the “smaller fry†to order, by declaring in one of his articles that the differences in the structure of the human body and that of the highest anthropomorphous pithecoid, were not only far from being trifling and unimportant, but were, on the contrary, very great and suggestive: “each of the bones of the gorilla has its own specific impress on it that distinguishes it from a similar human bone.†Among the existing creatures there is not one single intermediate form that could fill the gap between man and the ape. To ignore that gap, he added, “was as uncalled-for as it was absurd.â€189
Finally, the absurdity of such an unnatural descent of man is so palpable in the face of all the proofs and evidence of the skull of the pithecoid as compared to that of man, that even de Quatrefages resorted unconsciously to our esoteric theory by saying that it is rather the apes that can claim descent from man than vice vers̢. As proven by Gratiolet, with regard to the cavities of the brain of the anthropoids, in which species that organ develops in an inverse ratio to what would be the case were the corresponding organs in man really the product of the development of the said organs in the apes Рthe size of the human skull and its brain, as well as the cavities, increase with the individual development of man. His intellect develops and increases with age, while his facial bones and jaws diminish and straighten, thus being more and more spiritualized: whereas with the ape it is the reverse. In its youth the anthropoid is far more intelligent and good-natured, while with age it becomes duller, and, as its skull recedes and seems to diminish as it grows, its facial bones and jaws develop, the brain being finally crushed, and thrown entirely back, to make with every day more room for the animal type. The organ of thought Рthe brain Рrecedes and diminishes, entirely conquered and replaced by that of the wild beast Рthe jaw apparatus.
Thus, as wittily remarked in the French work, a gorilla would have a perfect right to address an Evolutionist, claiming its right of descent from himself. It would say to him, “We, anthropoid apes, form a retrogressive departure from the human type, and therefore our development and evolution are expressed by a transition from a human-like to an animal-like structure of organism; but in what way could you, men, descend from us – how can you form a continuation of our genus? For, to make this possible, your organization would have to differ still more than ours does from the human structure, it would have to approach still closer to that of the beast than ours does, and in such a case justice demands that you should give up to us your place in nature. You are lower than we are, once that you insist on tracing your genealogy from our kind; for the structure of our organization and its development are such that we are unable to generate forms of a higher organization than our own.
MAN CANNOT DESCEND FROM EITHER AN APE OR AN ANCESTOR COMMON TO BOTH
This is where the Occult Sciences agree entirely with de Quatrefages. Owing to the very type of his development man cannot descend from either an ape or an ancestor common to both, but shows his origin from a type far superior to himself. And this type is the “Heavenly man†– the Dhyan Chohans, or the Pitris so-called, as shown in the first Part of this volume. On the other hand, the pithecoids, the orang-outang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee can, and as the Occult Sciences teach, do descend from the animalized Fourth human Root-Race, being the product of man and an extinct species of mammal – whose remote ancestors were themselves the product of Lemurian bestiality – which lived in the Miocene age. The ancestry of this semi-human monster is explained in the Stanzas as originating in the sin of the “Mind-less†races of the middle Third Race period.
When it is borne in mind that all forms which now people the earth are so many variations on basic types originally thrown off by the MAN of the Third and Fourth Round, such an evolutionist argument as that insisting on the “unity of structural plan†characterising all vertebrates, loses its edge. The basic types referred to were very few in number in comparison with the multitude of organisms to which they ultimately gave rise, but a general unity of type has, nevertheless, been preserved throughout the ages. The economy of Nature does not sanction the co-existence of several utterly opposed “ground plans†of organic evolution on one planet. Once, however, that the general drift of the occult explanation is formulated, inference as to detail may well be left to the intuitive reader.
Similarly with the important question of the “rudimentary†organs discovered by anatomists in the human organism. Doubtless this line of argument, when wielded by Darwin and Hæckel against their European adversaries, proved of great weight. Anthropologists, who ventured to dispute the derivation of man from an animal ancestry, were sorely puzzled how to deal with the presence of gill-clefts, with the “tail†problem, and so on. Here again Occultism comes to our assistance with the necessary data.
The fact is that, as previously stated, the human type is the repertory of all potential organic forms, and the central point from which these latter radiate. In this postulate we find a true “Evolution†or “unfolding†– a sense which cannot be said to belong to the mechanical theory of natural selection. Criticising Darwin’s inference from “rudiments,†an able writer remarks, “Why is it not just as probably a true hypothesis to suppose that Man was created with the rudimentary sketches in his organization, and that they became useful appendages in the lower animals into which man degenerated, as to suppose that these parts existed in full development in the lower animals out of which man was generated? (“Creation or Evolution?â€, Geo. T. Curtis, p. 76.)
Read for “into which Man degenerated,†“the prototypes which man shed in the course of his astral developments,†and an aspect of the true esoteric solution is before us. But a wider generalization is now to be formulated.
So far as our present Fourth Round terrestrial period is concerned, the mammalian fauna are alone to be regarded as traceable to prototypes shed by Man. The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc. are the resultants of the Third Round astral fossil forms stored up in the auric envelope of the Earth and projected into physical objectivity subsequent to the deposition of the first Laurentian rocks. “Evolution†has to deal with the progressive modifications, which palæontology shows to have affected the lower animal and vegetable kingdoms in the course of geological time. It does not, and from the nature of things cannot, touch on the subject of the pre-physical types which served as the basis for future differentiation. Tabulate the general laws controlling the development of physical organisms it certainly may, and to a certain extent it has acquitted itself ably of the task.
To return to the immediate subject of discussion. The mammalia, whose first traces are discovered in the marsupials of the Triassic rocks of the Secondary Period, were evolved from purely astral progenitors contemporary with the Second Race. They are thus post-Human, and, consequently, it is easy to account for the general resemblance between their embryonic stages and those of Man, who necessarily embraces in himself and epitomizes in his development the features of the group he originated. This explanation disposes of a portion of the Darwinist brief. “But how to account for the presence of the gill-clefts in the human fÅ“tus, which represent the stage through which the branchiæ of the fish are developed;190 for the pulsating vessel corresponding to the heart of the lower fishes, which constitutes the fÅ“tal heart; for the entire analogy presented by the segmentation of the human ovum, the formation of the blastoderm, and the appearance of the ‘gastrula’ stage, with corresponding stages in lower vertebrate life and even among the sponges; “for the various types of lower animal life which the form of the future child shadows forth in the cycle of its growth?†“How comes it to pass that stages in the life of fishes, whose ancestors swam†– æons before the epoch of the First Root-Race – “in the seas of the Silurian period, as well as stages in that of the later amphibian, reptilian fauna, are mirrored in the ‘epitomized history’ of human fÅ“tal development?“
The Secret Doctrine, ii 679 – 685
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188 Professor Owen believes that these muscles— the attollens, retrahens, and attrahens aurem—were actively functioning in men of the Stone Age. This may or may not be the case. The question falls under the ordinary “occult†explanation, and involves no postulate of an “animal progenitor†to solve it.
189 Quoted in the Review of the “Introduction à l’Etude des Races Humaines,†by de Quatrefages. We have not Mr. Huxley’s work at hand to quote from. Or to cite another good authority: “We find one of the most man-like apes (gibbon) in the tertiary period, and this species is still in the same low grade, and side by side with it at the end of the Ice-period, man is found in the same high grade as today, the ape not having approximated more nearly to the man, and modern man not having become further removed from the ape than the first (fossil) man. . . these facts contradict a theory of constant progressive development.†(Pfaff.) When, according to Vogt, the average Australian brain = 99. 35 cubic inches, that of the gorilla 30. 51 cubic inches, and that of the chimpanzee only 25.45, the giant gap to be bridged by the advocate of “Natural†Selection becomes apparent.
190 “At this period,†writes Darwin, “the arteries run in arch-like branches, as if to carry the blood to branchiæ which are not present in the higher vertebrata, though the slits on the side of the neck still remain, marking their former (?) position.“
It is noteworthy that, though gill-clefts are absolutely useless to all but Amphibia and fishes, etc. their appearance is regularly noted in the fœtal development of vertebrates. Even children are occasionally born with an opening in the neck corresponding to one of the clefts.
Selection 30
REVERSION FROM THE WRONG END
This plausible objection is met by the reply that the Third Round terrestrial animal forms were just as much referable to types thrown off by Third Round man, as that new importation into our planet’s area – the mammalian stock – is to the Fourth Round Humanity of the Second Root-Race. The process of human fÅ“tal growth epitomizes not only the general characteristics of the Fourth, but of the Third Round terrestrial life. The diapason of type is run through in brief. Occultists are thus at no loss to “account for†the birth of children with an actual caudal appendage, or for the fact that the tail in the human fÅ“tus is, at one period, double the length of the nascent legs. The potentiality of every organ useful to animal life is locked up in Man – the microcosm of the Macrocosm – and abnormal conditions may not unfrequently result in the strange phenomena which Darwinists regard as “reversion to ancestral features.â€191 Reversion, indeed, but scarcely in the sense contemplated by our present-day empiricists!
DARWINISM AND THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN: THE ANTHROPOIDS AND THEIR ANCESTRY
The public has been notified by more than one eminent modern geologist and man of science, that “all estimate of geological duration is not merely impossible, but necessarily imperfect; for we are ignorant of the causes, though they must have existed, which quickened or retarded the progress of the sedimentary deposits.â€192 And now another man of Science, as well known (Croll), calculating that the tertiary age began either 15 or 2½ million of years ago – the former being a more correct calculation, according to Esoteric doctrine, than the latter – there seems in this case, at least, no very great disagreement. Exact Science, refusing to see in man “a special creation†(to a certain degree the Secret Sciences do the same), is at liberty to ignore the first three, or rather two-and-a-half Races – the Spiritual, the semi-astral, and the semi-human- of our teachings. But it can hardly do the same in the case of the Third at its closing period, the Fourth, and the Fifth Races, since it already divides mankind into Palæolithic and Neolithic man.193 The geologists of France place man in the mid-Miocene age (Gabriel de Mortillet), and some even in the Secondary period, as de Quatrefages suggests, while the English savants do not generally accept such antiquity for their species. But they may know better some day. For “If we consider,†says Sir Charles Lyell in “Antiquity of Man†(p. 246):
“the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and works of art in all strata, whether marine or fresh water, even in those formed in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by millions of human beings, we shall be prepared for the general dearth of human memorials in glacial formations, whether recent, Pleistocene, or of more ancient date. If there were a few wanderers over lands covered with glaciers, or over seas infested with icebergs, and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in moraines or in marine drifts, the chances, after the lapse of thousands of years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must be infinitesimally small.“
The men of Science avoid pinning themselves down to any definite statement concerning the age of man, as indeed they hardly could, and thus leave enormous latitude to bolder speculations. Nevertheless, while the majority of the anthropologists carry back the existence of man only into the period of the post-glacial drift, or what is called the Quaternary period, those of them who, as Evolutionists, trace man to a common origin with that of the monkey, do not show great consistency in their speculations. The Darwinian hypothesis demands, in reality, a far greater antiquity for man, than is even dimly suspected by superficial thinkers. This is proven by the greatest authorities on the question – Mr. Huxley, for instance. Those, therefore, who accept the Darwinian evolution ipso facto hold very tenaciously to an antiquity of man so very great, indeed, that it falls not so far short of the Occultist’s estimate.194
The modest thousands of years of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the 100,000 years to which anthropology in general limits the age of Humanity seem quite microscopical when compared with the figures implied in Mr. Huxley’s bold speculations. The former, indeed, makes of the original race of men ape-like cave-dwellers. The great English biologist, in his desire to prove man’s pithecoid origin, insists that the transformation of the primordial ape into a human being must have occurred millions of years back. For in criticising the excellent average cranial capacity of the Neanderthal skull, notwithstanding his assertion that it is overlaid with “pithecoid bony walls,†coupled with Mr. Grant Allen’s assurances that this skull “possesses large bosses on the forehead, strikingly (?) suggestive of those which give the gorilla its peculiarly fierce appearanceâ€195 (Fortnightly Review, 1882), still Mr. Huxley is forced to admit that, in the said skull, his theory is once more defeated by the “completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, together with the fair development of the Engis skull.†In consequence of all this we are notified that those skulls, “clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has proceeded, need no longer be sought by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development in the newest Tertiaries; but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of the eiepnas priMigemus than that is from usâ€196 (Huxley).
An untold antiquity for man is thus, then, the scientific sine qûa non in the question of Darwinian Evolution, since the oldest Palæolithic man shows as yet no appreciable differentiation from his modern descendant. It is only of late that modern Science began to widen with every year the abyss that now separates her from old Science, that of the Plinys and Hippocrateses, none of whom would have derided the archaic teachings with respect to the evolution of the human races and animal species, as the present day Scientist – geologist or anthropologist – is sure to do.
THE MAMMALIAN TYPE WAS A POST-HUMAN FOURTH ROUND PRODUCT
Holding, as we do, that the mammalian type was a post-human Fourth Round product, the following diagram – as the writer understands the teaching – may make the process clear:
PRIMEVAL ASTRAL MAN
The unnatural union was invariably fertile, because the then mammalian types were not remote enough from their Root-type197 - Primeval Astral Man – to develop the necessary barrier. Medical science records such cases of monsters, bred from human and animal parents, even in our own day. The possibility is, therefore, only one of degree, not of fact. Thus it is that Occultism solves one of the strangest problems presented to the consideration of the anthropologist.
THE INCUBUS OF ETHNOLOGY
The pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally emancipated herself from the shackles of theology, Science has embraced the opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to interpret Nature on purely materialistic lines, she has built up that most extravagant theory of the ages – the derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has this doctrine, in one form or another, now become, that the most Herculean efforts will be needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian anthropology is the incubus of the ethnologist, a sturdy child of modern Materialism, which has grown up and acquired increasing vigour, as the ineptitude of the theological legend of Man’s “creation†became more and more apparent. It has thriven on account of the strange delusion that – as a scientist of repute puts it – “All hypotheses and theories with respect to the rise of man can be reduced to two (the Evolutionist and the Biblical exoteric account). . . There is no other hypothesis conceivable. . .“!! The anthropology of the secret volumes is, however, the best possible answer to such a worthless contention.
The anatomical resemblance between Man and the higher Ape, so frequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some former ancestor common to both, presents an interesting problem, the proper solution of which is to be sought for in the esoteric explanation of the genesis of the pithecoid stocks. We have given it as far as was useful, by stating that the bestiality of the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of huge man-like monsters – the offspring of human and animal parents. As time rolled on, and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical, the descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions, until the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the “Mindless†– this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their crime were the species of apes now known as Anthropoid.
It may be useful to compare this very simple theory – and we are willing to offer it even as a hypothesis to the unbelievers – with the Darwinian scheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles, that no sooner is one of these overcome by a more or less ingenious hypothesis, than ten worse difficulties are forthwith discovered behind the one disposed of.
PROOFS FOR THE ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN RACE
Millions of years have dropped into Lethe, leaving no more recollection in the memory of the profane than the few millenniums of the orthodox Western chronology as to the origin of Man and the history of the primeval races.
All depends on the proofs found for the antiquity of the Human Race. If the still-debated man of the Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the Homo primigenius, then science may be right (argumenti causâ) in basing its present anthropology – as to the date and mode of origin of Homo sapiens - on the Darwinian theory.198 But if the skeletons of man should, at any time, be discovered in the Eocene strata, but no fossil ape, thereby proving the existence of man prior to the anthropoid – then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in another direction. And it is said in well-informed quarters that the XXth century will be yet in its earliest teens, when such undeniable proof of Man’s priority will be forthcoming.
Even now evidence is brought forward that the dates for the foundations of cities, civilizations, and various other historical events have been absurdly curtailed. This was done as a peace-offering to Biblical chronology. “No date,†writes the well-known Palæontologist, Edward Lartet, “is to be found in Genesis, which assigns a time for the birth of primitive humanity,†but chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to force the Bible facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one hundred and forty different opinions have been formed about the single date of “Creationâ€, “and between the extreme variations there is a discrepancy of 3,194 years, in the reckoning of the period between the beginning of the world and the birth of Christ.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 685 – 690
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191 Those who, with Hæckel, regard the gill-clefts with their attendant phenomena as illustrative of an active function in our Amphibian and piscine ancestors (Vide his Xllth and XlIIth stages) ought to explain why the “Vegetable with leaflets†(Lefèvre) represented in fœtal growth, does not appear in his 22 stages through which the Monera have passed in their ascent to Man. Hæckel does not postulate a vegetable ancestor. The embryological argument is thus a two-edged sword and here cuts its possessor.
192 “Physiology,†Lefevre, p. 480.
193 We confess to not being able to see any good reasons for Mr. E. Clodd’s certain statement in Knowledge. Speaking of the men of Neolithic times, “concerning whom Mr. Grant Allen has given . . . a vivid and accurate sketch,†and who are “the direct ancestors of peoples of whom remnants yet lurk in out-of-the way corners of Europe, where they have been squeezed or stranded,†he adds to this: “but the men of Palæolithic times can be identified with no existing races; they were savages of a more degraded type than any extant; tall, yet barely erect, with short legs and twisted knees, with prognathous, that is, projecting ape-like jaws, and small brains. Whence they come we cannot tell, and their ‘grave knoweth no man to this day.’
Besides the possibility that there may be men who know whence they came and how they perished—it is not true to say that the Palæolithic men, or their fossils, are all found with “small brains.†The oldest skull of all those hitherto found, the “Neanderthal skull,†is of average capacity, and Mr. Huxley was compelled to confess that it was no real approximation whatever to that of the “missing link.†There are aboriginal tribes in India whose brains are far smaller and nearer to that of the ape than any hitherto found among the skulls of Palæolithic man.
194 The actual time required for such a theoretical transformation is necessarily enormous. “If,†says Professor Pfaff, “in the hundreds of thousands of years which you (the Evolutionists) accept between the rise of Palæolithic man and our own day, a greater distance of man from the brute is not demonstrable, (the most ancient man was just as far removed from the brute as the now living man), what reasonable ground can be advanced for believing that man has been developed from the brute, and has receded further from it by infinitely small gradations?†. . . . “The longer the interval of time placed between our times and the so-called Palæolithic men, the more ominous and destructive for the theory of the gradual development of man from the animal kingdom is the result stated.†Huxley states (“Man’s Place in Nature,†p. 159) that the most liberal estimates for the antiquity of Man must be still further extended.
195 The baselessness of this assertion, as well as that of many other exaggerations of the imaginative Mr. Grant Allen, was ably exposed by the eminent anatomist, Professor R. Owen, in “Longman’s Magazine,†No. 1. Must it be repeated, moreover, that the Cro-Magnon Palæolithic type is superior to a very large number of existing races?
196 It thus stands to reason that science would never dream of a pre-tertiary man, and that de Quatrefages’ secondary man makes every Academician and “F.R.S.†faint with horror because, TO PRESERVE THE APE-THEORY, SCIENCE MUST MAKE MAN POST-SECONDARY. This is just what de Quatrefages has twitted the Darwinists with, adding, that on the whole, there were more scientific reasons to trace the ape from man than man from the anthropoid. With this exception, science has not one single valid argument to offer against the antiquity of man. But in this case modern Evolution demands far more than the fifteen million years of Croll for the Tertiary period, for two very simple but good reasons: (a) No anthropoid ape has been found before the Miocene period; (b) man’s flint relics have been traced to the Pliocene and their presence suspected, if not accepted by all, in the Miocene strata. Again, where is the “missing link†in such case? And how could even a Palæolithic Savage, a “Man of Canstadt,†evolve into thinking men from the brute Dryopithecus of the Miocene in so short a time. One sees now the reason why Darwin rejected the theory that only 60,000,000 years had elapsed since the Cambrian period. “He judges from the small amount of organic changes since the glacial epoch, and adds that the previous 140 million years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which certainly existed toward the close of the Cambrian period.†(Ch. Gould.)
197 Let us remember in this connection the esoteric teaching which tells us of Man having had in the Third Round a GIGANTIC APE-LIKE FORM on the astral plane. And similarly at the close of the Third Race in this Round. Thus it accounts for the human features of the apes, especially of the later anthropoids— apart from the fact that these latter preserve by Heredity a resemblance to their Atlanto-Lemurian sires.
198 It may here be remarked that those Darwinians, who with Mr. Grant Allen, place our “hairy arboreal†ancestors so far back as the Eocene Age, are landed in rather an awkward dilemma. No fossil anthropoid ape—much less the fabulous common ancestor assigned to Man and the Pithecoid—appears in Eocene strata. The first presentment of an anthropoid ape is Miocene.
Selection 31
SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS ON ESOTERIC GEOLOGICAL CHRONOLOGY
It seems, however, possible to calculate the approximate duration of the geological periods from the combined data of Science and Occultism now before us. Geology is, of course, able to determine almost with certainty one thing – the thickness of the several deposits. Now, it also stands to reason that the time required for the deposition of any stratum on a sea-bottom must bear a strict proportion to the thickness of the mass thus formed. Doubtless the rate of erosion of land and the sorting out of matter on to ocean beds has varied from age to age, and cataclysmic changes of various kinds break the “uniformity†of ordinary geological processes. Provided, however, we have some definite numerical basis on which to work, our task is rendered less difficult than it might at first sight appear to be. Making due allowance for variations in the rate of deposit, Professor Lefèvre gives us the relative figures which sum up geological time. He does not attempt to calculate the lapse of years since the first bed of the Laurentian rocks was deposited, but postulating that time as = X, he presents us with the relative proportions in which the various periods stand to it. Let us premise our estimate by stating that, roughly speaking, the Primordial rocks are 70,000 ft., the Primary 42,000 ft., the Secondary 15,000 ft., the Tertiary 5,000 ft., and the Quaternary some 500 ft. in thickness:
“Dividing into a hundred parts the time, whatever its actual length, that has passed since the dawn of life on this earth (lower Laurentian strata), we shall be led to attribute to the primordial age more than half of the whole duration, say 53.5; to the Primary 32.2; to the Secondary 11. 5; to the Tertiary 2.3; to the Quaternary 0.5, or one-half per cent.†(“Philosophy,†p. 481.)
Now, as it is certain, on occult data, that the time which has elapsed since the first sedimentary deposits = 320,000,000 years, we are able to infer that the:
|
|
|
ROUGH APPROXIMATIONS. |
|
Primordial |
Laurentian |
lasted 171,200,000 yrs. |
|
Primary |
Devonian |
lasted 103,040,000 yrs. |
|
Secondary |
Triassic |
lasted 36,800,000 yrs. |
|
Tertiary |
Eocene |
lasted 7,360,000 yrs. |
|
Quaternary |
|
lasted 1,600,000 yrs. |
Such estimates harmonise with the statements of Esoteric Ethnology in almost every particular. The Tertiary Atlantean part-cycle, from the “apex of glory†of that Race in the early Eocene to the great mid-Miocene cataclysm, would appear to have lasted some 3½ to four million years. If the duration of the Quaternary is not rather (as seems likely) overestimated, the sinking of Ruta and Daitya would be post-Tertiary. It is probable that the results here given allow somewhat too long a period to both the Tertiary and Quaternary, as the Third Race goes very far back into the Secondary Age. Nevertheless, the figures are most suggestive.
But the argument from geological evidence being only in favour of 100,000,000 years, let us compare our claims and teachings with those of exact science.
Mr. Edward Clodd,199 in reviewing M. de Mortillet’s work “Materiaux pour l’Histoire de l’Homme,†which places man in the mid-Miocene period,200 remarks that “it would be in defiance of all that the doctrine of evolution teaches, and moreover, win no support from believers in special creation and the fixity of species, to seek for so highly specialized a mammalian as man at an early stage in the life-history of the globe.†To this, one could answer: (a) the doctrine of evolution, as inaugurated by Darwin and developed by later evolutionists, is not only the reverse of infallible, but it is repudiated by several great men of science, e.g. de Quatrefages, in France, and Dr. Weismann, an ex-evolutionist in Germany, and many others, the ranks of the anti- Darwinists growing stronger with every year;201 and (b) truth to be worthy of its name, and remain truth and fact, hardly needs to beg for support from any class or sect. For were it to win support from believers in special creation, it would never gain the favour of the evolutionists, and vice versâ. Truth must rest upon its own firm foundations of facts, and take its chances for recognition, when every prejudice in the way is disposed of. Though the question has been already fully considered in its main aspects, it is, nevertheless, advisable to combat every so-called “scientific†objection as we go along, when making what are regarded as heretical and “anti-scientific†statements.
DIVERGENCES BETWEEN ORTHODOX AND ESOTERIC SCIENCE ON THE QUESTION OF THE AGE OF THE GLOBE AND OF MAN
Let us briefly glance at the divergences between orthodox and esoteric science on the question of the age of the globe and of man. With the two respective synchronistic tables before him, the reader will be enabled to see at a glance the importance of these divergences and to perceive, at the same time, that it is not impossible – nay, it is most likely – that further discoveries in geology and the finding of fossil remains of man will force science to confess that it is esoteric philosophy which is right after all, or, at any rate, nearer to the truth.
PARALLELISM OF LIFE
|
SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES |
ESOTERIC THEORY |
|
Science divides the period of the globe’s history, since the beginning of life on earth (or the Azoic age), into five main divisions or periods, according to Hæckel.1 |
Leaving the classification of the geological periods to Western Science, esoteric philosophy divides only the life-periods on the globe. In the present Manvantara, the actual period is separated into seven Kalpas and seven great human races. Its first Kalpa, answering to the “Primordial Epoch,†is the age of the |
|
PRIMORDIAL |
Laurentian |
Deva or Divine men, the “Creators†and Progenitors.3 |
|
The Primordial Epoch is, science tells us, by no means devoid of vegetable and animal life. In the Laurentian deposits are found specimens of the Eozoon Canadense- a chambered shell. In the Silurian are discovered sea-weeds (olgæ), molluscs, crustacea, and lower marine organisms, also the first trace of fishes. The primordial Epoch shows algæ, molluscs, crustacea, polyps, and marine organisms, etc., etc. Science teaches, therefore, that marine life was present from the very beginnings of time, leaving us, however, to speculate for ourselves as to how life appeared on earth. If it rejects the Biblical “Creation†(as we do), why does it not give us another, approximately plausible hypothesis? |
The Esoteric Philosophy agrees with the statement made by science (see parallel column), demurring, however, in one particular. The 300,000,000 years of vegetable life (see “Brahminical Chronologyâ€) preceded the “Divine Men,†or Progenitors. Also, no teaching denies that there were traces of life within the Earth besides the Eozoon Canadense in the Primordial Epoch. Only, whereas the said vegetation belonged to this Round, the zoological relics now found in the Laurentian, Cambrian, and Silurian systems, so called, are the relics of the Third Round. At first astral like the rest, they consolidated and materialized pari passu with the NEW vegetation. |
|
PRIMARY |
Devonian4 |
Divine Progenitors, SECONDARY GROUPS, and the 2 1/2 races. “Fern-forests, Sigillaria, Coniferæ, fishes, first trace of reptiles.†Thus saith modern science; the esoteric doctrine repeats that which was said above. These are all relics of the preceding Round.5 Once, however, the prototypes are projected out of the astral envelope of the earth, an indefinite amount of modification ensues. |
|
|
Triassic |
According to every calculation, the Third Race had already made its appearance, as during the Triassic there were already a few mammals, and it must have separated. |
|
This is the age of Reptiles, of the gigantic Megalosauri, Ichthyosauri, Plesiosauri, etc., etc. Science denies the presence of man in that period. If so, it has to explain how men came to know of these monsters and describe them before the age of Cuvier? The old annals of China, India, Egypt, and even of Judea are full of them, as demonstrated elsewhere. In this period also appear the first (marsupial) mammals6- insectivorous, carnivorous, phytophagous, and (as Prof. Owen thinks) an herbivorous hoofed mammal. |
This, then, is the age of the Third Race, in which the origins of the early Fourth may be perhaps also discoverable. We are, however, here left entirely to conjecture, as no definite data are yet given out by the Initiates. The analogy is but a poor one; still it may be argued that, as the early Mammalia and pre -mammalia are shown in their evolution merging from one kind into a higher one, anatomically, so are the human races in their procreative processes. A parallel might certainly be found among the Monotremata, the Didelphia (or Marsupialia), and the placental Mammals, divided in their turn into three orders8 like the First, Second, and Third Root-Races of men.9 But this would require more space than can be now allotted to the subject. |
|
No man is yet allowed to have lived during this period: 13Tertiary Says Mr. E. Clodd, in Knowledge: “Although the placenta mammals and the order of Primates to which man is related, appear in Tertiary times and the climate, tropical in the Eocene age, warm in the Miocene and temperate in the Pliocene, was favourable to his presence, the proofs of his existence in Europe before the close of the Tertiary epoch . . . . are not generally accepted here.†|
Tertiary |
Geology has now divided the periods and placed man in the
|
Quaternary |
Palaeolithic |
|
If the Quaternary period is allowed 1,500,000 years, then only does our Fifth Race belong to it. |
(Footnotes to PARALLELISM OF LIFE)
1 “History of Creation,†p. 20.
2 The same names are retained as those given by science, to make the parallels clearer. Our terms are quite different.
3 Let the student remember that the Doctrine teaches that there are seven degrees of Devas or “Progenitors,†or seven classes, from the most perfect to the less exalted.
4 It may be said that we are inconsistent in not introducing into this table a Primary-Age Man. The parallelism of Races and geological periods here adopted, is, so far as the origin of 1st and 2nd are concerned, purely tentative, no direct information being available. Having previously discussed the question of a possible Race in the Carboniferous Age, it is needless to renew the debate.
5 During the interim from one Round to another, the globe and everything on it remains in statu quo. Remember, vegetation began in its ethereal form before what is called the Primordial, running through the Primary, and condensing in it, and reaching its full physical life in the Secondary.
6 Geologists tell us that “in the Secondary epoch, the only mammals which have been (hitherto) discovered in Europe are the fossil remains of a small marsupial or pouch-bearer.†(“Knowledge,†March 31, 1882, p. 464.) Surely the marsupial or didelphis (the only surviving animal of the family of those who were on earth during the presence on it of androgyne man) cannot be the only animal that was then on earth? Its presence speaks loudly for that of other (though unknown) mammals, besides the monotremes and marsupials, and thus shows the appellation of “mammalian age†given only to the Tertiary period to be misleading and erroneous, as it allows one to infer that there were no mammals, but reptiles, birds, Amphibians, and fishes alone in the Mesozoic times—the Secondary.
7 Those who feel inclined to sneer at that doctrine of Esoteric Ethnology, which pre-supposes the existence of Man in the Secondary Age, will do well to note the fact that one of the most distinguished anthropologists of the day, M. de Quatrefages, seriously argues in that direction. He writes: “There is nothing impossible in the supposition that he (Man) may have appeared on the globe with the first representatives of the type to which he belongs in virtue of his organism†This statement approximates most closely to our fundamental assertion that man preceded the other mammalia.
Professor Lefèvre admits that the “labours of Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Christy, Bourgeois, Desnoyers, Broca, de Mortillet, Hamy, Gaudry, Capellini, and a hundred others, have overcome all doubts and clearly established the progressive development of the human organism and industries from the Miocene epoch of the Tertiary age.†(“Philosophy,†p. 499, chapter on Organic Evolution.) Why does he reject the possibility of a Secondary-Age man? Simply because he is involved in the meshes of the Darwinian Anthropology!! “The origin of man is bound up with that of the higher mammals;†he appeared “only with the last types of his classâ€!! This is not argument, but dogmatism. Theory can never excommunicate fact! Must everything give place to the mere working-hypotheses of Western Evolutionists? Surely not.
8 These Placentalia of the third sub-class are divided, it appears, into Villiplacentalia (placenta composed of many separate scattered tufts), the Zonoplacentalia (girdle-shaped placenta), and the discoplacentalia (or discoid). Hæckel sees in the Marsupialia Didelphia, one of the connecting links genealogically between man and the Moneron!!
9 This inclusion of the First Race in the Secondary is necessarily only a provisional working-hypothesis—the actual chronology of the First, Second, and Early Third Races being closely veiled by the Initiates. For all that can be said on the subject, the First Root-Race may have been Pre-Secondary, as is, indeed, taught. (Vide supra.)
10 Though we apply the term “truly human,†only to the Fourth Atlantean Root-Race, yet the Third Race is almost human in its latest portion, since it is during its fifth sub-race that mankind separated sexually, and that the first man was born according to the now normal process. This “first man†answers in the Bible (Genesis) to Enos or Henoch, son of Seth (Ch. IV).
11 Geology records the former existence of a universal ocean, sheets of marine sediments uniformly present everywhere testifying to it, but, it is not even the epoch referred to in the allegory of Vaivasvata Manu. The latter is a Deva-Man (or Manu) saving in an ark (the female principle) the germs of humanity, and also the seven Rishis—who stand here as the symbols for the seven human principles— of which allegory we have spoken elsewhere. The “Universal Deluge†is the watery abyss of the Primordial Principle of Berosus. (See Stanzas from 2 to 8 in Part I). How, if Croll allowed fifteen million years to have elapsed since the Eocene period (which we state on the authority of a Geologist, Mr. Ch. Gould), only 60 millions are assigned by him “since the beginning of the Cambrian period, in the Primordial Ageâ€, passes comprehension. The Secondary strata are twice the thickness of the Tertiary, and Geology thus shows the Secondary age alone to be of twice the length of the Tertiary. Shall we then accept only 15 million years for both the Primary and the Primordial? No wonder Darwin rejected the calculation.
12 We hope that we have furnished all the Scientific data for it elsewhere.
13 The above parallels stand good only if Professor Croll’s earlier calculations are adopted, namely, 15,000,000 years since the beginning of the Eocene period (see Charles Gould’s “Mythical Monsters,†p. 84), not those in his “Climate and Time,†which allow only 2½ million years’, or at the utmost three million years’ duration to the Tertiary age. This, however, would make the whole duration of the incrusted age of the world only 131,600,000 years according to Professor Winchell, whereas in the Esoteric doctrine, sedimentation began in this Round approximately over 320 million years ago. Yet his calculations do not clash much with ours with regard to the epochs of glacial periods in the Tertiary age, which is called in our Esoteric books the age of the “Pigmies.†With regard to the 320 millions of years assigned to sedimentation, it must be noted that even a greater time elapsed during the preparation of this globe for the Fourth Round previous to stratification. (End of Footnotes)
Yet, mirabile dictu! – while the non-cannibal Palæolithic man, who must have certainly antedated cannibal Neolithic man by hundreds of thousands of years202, is shown to be a remarkable artist, Neolithic man is made out almost an abject savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding.203 For see what a learned geologist, Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in his “Mythical Monstersâ€:
“Palæolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of weaving, and apparently had no domesticated animals or system of cultivation, but the Neolithic lake-dwellers of Switzerland had looms, pottery, cereals, sheep, horses,†etc., etc.
Yet, though “Implements of horn, bone, and wood were in common use among both races . . . those of the older are frequently distinguished by their being sculptured with great ability, or ornamented with life-like engravings of the various animals living at the period, whereas there appears to have been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability204 on the part of “Neolithic man.†Let us give the reasons for it.
(1) The oldest fossil man, the primitive cave-men of the old Palæolithic period, and of the Pre-glacial period (of whatever length, and however far back), is always the same genus man, and there are no fossil remains proving for him “what the Hipparion and Anchitherium have proved for the genus horse – that is, gradual progressive specialization from a simple ancestral type to more complex existing forms†(“Modern Science,†p. 181).
(2) As to the so-called Palæolithic hâches. . . “when placed side by side with the rudest forms of stone hatchets actually used by the Australian and other savages, it is difficult to detect any difference†(Ibid, p. 112) . This goes to prove that there have been savages at all times, and the inference would be that there might have been civilized people in those days as well, cultured nations contemporary with those rude savages. We see such a thing in Egypt 7,000 years ago.
(3) An obstacle which is the direct consequence of the two preceding: Man, if no older than the Palæolithic period, could not possibly have had the actual time to get transformed from the “missing link†into what he is known to have been even during that remote geological time, i.e. even a finer specimen than many of the now existing races.
SOME OF THE PRESENT DIFFICULTIES OF SCIENCE MIGHT BE EASILY MADE TO DISAPPEAR
The above lends itself naturally to the following syllogism: (1) The primitive man (known to Science) was, in some respects, even a finer man of his genus than he is now; (2) The earliest monkey known, the lemur, was less anthropoid than the modern pithecoid species; (3) Conclusion: even though a missing link were found, the balance of evidence would remain more in favour of the ape being a degenerated man made dumb by some fortuitous circumstances,205 than tending to show that man descends from a pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both way.
On the other hand, if the existence of Atlantis is accepted, and the statement is believed that in the Eocene Age “even in its very first part, the great cycle of the Fourth Race men, the Atlanteans had already reached its highest point . . . .†(“Esoteric Buddhism,†p. 64), then some of the present difficulties of science might be easily made to disappear. The rude workmanship of the Palæolithic tools proves nothing against the idea that, side by side with their makers, there lived nations highly civilized. We are told that “only a very small portion of the earth’s surface has been explored, and of this a very small portion consists of ancient land surfaces or fresh water formations, where alone we can expect to meet with traces of the higher forms of animal life,†. . . and that “even these have been so imperfectly explored, that where we now meet with thousands and tens of thousands of undoubted human remains lying almost under our feet, it is only within the last thirty years that their existence has even been suspected†(Ibid, p. 98). It is very suggestive also that along with the rude hâches of the lowest savage, explorers meet with specimens of workmanship of such artistic merit as could hardly be found, or expected, in a modern peasant belonging to any European country – unless in exceptional cases. The “portrait†of the “Reindeer feeding,†from the Thayngin grotto in Switzerland, and those of the man running, with two horse’s heads sketched close to him – a work of the Reindeer period, i.e. at least 50,000 years ago - are pronounced by Mr. Laing not only exceedingly well done, but, especially the reindeer feeding, as one that “would do credit to any modern animal painter†– by no means exaggerated praise, as anyone may see (vide infra). Now, since side by side with the modern Esquimaux, who also have a tendency, like their Palæolithic ancestors of the Reindeer period, the rude and savage human species, to be constantly drawing with the point of their knives sketches of animals, scenes of the chase, etc., we have our greatest painters of Europe, why could not the same have happened in those days? Compared with the specimens of Egyptian drawing and sketching – “7,000 years ago†– the “earliest portraits†of men, horses’ heads, and reindeer, made 50,000 years ago, are certainly superior. Nevertheless, the Egyptians of those periods are known to have been a highly civilized nation, whereas the Palæolithic men are called savages of the lower type. This is a small matter seemingly, yet extremely suggestive as showing that every new geological discovery is made to fit in with current theories, instead of the reverse. Yes, Mr. Huxley is right in saying, “Time will show.†It will, and must vindicate Occultism.
Meanwhile, the most uncompromising materialists are driven by necessity into the most occult-like admissions. Strange to say, it is the most materialistic – those of the German school – who, with regard to physical development, come the nearest to the teachings of the Occultists. Thus, Professor Baumgärtner, who believes that “the germs for the higher animals could only be the eggs of the lower animalsâ€; who thinks that “besides the advance of the vegetable and animal world in development, there occurred in that period the formation of new original germs,†which formed the basis of new metamorphoses, etc.; thinks also that “the first men who proceeded from the germs of animals beneath them, lived first in a larva state.“
Just so, in a larva state, we say, too, only from no “animal†germ, and that “larva†was the soulless astral form of the pre-physical Races. And we believe, as the German professor does, with several other men of Science in Europe now, that the human races “have not descended from one pair, but appeared immediately in numerous races†(Anfänge zu einer Physiologischen Schöpfungs-geschichte der Pflanzen und Thierwelt, 1885). Therefore, when we read “Force and Matter,†and find that Emperor of Materialists, Büchner, repeating after Manu and Hermes, that the plant passes “imperceptibly into the animal, and the animal into man†(ibid, p. 85), we need only add “and man into a spirit,†to complete the Kabalistic axiom. The more so, since on page 82 of the same work we read the following admission: . . . “Produced in the way of spontaneous generation . . . it is by the aid of intense natural forces and endless periods of time (that) there has progressively arisen that rich and infinitely modified organic world by which we are at present surrounded.†. . And (p. 84) “Spontaneous generation played, no doubt, a more important part in the primeval epoch than at present; nor can it be denied that in this way beings of a higher organization were produced than now,â€206 for this is the claim of Occultism.
THE ORIGIN AND THE DESCENT OF MAN IS STILL A GREAT PROBLEM FOR SCIENCE
The whole difference lies in this: Modern Science places her materialistic theory of primordial germs on earth, and the last germ of life on this globe, of man, and everything else, between two voids. Whence the first germ, if both spontaneous generation and the interference of external forces, are absolutely rejected now? Germs of organic life, we are told, by Sir W. Thomson, came to our earth in some meteor? This helps in no way and only shifts the difficulty from this earth to the supposed meteor.
These are our agreements and disagreements with Science. About the endless periods we are, of course, at one even with materialistic speculation, for we believe in Evolution, though on different lines. Professor Huxley very wisely says: “If any form of progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of man.†But when we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces inherent in matter, force, according to modern views, being but a quality of matter, a “mode of motion,†etc., and when we find Sir W. Thomson repeating in 1885 what was asserted by Büchner and his school thirty years ago, we fear all our reverence for real Science is vanishing into thin air! One can hardly help thinking that materialism is, in certain cases, a disease. For when men of Science, in the face of the magnetic phenomena and the attraction of iron particles through insulating substances, like glass, maintain that the said attraction is due to “molecular motion,†or to the “rotation of the molecules of the magnet,’’ then, whether the teaching comes from a “credulous†Theosophist innocent of any notion of physics, or from an eminent man of Science, it is equally ridiculous. The individual who asserts such a theory in the teeth of fact, is only one more proof that “When people have not a niche in their minds in which to shoot facts, so much the worse for the facts.â€
At present the dispute between the spontaneous generationists and their opponents is at rest, having ended in the provisional victory of the latter. But even they are forced to admit, as Büchner did, and Messrs. Tyndall and Huxley still do – that spontaneous generation must have occurred once, under “special thermal conditions.†Virchow refuses even to argue the question; it must have taken place sometime in the history of our planet, and there’s an end of it. This seems to look more natural than Sir W. Thomson’s hypothesis just quoted, that the germs of organic life fell on our earth in some meteor, or that other scientific hypothesis coupled to the recently adopted belief that there exists no “Vital principle†whatever, but only vital phenomena, which can all be traced to the molecular forces of the original protoplasm. But this does not help Science to solve the still greater problem – the origin and the descent of Man, for here is a still worse plaint and lamentation.
“While we can trace the skeletons of Eocene mammals through several directions of specialization in succeeding Tertiary times, man presents the phenomenon of an unspecialized skeleton which cannot fairly be connected with any of these lines.†(“Origin of the World,†by Sir W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., p. 39)
REINDEER ENGRAVED ON ANTLER BY PALÆOLITHIC MAN (After Geikie.)
The secret could be soon told, not only from the esoteric but even from the standpoint of every religion the world over, without mentioning the Occultists. The “specialized skeleton†is sought for in the wrong place, where it can never be found. It is expected to be discovered in the physical remains of man, in some pithecoid “missing link,†with a skull larger than that of the ape’s, and with a cranial capacity smaller than in man, instead of looking for that specialization in the super-physical essence of his inner astral constitution, which can hardly be excavated from any geological strata! Such a tenacious, hopeful clinging to a self-degrading theory is the most wonderful feature of the day.
Meanwhile, this is a specimen of an engraving made by a Palæolithicâ€savage“, Palæolithic meaning the “earlier Stone-age†man, one supposed to have been as savage and brutal as the brutes he lived with.
Leaving the modern South Sea Islander, or even any Asiatic race, aside, we defy any grown-up schoolboy, or even a European youth, one who has never studied drawing, to execute such an engraving or even a pencil sketch. Here we have the true artistic raccourci, and correct lights and shadows without any plane model before the artist, who copied direct from nature, thus exhibiting a knowledge of anatomy and proportion. The artist who engraved this reindeer belonged, we are asked to believe, to the primitive “semi-animal†savages (contemporaneous with the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros), whom some over-zealous Evolutionists once sought to picture to us as distinct approximations to the type of their hypothetical “pithecoid manâ€!
This engraved antler proves as eloquently as any fact can that the evolution of the races has ever proceeded in a series of rises and falls, that man, perhaps, is as old as incrustated Earth, and – if we can call his Divine ancestor “Man†– far older still.
Even de Mortillet himself seems to experience a vague distrust of the conclusions of modern archaeologists, when he writes, “The prehistoric is a new science, far, very far, from having said its last word.†(“Prehistoric Antiquity of Man,†1883.) According to Lyell, one of the highest authorities on the subject, and the “Father†of Geology: “The expectation of always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, is based on the theory of progressive development, and it may prove to be sound; nevertheless, we must remember that as yet, we have no distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in chronological order that of the higher races†(“Antiquity of Man Historically Considered,†p. 25) Nor has such evidence been found to this day. Science is thus offering for sale the skin of a bear, which has hitherto never been seen by mortal eye!
This concession of Lyell’s reads most suggestively with the subjoined utterance of Professor Max Müller, whose attack on the Darwinian anthropology from the standpoint of LANGUAGE has, by the way, never been satisfactorily answered:
“What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter of their history?†(cf. this with the Esoteric view of the Australians, Bushmen, as well as of Palæolithic European man, the Atlantean offshoots retaining a relic of a lost culture, which throve when the parent root-race was in its prime.) “Do we ever get an insight into their antecedents. . . . How have they come to be what they are?. . . . Their language proves, indeed, that these so-called heathens, with their complicated systems of mythology, their artificial customs, their unintelligible whims and savageries, are not the creatures of today or yesterday. unless we admit a special creation for these savages, they must be as old as the Hindus, the Greeks and Romans (far older). . . . They may have passed through ever so many vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive, may be, for all we know, a relapse into savagery or a corruption of something that was more rational and intelligible in former stages.†(“India,†1883, F. Max Müller)
“The primeval savage is a familiar term in modern literature,†remarks Professor Rawlinson, “but there is no evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather, all the evidence looks the other way.†(Antiquity of Man Historically Consideredâ€) In his “Origin of Nations,†pp. 10 – 11, he rightly adds, “The mythical traditions of almost all nations place at the beginning of human history a time of happiness and perfection, a ‘golden age’ which has no features of savagery or barbarism, but many of civilization and refinement.†How is the modern evolutionist to meet this consensus of evidence?
We repeat the question asked in “isis Unveiledâ€:â€Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? When the present population of the earth have disappeared, and some archæologist belonging to the ‘coming race’ of the distant future shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century was ‘just emerging from the Stone Age’?â€
Another strange inconsistency in scientific knowledge is that Neolithic man is shown as being far more of a primitive savage than the Palæolithic one. Either Lubbock’s “Pre-historic Man,†or Evans’ Ancient Stone implements†must be at fault, or – both. For this is what we learn from these works and others:
1) As we pass from Neolithic to Palæolithic Man, the stone implements become, from gracefully shaped and polished instruments, rude lumbering makeshifts. Pottery, etc., disappear as we descend the scale. And yet the latter could engrave such a reindeer!
2) Palæolithic Man lived in caves which he shared with hyænas and lions also,207 whereas Neolithic man dwelt in lake-villages and buildings.
ENTRAPPED BY THE REINDEER
Every one who has followed even superficially the geological discoveries of our day, knows that a gradual improvement in workmanship is found, from the clumsy chipping and rude chopping of the early Palæolithic hâches, to the relatively graceful stone celts of that part of the Neolithic period immediately preceding the use of metals. But this is in Europe, a few portions only of which were barely rising from the waters in the days of the highest Atlantean civilizations. There were rude savages and highly civilized people then, as there are now. If 50,000 years hence, pigmy Bushmen are exhumed from some African cavern together with far earlier pigmy elephants, such as were found in the cave deposits of Malta by Milne Edwards, will that be a reason to maintain that in our age all men and all elephants were pigmies? Or if the weapons of the Veddhas of Ceylon are found, will our descendants be justified in setting us all down as Palæolithic savages? All the articles which geologists now excavate in Europe can certainly never date earlier than from the close of the Eocene age, since the lands of Europe were not even above water before that period. Nor can what we have said be in the least invalidated by theorists telling us that these quaint sketches of animals and men by Palæolithic man, were executed only toward the close of the Reindeer period- for this explanation would be a very lame one indeed, in view of the geologists’ ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods.
The Esoteric Doctrine teaches distinctly the dogma of the risings and falls of civilization, and now we learn that, “It is a remarkable fact that cannibalism seems to have become more frequent as man advanced in civilization, and that while its traces are frequent in Neolithic times they . . . . altogether disappear in the age of the mammoth and the reindeer.†(“Modern Science and Modern Thought,†p. 164.)
Another evidence of the cyclic law and the truth of our teachings. Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do.
“In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the prehistoric cities excavated by Dr. Schliemann, images of owl and ox-headed goddesses, and other symbolical figures, or idols, are found in abundance. But when we ascend into Neolithic times, such idols are no longer found . . . the only ones which may be said with some certainty to have been idols are one or two discovered by M. de Braye in some artificial caves of the Neolithic period . . . which appear to be intended for female figures of life size†. . . . (p. 199, ibid)
And these may have been simply statues. Anyhow, all this is one among the many proofs of the cyclic rise and fall of civilization and religion. The fact that no traces of human relics or skeletons are so far found beyond post-tertiary or “Quaternary†times – though Abbé Bourgeois’ flints may serve as a warning208 – seems to point to the truth of another esoteric statement, which runs thus: “Seek for the remains of thy forefathers in the high places. The vales have grown into mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the bottom of the seas.†. . . Fourth Race mankind, thinned after the last cataclysm by two-thirds of its population, instead of settling on the new continents and islands that reappeared while their predecessors formed the floors of new Oceans – deserted that which is now Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for the summits of gigantic mountains, the seas that surrounded some of the latter having since “retreated†and made room for the table lands of Central Asia.
The most interesting example of this progressive march is perhaps afforded by the celebrated Kent’s Cavern at Torquay. In that strange recess, excavated by water out of the Devonian limestone, we find a most curious record preserved for us in the geological memoirs of the earth. Under the blocks of limestone, which heaped the floor of the cavern, were discovered, embedded in a deposit of black earth, many implements of the Neolithic period of fairly excellent workmanship, with a few fragments of pottery – possibly traceable to the era of the Roman colonization. There is no trace of Palæolithic man here. No flints or traces of the extinct animals of the Quaternary period. When, however, we penetrate still deeper through the dense layer of stalagmite beneath the mould into the red earth, which, of course, itself once formed the pavement of the retreat, things assume a very different aspect. Not one implement fit to bear comparison with the finely-chipped weapons found in the overlying stratum is to be seen; only a host of the rude and lumbering little hatchets (w ith which the monstrous giants of the animal world were subdued and killed by little man, we have to think?) and scrapers of the Palæolithic age, mixed up confusedly with the bones of species now either extinct or emigrated, driven away by change of climate. It is the artificer of these ugly little hatchets, you see, who sculptured the reindeer over the brook, on the antler as shown above. In all cases we meet with the same evidence that, from historic to Neolithic and from Neolithic to Palæolithic man, things slope downwards on an inclined plane from the rudiments of civilization to the most abject barbarism – in Europe again. We are made also to face the “mammoth age†– the extreme or earliest division of the Palæolithic age – in which the great rudeness of implements reaches its maximum, and the brutal (?) appearance of contemporary skulls, such as the Neanderthal, point to a very low type of Humanity. But they may sometimes point also to something besides, to a race of men quite distinct from our (Fifth Race) Humanity.
STRANGE CONFESSIONS OF SCIENCE
As said by an anthropologist in “Modern Thought†(article “The Genesis of Manâ€):â€The theory, scientifically based or not, of Peyrère may be considered to be equivalent to that which divided man in two species. Broca, Virey, and a number of the French anthropologists have recognised that the lower race of man, comprising the Australian, Tasmanian, and Negro race, excluding the Kaffirs and the Northern Africans, should be placed apart. The fact that in this species, or rather sub-species, the third lower molars are usually larger than the second, and the squamosal and frontal bones are generally united by suture, places the Homo Afer on the level of being as good a distinct species as many of the kinds of finches. I shall abstain on the present occasion from mentioning the facts of hybridity, whereon the late Professor Broca has so exhaustively commented. The history, in the past ages of the world, of this race is peculiar. It has never originated a system of architecture or a religion of its own†(Dr. C. Carter Blake). It is peculiar, indeed, as we have shown in the case of the Tasmanians. However it may be, fossil man in Europe can neither prove nor disprove the antiquity of man on this Earth nor the age of his earliest civilizations.
It is time the Occultists should disregard any attempts to laugh at them, scorning the heavy guns of the satire of the men of science as much as the pop-guns of the profane, since it is impossible, so far, to obtain either proof or disproof, while their theories can stand the test better than the hypotheses of the Scientists at any rate. As to the proof for the antiquity which they claim for man, they have, moreover, Darwin himself and Lyell. The latter confesses that they (the naturalists) “have already obtained evidence of the existence of man at so remote a period that there has been time for many conspicuous mammalia, once his contemporaries, to die out, and this even before the era of the earliest historical records.â€209 This is a statement made by one of England’s great authorities upon the question. The two sentences that follow are as suggestive, and may well be remembered by the students of Occultism, for with all others he says: “In spite of the long lapse of prehistoric ages during which he (Man) must have flourished on Earth, there is no proof of any perceptible change in his bodily structure. If, therefore, he ever diverged from some unreasoning brute ancestor, we must suppose him to have existed at a far more distant epoch, possibly on some continents or islands now submerged beneath the Ocean.â€
Thus lost continents are officially suspected. That worlds (also Races) are periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquakes) and water, in turn, and renewed, is a doctrine as old as man. Manu, Hermes, the Chaldees, all antiquity believed in this. Twice already has the face of the globe been changed by fire, and twice by water, since man appeared on it. As land needs rest and renovation, new forces, and a change for its soil, so does water. Thence arises a periodical redistribution of land and water, change of climates, etc., all brought on by geological revolution, and ending in a final change in the axis. Astronomers may pooh-pooh the idea of a periodical change in the behaviour of the globe’s axis, and smile at the conversation given in the Book of Enoch between Noah and his “grandfather†Enoch; the allegory is, nevertheless, a geological and an astronomical fact: there is a secular change in the inclination of the earth’s axis, and its appointed time is recorded in one of the great Secret Cycles. As in many other questions, Science is gradually moving toward our way of thinking. Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S., writes in the Popular Science Review (New Series in Vol. I, p. 115), article “Evidences of the Age of iceâ€: “If it be necessary to call in extramundane causes to explain the great increase of ice at this glacial period, I would prefer the theory propounded by Dr. Robert Hooke in 1688; since, by Sir Richard Phillips and others; and lastly by Mr. Thomas Belt, C.E., F.G.S.; namely, a slight increase in the present obliquity of the ecliptic, a proposal in perfect accord with other known astronomical facts, and the introduction of which is essential to our cosmical condition as a unit in the great solar system.â€
The following, quoted from a lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S., delivered in March, 1885, on “The Extinct Lake of Bovey Tracey†shows the hesitation, in the face of every evidence in favour of Atlantis, to accept the fact. It is a quotation in the body of the lecture:
“Evergreen Figs, Laurels, Palms, and Ferns having gigantic rhizomes have their existing congeners in a sub-tropical climate, such, it cannot be doubted, as prevailed in Devonshire in Miocene times, and are thus calculated to suggest caution when the present climate of any district is regarded as normal.
“When, moreover, Miocene plants are found in Disco Island, on the west coast of Greenland, lying between 69° 20’ and 70°30’ N. Lat.; when we learn that among them were two species found also at Bovey (Sequoia couttsiæ, Quercus Lyelli); when, to quote Professor Heer, we find that “the ‘splendid evergreen’ (Magnolia inglefieldi) ‘ripened its fruits so far north as on the parallel of 70°’ †(Phil. Trans., CLIX, p. 457, 1869); when also the number, variety, and luxuriance of the Greenland Miocene plants are found to have been such that, had land continued so far, some of them would in all probability have flourished at the Pole itself, the problem of changes of climate is brought prominently into view, but only to be dismissed apparently with the feeling that the time for its solution has not yet arrived.
“It seems to be admitted on all hands that the Miocene plants of Europe have their nearest and most numerous existing analogues in North America, and hence arises the question, How was the migration from one area to the other effected? Was there, as some have believed, an Atlantis? – a continent, or an archipelago of large islands, occupying the area of the North Atlantic. There is perhaps nothing unphilosophical in this hypothesis, for since, as geologists state, “the Alps have acquired 4,000, and even in some places more than 10,000 feet of their present altitude since the commencement of the Eocene period’ (Lyell’s Principles, 11th Ed., 1872, p. 256), a Post-Miocene (?) depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths. But an Atlantis is apparently unnecessary and uncalled for. According to Professor Oliver, “A close and very peculiar analogy subsists between the Flora of Tertiary Central Europe and the recent Floras of the American States and of the Japanese region; an analogy much closer and more intimate than is to be traced between the Tertiary and Recent Floras of Europe. We find the Tertiary element of the Old World to be intensified towards its extreme eastern margin. . . . This accession of the Tertiary element is rather gradual and not abruptly assumed in the Japan islands only. Although it there attains a maximum, we may trace it from the Mediterranean, Levant, Caucasus, and Persia . . . then along the Himalaya and through China.... We learn also that during the Tertiary epoch, counterparts of Central European Miocene genera certainly grew in North-West America. . . . We note further that the present Atlantic Islands’ Flora affords no substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the mainland of the New World. . . . The consideration of these facts leads me to the opinion that botanical evidence does not favour the hypothesis of an Atlantis. On the other hand, it strongly favours the view that at some period of the Tertiary epoch North-Eastern Asia was united to North-Western America, perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends.†(Nat. Hist. Rev., II, p. 164, 1862.) See, however, “Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Reality of Several Submerged Continentsâ€
THERE IS NO “MISSING LINK†ANYWHERE
But nothing short of a pithecoid man will ever satisfy the luckless searchers after the thrice hypothetical “missing link.†Yet, if beneath the vast floors of the Atlantic, from the Teneriffe Pic to Gibraltar, the ancient emplacement of the lost Atlantis, all the submarine strata were to be broken up miles deep, no such skull as would satisfy the Darwinists would be found. As Dr. C. R. Bree remarks (“Fallacies of Darwinismâ€), no missing links between man and ape having been discovered in various gravels and formations above the tertiaries, if they had gone down with the continents now covered with the sea, they might still be found “in those beds of contemporary geological strata which have not gone down to the bottom of the sea.†Yet they are as fatally absent from the latter as from the former. Were not preconceptions to fasten vampirelike on man’s mind, the author of “Antiquity of Man†would have found a clue to the difficulty in that same work of his, by going ten pages back (p. 530) and reading over a quotation of his own from Professor G. Rolleston’s work. This physiologist, he says, suggests that as there is considerable plasticity in the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the adult, we ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the development theory seem to do, that each advance in physical power depends on an improvement in bodily structure, for why may not the soul, or the higher intellectual and moral faculties, play the first instead of the second part in a progressive scheme?
This hypothesis is made in relation to Evolution not being entirely due to “natural selectionâ€, but it applies as well to our case in hand. For we, too, claim that it is the “Soul,†or the inner man, that descends on Earth first, the psychic astral, the mould on which physical man is gradually built – his Spirit, intellectual and moral faculties awakening later on as that physical stature grows and develops.
“Thus incorporeal Spirits to smaller forms reduced their shapes immense,†. . . and became the men of the Third and the Fourth Races. Still later, ages after, appeared the men of our Fifth Race, reduced from the still gigantic (in our modern sense) stature of their primeval ancestors, to about half of that size at present.
Man is certainly no special creation, and he is the product of Nature’s gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this Earth. But this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution – is the “Eternal Pilgrim,†the Protean differentiation in space and time of the One Absolute “Unknowable.â€
PALÆOLITHIC MAN, A CALIGRAPH!
In his “Antiquity of Man,†Sir C. Lyell quotes – perhaps in rather a mocking spirit – what Hallam says (in Vol. IV, p. 162) in his “introduction to the Literature of Europeâ€:
“If man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute who wanders in the forest of Sumatra. Thus standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both?â€
An Occultist would have put it otherwise. He would say that man was indeed made in the image of a type projected by his progenitor, the creating Angel-Force, or Dhyan Chohan, while the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra was made in the image of man, since the framework of the ape, we say again, is the revival, the resuscitation by abnormal means, of the actual form of the Third-Round and of the Fourth-Round Man as well, later on. Nothing is lost in nature, not an atom: this latter is at least certain on scientific data. Analogy would appear to demand that form should be equally endowed with permanency.
And yet what do we find:
“It is significant,†says Sir W. Dawson, F.R.S., “that Professor Huxley in his lectures in New York, while resting his case as to the lower animals, mainly on the supposed genealogy of the horse, which has often been shown to amount to no certain evidence, avoided altogether the discussion of the origin of men from the apes, now obviously complicated with so many difficulties that both Wallace and Mivart are staggered by them. Professor Thomas in his recent lectures (“Nature,†1876), admits that there is no lower man known than the Australian, and that there is no known link of connection with the monkeys, and that Hæckel has to admit that the penultimate link in his phylogeny, the ape-like man, is absolutely unknown (’History of Creation’). . . . The so-called ’nallies’ found with the bones of Palæocosmic men in European caves, and illustrated in the admirable works of Christy and Lartet, show that the rudiments even of writings were already in possession of the oldest race of men known to archæology or geology.†(See Wilson’s “Prehistoric Man,†Vol. II, p. 54; “Origin of the World†p. 393.)
Again in Dr. C. R. Bree’s “Fallacies of Darwinism,†on p. 160, we read:
“Mr. Darwin justly says that the difference physically and, more especially mentally, between the lowest form of man and the highest anthropomorphous ape, is enormous. Therefore, the time- which in Darwinian evolution must be almost inconceivably slow – must have been enormous also during man’s development from the monkey.210 The chance, therefore, of some of these variations being found in the different gravels or fresh-water formations above the tertiaries, must be very great. And yet not one single variation, not one single specimen of a being between a monkey and a man has ever been found. Neither in the gravel, nor the drift-clay, nor the fresh-water beds, nor in the tertiaries below them has there ever been discovered the remains of any member of the missing families between the monkey and the man, as assumed to have existed by Mr. Darwin. Have they gone down with the depression of the earth’s surface and are they now covered with the sea? If so, it is beyond all probability that they should not also be found in those beds of contemporary geological strata which have not gone down to the bottom of the sea; still more improbable that some portions should not be dredged from the ocean bed like the remains of the mammoth and the rhinoceros which are also found in fresh-water beds and gravels and drift!.......the celebrated Neanderthal skull, about which so much has been said, belongs confessedly to this remote epoch (bronze and stone ages), and yet presents, although it may have been the skull of an idiot, immense differences from the highest known anthropomorphous ape.â€
Our globe being convulsed each time that it reawakens for a new period of activity, like a field which has to be ploughed and furrowed before fresh seed for its new crop is thrown into it – it does seem quite hopeless that fossils belonging to its previous Rounds should be found in the beds of either its oldest or its latest geological strata. Every new Manvantara brings along with it the renovation of forms, types, and species; every type of the preceding organic forms – vegetable, animal, and human – changes and is perfected in the next, even to the mineral, which has received in this Round its final opacity and hardness, its softer portions having formed the present vegetation, the astral relics of previous vegetation and fauna having been utilized in the formation of the lower animals, and determining the structure of the primeval Root-Types of the highest mammalia. And, finally, the form of the gigantic Ape-Man of the former Round has been reproduced in this one by human bestiality and transfigured into the parent form in the modern Anthropoid.
This doctrine, even imperfectly delineated as it is under our inefficient pen, is assuredly more logical, more consistent with facts, and far more probable than many “scientific†theories; that, for instance, of the first organic germ descending on a meteor to our Earth – like Ain Soph on his Vehicle, Adam Kadmon. Only, the latter descent is allegorical, as every one knows, and the Kabalists have never offered this figure of speech for acceptance in its dead-letter garb. But the germ on the meteor theory, as coming from such high scientific quarters, is an eligible candidate for axiomatic truth and law, a theory people are in honour bound to accept, if they would be on a right level with modern Science. What the next theory necessitated by the materialistic premises will be – no one can tell. Meanwhile, the present theories, as any one can see, clash together far more discordantly among themselves than even those of the Occultists outside the sacred precincts of learning. For what is there, next in order, now that exact Science has made even of the Life-principle an empty word, a meaningless term, and now insists that life is an effect due to the molecular action of the primordial protoplasm! The new doctrine of the Darwinists may be defined and summarized in a few words, in which Mr. Herbert Spencer has defined “special creation“. . .†it is worthless. Worthless, by its derivation; worthless, in its intrinsic incoherence; worthless, as absolutely without evidence; worthless, as not supplying an intellectual need; worthless, as not satisfying a moral want. We must, therefore, consider it as counting for nothing in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the origin of organic beings.†(“Principles of Biology,†Vol. I, p. 345.)
The Secret Doctrine, ii 709–730
________________
199 Knowledge, March 31, 1882.
200 And who yet, in another work, “La Préhistorique Antiquité de l’Homme,†some twenty years ago, generously allowed only 230,000 years to our mankind. Since we learn now that he places man “in the mid-Miocene period,†we must say that the much respected Professor of Prehistoric Anthropology (in Paris) is somewhat contradictory and inconsistent, if not naïf in his views.
201 The root and basic idea of the origin and transformation of species—the heredity (of acquired faculties) seems to have found lately very serious opponents in Germany. Du Bois Raymond and Dr. Pflüger, the physiologists, besides other men of science as eminent as any, find insuperable difficulties and even impossibilities in the doctrine.
202 It is conceded by Geology to be “beyond doubt that a considerable period must have supervened after the departure of Palæolithic man and before the arrival of his Neolithic successor.†(See James Geikie’s “Prehistoric Europe,†and Ch. Gould’s “Mythical Monsters,†p. 98.)
203 Resembling in a manner the pile-villages of Northern Borneo.
204 “The most clever sculptor of modern times would probably not succeed very much better, if his graver were a splinter of flint and stone and bone were the materials to be engravedâ€â€!! (Prof. Boyd Dawkins’ “Cave-Hunting,†p. 344.) It is needless after such a concession to further insist on Huxley’s, Schmidt’s, Laing’s, and others’ statements to the effect that Palæolithic man cannot be considered to lead us back in any way to a pithecoid human race, thus demolishing the fantasies of many superficial evolutionists. The relic of artistic merit here re-appearing in the Chipped-Stone-Age men is traceable to their Atlantean ancestry. Neolithic man was a fore-runner of the great Aryan invasion, and immigrated from quite another quarter—Asia, and in a measure Northern Africa. (The tribes peopling the latter towards the North-West, were certainly of an Atlantean origin— dating back hundreds of thousands of years before the Neolithic Period in Europe—but they had so diverged from the parent type as to present no longer any marked characteristic peculiar to it.) As to the contrast between Neolithic and Palæolithic Man, it is a remarkable fact that, as Carl Vogt remarks, the former was a cannibal, the much earlier man of the Mammoth era not. Human manners and customs do not seem to improve with time, then? Not in this instance at any rate.
205 On the data furnished by modern science, physiology, and natural selection, and without resorting to any miraculous creation, two negro human specimens of the lowest intelligence— say idiots born dumb— might by breeding produce a dumb Pastrana species, which would start a new modified race, and thus produce in the course of geological time the regular anthropoid ape.
206 “Force and Matter,†by Dr. Louis Büchner, translated and edited by J. Frederick Collingwood, F.R.S., F.G.S., 1864.
207 In such a case, Palæolithic man must have been endowed in his day with thrice Herculean force and magic invulnerability, or else the lion was as weak as a lamb at that period, for both to share the same dwelling. We may as well be asked to believe next that it is that lion or hyæna which has engraved the deer on the antler, as be told that this bit of workmanship was done by a savage of such a kind.
208 More than twenty specimens of fossil monkeys have been found in one locality alone, in Miocene strata (Pikermi, near Athens). If man was not then, the period is too short for him to have been transformed— stretch it as you may. And if he was, and if no monkey is found earlier, what follows?
209 “Antiquity of Man,†p. 530.
210 And how much more “enormous†if we reverse the subjects and say during the monkey’s development from the Third Race Man.
Selection 32
THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF SPECIES IN ALL THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE WORKS BY UNIFORM LAWS
IT is argued that the Universal Evolution, otherwise, the gradual development of species in all the kingdoms of nature, works by uniform laws. This is admitted, and the law enforced far more strictly in Esoteric than in modern Science. But we are told also, that it is equally a law that “development works from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complicated, by incessant changes, small in themselves, but constantly accumulating in the required direction.†It is from the infinitesimally small that the comparatively gigantic species are produced.
Esoteric Science agrees with it, but adds that this law applies only to what is known to it as the Primary Creation- the evolution of worlds from primordial atoms, and the pre-primordial ATOM, at the first differentiation of the former, and that during the period of cyclic evolution in space and time, this law is limited and works only in the lower kingdoms. It did so work during the first geological periods, from simple to complex, on the rough material surviving from the relics of the Third Round, which relics are projected into objectivity when terrestrial activity recommences.
NEITHER SCIENCE NOR ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY ADMIT DESIGN OR “SPECIAL CREATION
No more than Science, does esoteric philosophy admit design or “special creation.†It rejects every claim to the “miraculous,†and accepts nothing outside the uniform and immutable laws of Nature. But it teaches a cyclic law, a double stream of force (or spirit) and of matter, which, starting from the neutral centre of Being, develops in its cyclic progress and incessant transformations. The primitive germ from which all vertebrate life has developed throughout the ages, being distinct from the primitive germ from which the vegetable and the animal life have evolved, there are side laws whose work is determined by the conditions in which the materials to be worked upon are found by them, and of which Science – physiology and anthropology especially – seems to be little aware. Its votaries speak of that “primitive germ,†and maintain that it is shown beyond any doubt that the “design†and the “designer,†if there be any, in the case of man, with the wonderful structure of his limbs, and his hand especially, “must be placed very much farther back, and (the design) is, in fact, involved in the primitive germ,†from which not only all vertebrate life, but, “probably all life, animal and vegetable, have been slowly developed†(“Modern Science and Modern Thought,†p. 94).
This is as true of the “primitive germ†as it is false that that “germ†is only “very much farther back†than man is; for it is at an immeAsurable and inconceivable distance (in time, though not in space) from the origin even of our Solar system. As the Hindu philosophy very justly teaches, the “Aniyámsam Aniyâsam,†can be known only through false notions. It is the “many†that proceed from the ONE- the living spiritual germs or centres of forces- each in a septenary form, which first generate, and then give the PRIMARY IMPULSE to the law of evolution and gradual slow development.
Limiting the teaching strictly to this, our earth, it may be shown that, as the ethereal forms of the first Men are first projected on seven zones by seven Dhyan-Chohanic centres of Force, so there are centres of creative power for every ROOT or parent species of the host of forms of vegetable and animal life. This is, again, no “special creation,†nor is there any “Design,†except in the general “ground-plan†worked out by the universal law. But there are certainly “designers,†though these are neither omnipotent nor omniscient in the absolute sense of the term. They are simply Builders, or Masons, working under the impulse given them by the ever-to-be-unknown (on our plane) Master Mason – the ONE LIFE and Law. Belonging to this sphere, they have no hand in, or possibility of working on any other, during the present Manvantara, at any rate. That they work in cycles and on a strictly geometrical and mathematical scale of progression, is what the extinct animal species amply demonstrate; that they act by design in the details of minor lives (of side animal issues, etc.), is what natural history has sufficient evidence for. In the creation of new species, departing sometimes very widely from the Parent stock, as in the great variety of the genus Felis- like the lynx, the tiger, the cat, etc. – it is the “designers†who direct the new evolution by adding to, or depriving the species of certain appendages, either needed or becoming useless in the new environments. Thus, when we say that Nature provides for every animal and plant, whether large or small, we speak correctly. For, it is those terrestrial spirits of Nature, who form the aggregated Nature, which, if it fails occasionally in its design, is neither to be considered blind, nor to be taxed with the failure, since, belonging to a differentiated sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that alone conditioned and imperfect.
Were there no such thing as evolutionary cycles, an eternal spiral progress into matter with a proportionate obscuration of spirit – though the two are one – followed by an inverse ascent into spirit and the defeat of matter – active and passive by turn – how explain the discoveries of zoology and geology? How is it that, on the dictum of authoritative science, one can trace the animal life from the mollusc up to the great Sea Dragon, from the smallest land-worm up again to the gigantic animals of the Tertiary Period, and that the latter were once crossed is shown by the fact of all those species decreasing, dwindling down, and being dwarfed. If the seeming process of development working from the less to the more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complex, were a universal law indeed, instead of being a very imperfect generalization of a mere secondary nature in the great Cosmic process, and if there were no such cycles as those claimed, then the Mesozoic fauna and flora ought to change places with the latest Neolithic. It is the Plesiosauri and the Ichthyosauri that we ought to find developing from the present sea and river reptiles, instead of giving place to their dwarfed modern analogies. It is, again, our old friend, the good-tempered elephant, that would be the fossil antediluvian ancestor, and the mammoth of the Pliocene age who would be in the menagerie; the megalonyx and the gigantic megatherium would be found instead of the lazy sloth in the forests of South America, in which the colossal ferns of the carboniferous periods would take the place of moss and present trees – dwarfs, even the giants of California, in comparison with the Titan-trees of past geological periods. Surely the organisms of the megasthenian world of the Tertiary and the Mesozoic Ages must have been more complex and perfect than those of the microsthenian plants and animals of the present age? The Dryopithecus, for instance, is found more perfect anatomically, more fit for a greater development of brain power, than the modern gorilla or gibbon? How is this, then? Are we to believe that the constitution of all those colossal land and sea-dragons, of the gigantic flying reptiles, was not far more developed and complex than the anatomy of the lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and even of the whales – in short, all those animals we are acquainted with?
THE “TO BE OR NOT TO BE†OF SCIENCE
Let us admit, however, for argument’s sake, that all those cycles, races, septenary forms of evolution and the tutti quanti of esoteric teaching, are no better than a delusion and a snare. Let us agree with Science and say that man, instead of being an imprisoned “Spirit,†and his vehicle, the shell or body, a gradually perfected and now complete mechanism for material and terrestrial uses, as claimed by the Occultists – is simply a more developed animal, whose primal form emerged from one and the same primitive germ on this earth, as the flying dragon and the gnat, the whale and the amÅ“ba, the crocodile and the frog, etc., etc. In this case, he must have passed through the identical developments and through the same process of growth as all the other mammals? If man is an animal, and nothing more, a highly intellectual ex-brute, he should be privileged, at least, and allowed to have been a gigantic mammal of his kind, a meganthropos in his day. It is just this, that esoteric science shows as having taken place in the first three rounds, and in this, as in most other things, it is more logical and consistent than modern science. It classifies the human body with the brute creation, and maintains it in the path of animal evolution, from first to last, while science leaves man a parentless orphan born of sires unknown, an “unspecialized skeleton†truly! And this mistake is due to a stubborn rejection of the doctrine of cycles.
THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE MAMMALIA: SCIENCE AND THE ESOTERIC PHYLOGENY
Having dealt almost exclusively with the question of the origin of Man in the foregoing criticism of Western Evolutionism, it may not be amiss to define the position of the Occultists with regard to the differentiation of species. The pre-human fauna and flora have been already generally dealt with in the Commentary on the Stanzas, and the truth of much of modern biological speculation admitted, e.g. the derivation of birds from reptiles, the partial truth of “natural selection,†and the transformation theory generally. It now remains to clear up the mystery of the origin of those first mammalian fauna which M. de Quatrefages so brilliantly endeavours to prove as contemporary with the Homo primigenius of the Secondary Age.
The somewhat complicated problem relating to the “Origin of Species,â€- more especially of the varied groups of fossil or existing mammalian fauna – will be rendered less obscure by the aid of a diagram. It will then he apparent to what extent the “Factors of Organic Evolution,†relied upon by Western biologists,211 are to be considered as adequate to meet the facts. The line of demarcation between ethero-spiritual, astral, and physical evolution must be drawn. Perhaps, if Darwinians deigned to consider the possibility of the second process, they would no longer have to lament the fact that “we are referred to conjecture and inference for the origin of the Mammalsâ€!! (“The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,†by Professor O. Schmidt, p. 268) At present, the admitted chasm between the systems of reproduction of the oviparous vertebrates and mammalia constitutes a hopeless crux to those thinkers who, with the Evolutionists, seek to link all existing organic forms in a continuous line of descent.
Let us take – exempli gratiâ- the case of the ungulate mammals. “In no other division,†it is said, “do we possess such abundant fossil material.†So much progress has been made in this direction, that in some instances the intermediate links between the modern and Eocene ungulates have been unearthed, a notable example being that of the complete proof of the derivation of the present one-toed horse from the three-toed Anchitherium of the old Tertiary. This standard of comparison between Western biology and the Eastern doctrine could not, therefore, be improved upon. The pedigree here utilized, as embodying the view, of scientists in general, is that of Schmidt based on the exhaustive researches of Rütimeyer. Its approximate accuracy – from the standpoint of evolutionism – leaves little to be desired:
UNGULATE MAMMALS
The midway point of evolution. Science comes to a standstill. “The root to which these two families lead back is UNKNOWN†(Schmidt).
THE “ROOT†ACCORDING TO OCCULTISM
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ANOPLOTHERIDAE |
PALAETHERIDAE |
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II. |
One of the Seven primeval physico-astral and bisexual Root-types of the Mammalian Kingdom (animal). These were Contemporaries of the early Lemurian races – the “unknown roots†of Science. |
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No. I. represents the realm explored by Western Evolutionists, the area in which climatic influences, “natural selection,†and all the other physical causes of organic differentiation are present. Biology and palaeontology find their province here in investigating the many physical agencies which contribute so largely, as shown by Darwin, Spencer, and others, to the segregation of species. But even in this domain the sub-conscious workings of the Dhyan-Chohanic wisdom are at the root of all the “ceaseless striving towards perfection,†though its influence is vastly modified by those purely material causes which de Quatrefages terms the “milieux†and Spencer the “Environment.â€
The “midway point of evolution†is that stage where the astral prototypes definitely begin to pass into the physical, and thus become subject to the differentiating agencies now operative around us. Physical causation supervenes immediately on the assumption of “coats of skin†– i.e. the physiological equipment in general. The forms of Men and mammalia previous to the separation of sexes212 are woven out of astral mater and possess a structure uterly unlike that of the physical organisms, which eat, drink, digest, etc., etc., etc. The known physiological contrivances in organisms were almost entirely evolved subsequently to the incipient physicalization of the 7 Root-Types out of the astral – during the “midway halt†between the two planes of existence. Hardly had the “ground-plan†of evolution been limned out in these ancestral types, than the influence of the accessory terrestrial laws, familiar to us, supervened, resulting in the whole crop of mammalian species. Æons of slow differentiation were, however, required to effect this end.
THE UNITY OF TYPE
No. II. represents the domain of the purely astral prototypes previous to their descent into (gross) mater. Astral mater, it must be noted, is fourth-state mater, having, like our gross mater, its own “protyle.†There are several “protyles†in Nature, corresponding to the various planes of mater. The two sub-physical elemental kingdoms, the plane of mind (manas, the fifth-state matter), as also that of Buddhi (sixth-state mater), are each and all evolved from one of the six “protyles†which constitute the basis of the Object-Universe. The three “states,†so-called of our terrestrial matter, known as the “solid,†“liquid,†and “gaseous,†are only, in strict accuracy, SUB-states. As to the former reality of the descent into the physical, which culminated in physiological man and animal, we have a palpable testimony in the fact of the so-called spiritualistic “materializations.â€
In all these instances a complete temporary mergence of the astral into the physical takes place. The evolution of physiological Man out of the astral races of early Lemurian age – the Jurassic age of Geology – is exactly paralleled by the “materialization†of “spirits†(?) in the séance-room. In the case of Professor Crookes’ “Katie King,†the presence of a physiological mechanism – heart, lungs, etc. – was indubitably demonstrated!!
This, in a way, is the ARCHETYPE of Goethe. Listen to his words: “Thus much we should have gained. . . all the nine perfect organic beings. . . (are) formed according to an archetype which merely fluctuates more or less in its very persistent parts and, moreover, day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction.†This is a seemingly imperfect foreshadowing of the occult fact of the differentiation of species from the primal astral root-types. Whatever the whole posse comitatus of “natural selection,†etc., etc., may effect, the fundamental unity of structural plan remains practically unaffected by all subsequent modifications. The “Unity of Type†common, in a sense, to all the animal and human kingdoms, is not, as Spencer and others appear to hold, a proof of the consanguinity of all organic forms, but a witness to the essential unity of the “ground-plan†Nature has followed in fashioning her creatures.
To sum up the case, we may again avail ourselves of a tabulation of the actual factors concerned in the differentiation of species. The stages of the process itself need no further comment here, being the basic principles underlying organic development, than to enter on the domain of the biological specialist.
FACTORS CONCERNED IN THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE
BASIC ASTRAL PROTOTYPES PASS INTO THE PHYSICAL
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The Dhyan Chohanic Impulse constituting Lamarck’s “inherent and necessary†law of development. It lies behind all minor agencies. |
1. Variation transmitted by heredity. |
IS Science against those who maintain that, down to the Quaternary period, the distribution of the human races was widely different from what it is now? Is Science against those who, further, maintain that the fossil men found in Europe – although having almost reached a plane of saMeness and unity from the fundamental physiological and anthropological aspects which continues till this day – still differ, sometimes greatly, from the type of the now existing populations. The late Littré confesses it in an article published by him on the Memoir called Antiquités Celtiques et Antediluviennes by Boucher de Perthes (1849), in the Revue des Deux Mondes (March 1, 1859). He says in it (a) that in these periods when the Mammoths, exhumed with the hatchets in Picardy, lived in the latter region, there must have been an eternal spring reigning over all the terrestrial globe213; nature was the contrary of what it is now – thus leaving an enormous margin for the antiquity of those “periods†and then adds (b) “Spring, professor of the Faculty of Medicine at Liège, found in a grotto near Namur, in the mountain of Chauvaux, numerous human bones ’of a race quite distinct from ours.’â€
Skulls exhumed in Austria offered a great analogy with those of African negro races, according to Littré, while others, discovered on the shores of the Danube and the Rhine, resembled the skulls of the Caribs and those of the ancient inhabitants of Peru and Chile. Still, the Deluge, whether Biblical or Atlantean, was denied. But further geological discoveries having made Gaudry write conclusively: “Our forefathers were positively contemporaneous with the rhinoceros tichorrhinus, the hippopotamus majorâ€, and add that the soil called diluvial in geology “was formed partially at least after man’s apparition on earth†– Littré pronounced himself finally. He then showed the necessity, before “the resurrection of so many old witnesses,†of rehandling all the origins, all the durations, and added that there was AN ACE hitherto unknown to study “either at the dawn of the actual epoch or, as I believe, at the beginning of the epoch which preceded it.â€
The types of the skulls found in Europe are of two kinds, as is well known: the orthognathous and the prognathous, or the Caucasian and the negro types, such as are now found only in the African and the lower savage tribes. Professor Heer – who argues that the facts of botany necessitate the hypothesis of an Atlantis – has shown that the plants of the Neolithic lake-villagers are mainly of African origin. How did the latter come to be in Europe if there was no former point of union between Africa and Europe? How many thousand years ago did the seventeen men live whose skeletons were exhumed in the Department of the Haute Garonne, in a squatting posture near the remains of a coal fire, with some amulets and broken crockery around them, and in company with the bear spelæus, the Elephas primigenius, the aurochs (regarded by Cuvier as a distinct species), the Megaceros hibernicus – all antediluvian mammals? Certainly at a most distant epoch, but not one which carries us further back than the Quaternary. A much greater antiquity for Man has yet to be proved. Dr. James Hunt, the late President of the Anthropological Society, makes it 9,000,000 years. This man of science, at any rate, makes some approach to our esoteric computation, if we leave the first two semi-human, ethereal races, and the early Third Race out of the computation.
The question, however, arises – who were these Palæolithic men of the European quaternary epoch? Were they aboriginal, or the outcome of some immigration dating back into the unknown past? The latter is the only tenable hypothesis, as all scientists agree in eliminating Europe from the category of possible “cradles of mankind.†Whence, then, radiated the various successive streams of “primitive†men?
The earliest Palæolithic men in Europe – about whose origin Ethnology is silent, and whose very characteristics are but imperfectly known, though expatiated on as “ape-like†by imaginative writers such as Mr. Grant Allen – were of pure Atlantean and “Africo†Atlantean stocks.214 (It must be borne in mind that by this time, the Atlantis continent itself was a dream of the past.) Europe in the Quaternary epoch was very different from the Europe of today, being then only in process of formation. It was united to N. Africa – or rather what is now N. Africa – by a neck of land running across the present Straits of Gibraltar – N. Africa thus constituting a species of extension of Spain, while a broad sea washed the great basin of the Sahara. Of the great Atlantis, the main bulk of which sank in the Miocene, there remained only Ruta and Daitya and a stray island or so. The Atlantean connections of the forefathers215 of the Palæolithic cave-men are evidenced by the upturning of fossil skulls (in Europe) reverting closely to the West Indian Carib and ancient Peruvian type – a mystery indeed to all those who refuse to sanction the “hypothesis†of a former Atlantic continent to bridge the ocean (Cf “Scientific and geological proofs of the reality of several submerged continentsâ€). What are we also to make of the fact that while de Quatrefages points to that “magnificent race,†the TALL Cro-Magnon cave-men and the Guanches of the Canary Islands as representatives of one type – Virchow also allies the Basques with the latter in a similar way? Professor Retzius independently proves the relationship of the aboriginal American dolichocephalous tribes and these same Guanches. The several links in the chain of evidence are securely joined together. Legions of similar facts could be adduced. As to the African tribes – themselves diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified by climate and conditions – they crossed into Europe over the peninsula which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many of these European cave-men; the Cro-Magnon, for instance. But, as was to be expected, progress is almost non-existent through the whole of the vast period allotted by Science to the Chipped Stone-Age.216 The cyclic impulse downwards weighs heavily on the stocks thus transplanted – the incubus of the Atlantean Karma is upon them. Finally, Palæolithic man makes room for his successor – and disappears almost entirely from the scene. Professor Lefèvre asks in this connection:
“Has the Polished succeeded the Chipped Stone-Age by an imperceptible transition, or was it due to an invasion of brachycephalous Celts? But whether, again, the deterioration produced in the populations of La Vezère was the result of violent crossings, or of a general retreat northwards in the wake of the reindeer, is of little moment to us.†He continues:
“Meantime the bed of the ocean has been upheaved, Europe is now fully formed, her flora and fauna fixed. With the taming of the dog begins the pastoral life. We enter on those polished stone and bronze periods, which succeed each other at irregular intervals, which even overlap one another in the midst of ethnical fusions and migrations. . . . The primitive European populations are interrupted in their special evolution and, without perishing, become absorbed in other races, engulfed . . . by successive waves of migration overflowing from Africa, possibly from a lost Atlantis [? ? far too late by æons of years] and from prolific Asia . . .
all FORERUNNERS OF THE GREAT ARYAN INVASION†(Fifth Race).
The Secret Doctrine, ii 731 – 741
________________
211 The Darwinian theory has been so strained, that even Huxley was forced at one time to deprecate its occasional degeneration into “fanaticism.†Oscar Schmidt presents a good instance of a thinker who unconsciously exaggerates the worth of an hypothesis. He admits (“The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,†p. 158) that “natural selection is in some cases . . . inadequate,. . . in others . . . not requisite, as the solution of the formation of species is found in other natural conditions.†He also asserts the “intermediate grades are . . . wanting, which would entitle us to infer with certainty the direct transition from unplacental to placental mammals†(p. 271); that “we are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the origin of the mammals†(p. 268), and the repeated failures of the framers of “hypothetical pedigrees,†more especially of Haackel. Nevertheless, he asserts on p. 194 that “what we have gained by the Doctrine of Descent based on the theory of selection is the KNOWLEDGE of the connection of organisms as ‘consanguineous beings.’ “Knowledge in the face of the above-cited concessions, is, then, the synonym for conjecture and theory only?
212 Bear in mind, please, that though the animals — mammalians included — have all been evolved after and partially from man’s cast-off tissues, still, as a far lower being, the mammalian animal became placental and separated far earlier than man.
213 Scientists now admit that Europe enjoyed in the Miocene times a warm, in the Pliocene or later Tertiary, a temperate climate. Littré’s contention as to the balmy spring of the Quaternary—to which deposits M. de Perthes’ discoveries of flint implements are traceable (since when the Somme has worn down its valley many scores of feet)— must be accepted with much reservation. The Somme-valley relics are post-glacial, and possibly point to the immigration of savages during one of the more temperate periods intervening between minor ages of Ice.
214 “Whence they (the old cave-men) came, we cannot tell†(Grant Allen).
“The Palæolithic hunters of the Somme Valley did not originate in that inhospitable climate, but moved into Europe from some more genial region.†(Dr. Southall’s “Epoch of the Mammoth,†p. 315)
215 The pure Atlantean stocks—of which the tall quaternary cave-men were, in part the direct descendants—immigrated into Europe long prior to the Glacial Period; in fact, as far back as the Pliocene and Miocene times in the Tertiary. The worked Miocene, flints of Thenay, and the traces of Pliocene man discovered by Professor Capellini in Italy, are witnesses to the fact. These colonists were portions of the once glorious race, whose cycle from the Eocene downwards had been running down the scale.
216 The artistic skill displayed by the old cave-men renders the hypothesis which regards them as approximations to the “pithecanthropus alalus‗that very mythical Hæckelian monster—an absurdity requiring no Huxley or Schmidt to expose it. We see in their skill in engraving a gleam of Atlantean culture atavistically re-appearing.†It will be remembered that Donnelly regards modern European as a renaissance of Atlantean civilization. (“Atlantis,†pp. 237–264.)
Selection 33
THE DAY WHEN THE CHURCH WILL FIND THAT ITS ONLY SALVATION LIES IN THE OCCULT INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE MAY NOT BE FAR OFF
The day when the Church will find that its only salvation lies in the occult interpretation of the Bible, may not be so far off as some imagine. Already many an abbé and ecclesiastic has become an ardent Kabalist, and as many appear publicly in the arena, breaking a lance with Theosophists and Occultists in support of the metaphysical interpretation of the Bible. But they commence, unfortunately for them, from the wrong end. They are advised, before they begin to speculate upon the metaphysical in their Scriptures, to study and master that which relates to the purely physical – e.g. its geological and ethnological hints. For such allusions to the Septenary constitution of the Earth and Man, to the seven Rounds and Races, abound in the New as in the Old Testaments, and are as visible as the sun in the heavens to him who reads both symbolically. What do the laws in Chapter XXIII, v. 15, of Leviticus apply to? What is the philosophy of reason for all such hebdomadic offerings and symbolical calculations as: “ye shall count. . . . from the morrow after the Sabbath. . . . that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be completed†(15); “And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish†(18), etc. etc. We shall be contradicted, no doubt, when we say that all these “wave†and “peace†offerings were in commemoration of the Sevenâ€Sabbaths†of the mysteries, which Sabbaths are seven pralayas, between seven Manvantaras, or what we call Rounds — for “Sabbath†is an elastic word, meaning a period of Rest of whatever nature, as explained elsewhere (Part II, “Selections on the Septenary.â€) And if this is not sufficiently conclusive, then we may turn to the verse which follows (16), and which adds, “even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days†(forty-nine, 7 × 7, stages of activity, and forty-nine stages of rest, on the seven globes of the chain, and then comes the rest of Sabbath, the fiftieth); after which “ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord,†i.e. ye shall make an offering of your flesh or “coats of skin,†and, divesting yourselves of your bodies, ye shall remain pure spirits. This law of offering, degraded and materialized with ages, was an institution that dated from the earliest Atlanteans; it came to the Hebrews viâ the “Chaldees,†who were the “wise men†of a caste, not of a nation, a community of great adepts come from their “Serpent-holes,†and who had settled in Babylonia ages before. And if this interpretation from Leviticus (full of the disfigured Laws of Manu) is found too farfetched, then turn to Revelation. Whatever interpretation profane mystics may give to the famous Chapter XVII, with its riddle of the woman in purple and scarlet; whether Protestants nod at the Roman Catholics, when reading “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH,†or Roman Catholics glare at the Protestants, the Occultists pronounce, in their impartiality, that these words have applied from the first to all and every exoteric Churchianity, that which was the “ceremonial magic†of old, with its terrible effects, and is now the harmless (because distorted) farce of ritualistic worship. The “mystery†of the woman and of the beast, are the symbols of soul-killing Churchianity and of Superstition. “The beast that was, and is not, and yet is.†“And here is the Mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains (seven continents and seven races) on which the woman sitteth,†the symbol of all the exoteric, barbarous, idolatrous faiths which have covered that symbol “with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs†who protested and do protest. “And there are seven Kings (seven races); five are fallen (our fifth race included), and one is (the fifth continues), and the other (the sixth and the seventh races) is not yet come. . . . And when he (the race “Kingâ€) cometh, he must continue a short space†(v. 10). There are many such Apocalyptic allusions, but the student has to find them out for himself. These five Kings were mentioned before.
THE APE ARRIVED ON THE SCENE LATER THAN MAN
If the Bible combines with archæology and geology to show that human civilization has passed through three more or less distinct stages, in Europe at least; and if man, both in America and Europe, as much as in Asia, dates from geological epochs – why should not the statements of the Secret Doctrine be taken into consideration? Is it more philosophical or logical and scientific too, to disbelieve, with Mr. Albert Gaudry, in Miocene man, while believing that the famous Thenay flints217 “were carved by the Dryopithecus monkey; or, with the Occultist, that the anthropomorphous monkey came ages after man? For if it is once conceded, and even scientifically demonstrated, that “there was not in the middle of the Miocene epoch a single species of mammal identical with species now extant†(“Les Enchainements du monde animal dans les temps géologiques,†by Albert Gaudry, p. 240); and that man was then just as he is now, only taller, and more athletic than we are,218 then where is the difficulty? That they could hardly be the descendants of monkeys, which are themselves not traced before the Miocene epoch,219 is, on the other hand, testified to by several eminent naturalists.
“Thus, in the savage of quaternary ages who had to fight against the mammoth with stone weapons, we find all those craniological characters generally considered as the sign of great intellectual development†(de Quatrefages, “The Human Species,†p. 312.)
Unless man emerged spontaneously, endowed with all his intellect and wisdom, from his brainless catarrhine ancestor, he could not have acquired such brain within the limits of the Miocene period, if we are to believe the learned Abbé Bourgeois (Vide infra, footnote).
As to the matter of giants, though the tallest man hitherto found in Europe among fossils is the “Mentone man†(6 ft. 8 in.), others may yet be excavated. Nilsson, quoted by Lubbock, states that “in a tomb of the Neolithic age . . . . a skeleton of extraordinary size was found in 1807,†and that it was attributed to a king of Scotland, Albus McGaldus.
And if in our own day we occasionally find men and women from 7 ft. to even 9 ft. and 11 ft. high, this only proves – on the law of atavism, or the reappearance of ancestral features of character – that there was a time when 9 ft. and 10 ft. was the average height of humanity, even in our latest Indo-European race.
But as the subject was sufficiently treated elsewhere, we may pass on to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, and see what the old Greeks knew of these early races and what the moderns know now.
The great nation mentioned by the Egyptian priests, from which descended the forefathers of the Greeks of the age of Troy, and which, as averred, had been destroyed by the Atlantic race, was then, as we see, assuredly no race of Palæolithic savages. Nevertheless, already in the days of Plato, with the exception of priests and Initiates, no one seems to have preserved any distinct recollection of the preceding races. The earliest Egyptians had been separated from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages; they were themselves descended from an alien race, and had settled in Egypt some 400,000 years before,220 but their Initiates had preserved all the records. Even so late as the time of Herodotus, they had still in their possession the statues of 341 kings who had reigned over their little Atlanto-Aryan Sub-race (Vide about the latter “Esoteric Buddhism,†5th Ed., p. 66). If one allows only twenty years as an average figure for the reign of each King, the duration of the Egyptian Empire has to be pushed back, from the day of Herodotus, about 17,000 years.
Bunsen allowed the great Pyramid an antiquity of 20,000 years. More modern archæologists will not give it more than 5,000, or at the utmost 6,000 years, and generously concede to Thebes with its hundred gates, 7,000 years from the date of its foundation. And yet there are records which show Egyptian priests – Initiates – journeying in a North-Westerly direction, by land, viâ what became later the Straits of Gibraltar; turning North and traveling through the future PhÅ“nician settlements of Southern Gaul; then still further North, until reaching Carnac (Morbihan), they turned to the West again and arrived, still traveling by land, on the North-Western promontory of the New Continent.221
What was the object of their long journey? And how far back must we place the date of such visits? The archaic records show the Initiates of the Second Sub-race of the Aryan family moving from one land to the other for the purpose of supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptacles for the ashes of generations to come. When was it? The fact of their crossing from France to Great Britain by land may give an idea of the date when such a journey could have been performed on terrâ firma.
It was -
“When the level of the Baltic and of the North Sea was 400 feet higher than it is now; when the valley of the Somme was not hollowed to the depth it has now attained; when Sicily was joined to Africa, Barbary to Spain,†when Carthage, the Pyramids of Egypt, the palaces of Uxmal and Palenqué were not in existence, and the bold navigators of Tyre and Sidon, who at a later date were to undertake their perilous voyages along the coasts of Africa, were yet unborn. What we know with certainty is that European man was contemporaneous with the extinct species of the quaternary epoch. . . . that he witnessed the upheaval of the Alps222 and the extension of the glaciers, in a word that he lived for thousands of years before the dawn of the remotest historical traditions. . . . It is even possible that man was the contemporary of extinct mammalia of species yet more ancient. . . . of the Elephas meridionalis of the sands of St. Prest. . . and the Elephas antiquus, assumed to be prior to the elephas primigenius, since their bones are found in company with carved flints in several English caves, associated with those of the Rhinoceros hemitæchus and even of the Machairodus latidens, which is of still earlier date. . . . M. E. Lartet is of opinion that there is nothing really impossible in the existence of man as early as the “Tertiary period.â€223
DARWINIANS REJECT THE TRUTH
If “there is nothing impossible†scientifically in the idea, and it may be admitted that man lived already as early as the Tertiary period, then it is just as well to remind the reader that Mr. Croll places the beginning of that period 2,500,000 years back (See Croll’s “Climate and Timeâ€); but there was a time when he assigned to it 15,000,000 years.
And if all this may be said of European man, how great is the antiquity of the Lemuro-Atlantean and of the Atlanto-Aryan man? Every educated person who follows the progress of Science, knows how all vestiges of man during the Tertiary period are received. The calumnies that were poured on Desnoyers in 1863, when he made known to the Institute of France that he had made a discovery “in the undisturbed Pliocene sands of St. Prest near Chartres, proving the co-existence of man and the Elephas meridionalis†– were equal to the occasion. The later discovery (in 1867) by the Abbé Bourgeois, that man lived in the Miocene epoch, and the reception it was given at the Pre-historic Congress held at Brussels in 1872, proves that the average man of Science will never see but that which he wants to see.224
The modern archæologist, though speculating ad infinitum upon the dolmens and their builders, knows, in fact, nothing of them or their origin. Yet, these weird, and often colossal monuments of unhewn stones – which consist generally of four or seven gigantic blocks placed together – are strewn over Asia, Europe, America, and Africa, in groups or rows. Stones of enormous size are found placed horizontally and variously upon two, three, four, and as in Poitou, upon six and seven blocks. People name them “devil’s altars,†druidic stones, and giant tombs. The stones of Carnac in the Morbihan, Britany – nearly a mile in length and numbering 11,000 ranged in eleven rows – are twin sisters of those at Stonehenge. The Conical menhir of Loch-Maria-ker in Morbihan, measures twenty yards in length and nearly two yards across. The Menhir of Champ Dolent (near St. Malo) rises thirty feet above the ground, and is fifteen feet in depth below. Such dolmens and prehistoric monuments are met with in almost every latitude. They are found in the Mediterranean basin; in Denmark (among the local tumuli from twenty-seven to thirty-five feet in height); in Shetland, and in Sweden, where they are called ganggriften (or tombs with corridors); in Germany, where they are known as the giant tombs (Hünengräben); in Spain (see the dolmen of Antiguera near Malaga), and Africa; in Palestine and Algeria; in Sardinia (see the Nuraghi and Sepolture dei giganti, or tombs of giants); in Malabar, in India, where they are called the tombs of the Daityas (giants) and of the Râkshasas, the mendemons of Lanka; in Russia and Siberia, where they are known as the Koorgan; in Peru and Bolivia, where they are termed the chulpas or burial places, etc., etc., etc.
There is no country from which they are absent. Who built them? Why are they all connected with Serpents and Dragons, with Alligators and Crocodiles? Because remains of “Palæolithic man†were, it is thought, found in some of them, and because in the funeral mounds of America bodies of later races were discovered with the usual paraphernalia of bone necklaces, weapons, stone and copper urns, etc., hence they are declared ancient tombs. But surely the two famous mounds – one in the Mississippi valley and the other in Ohio – known respectively as “the Alligator Mound†and “the Great Serpent Mound,†were never meant for tombs 225 (Vide infra). Yet one is told authoritatively that the Mounds, and the Mound or Dolmen Builders, are all “Pelasgic†in Europe, antecedent to the Incas, in America, yet of “not extremely distant times.†They are built by “no race of Dolmen Builders,†which never existed (opinion of De Mortillet, Bastian, and Westropp) save in the earlier archæological fancy. Finally Virchow’s opinion of the giant tombs of Germany is now accepted as an axiom:â€The tombs alone are gigantic, and not the bones they contain†– says that German biologist, and archæology has but to bow and submit to the decision.226
STILL MORE ASTOUNDING CONTRADICTIONS
That no gigantic skeletons have been hitherto found in the “tombs†is yet no reason to say there never were the remains of giants in them. Cremation was universal till a comparatively recent period – some 80, or 100,000 years ago. The real giants, moreover, were nearly all drowned with Atlantis. Nevertheless, the classics, as shown elsewhere, often speak of giant skeletons still excavated in their day. Besides this, human fossils may be counted on the fingers, as yet. No skeleton ever yet found is older than between 50, or 60,000 years,227 and man’s size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, ever since the third sub-race of the Aryan stock, which sub-race – born and developed in Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and conditions – had become European. Since then, as said, it has steadily been decreasing. It is truer therefore to say, that the tombs alone are archaic, and not necessarily the bodies of men occasionally found in them; and that those tombs, since they are gigantic, must have contained giants,228 or rather the ashes of generations of giants.
Nor were all such cyclopean structures intended for sepulchres. It is with the so-called Druidical remains, such as Carnac in Britany and Stonehenge in Great Britain, that the traveling Initiates above alluded to had to do. And these gigantic monuments are all symbolic records of the World’s history. They are not Druidical, but universal. Nor did the Druids build them, for they were only the heirs to the cyclopean lore left to them by generations of mighty builders and “magicians,†both good and bad.
It will always be a subject of regret that history, rejecting a priori the actual existence of giants, has preserved us so little of the records of antiquity concerning them. Yet in nearly every mythology – which after all is ancient history – the giants play an important part. In the old Norse mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against whom the sons of the gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of deities and men. The modern exegesis, that makes these giants to be the brethren of the dwarfs, and reduces the combats of the gods to the history of the development of the Aryan race, will only receive credence amongst the believers in the Aryan theory, as expounded by Max Müller. Granting that the Turanian races were typified by the dwarfs (Dwergar), and that a dark, round-headed, and dwarfish race was driven northward by the fair-faced Scandinavians, or Æsir, the gods being like unto men, there still exists neither in history nor any other scientific work any anthropological proof whatever of the existence in time or space of a race of giants. Yet that such exist, relatively and de facto side by side with dwarfs, Schweinfurth can testify. The Nyam-Nyam of Africa are regular dwarfs, while their next neighbours (several tribes of comparatively fair-complexioned Africans) are giants when confronted with the Nyam-Nyams, and very tall even among Europeans, for their women are all above 6½ feet high. (Vide Schweinfurth’s latest works.)
In Cornwall and in ancient Britain the traditions of these giants are, on the other hand, excessively common; they are said to live even down to the time of King Arthur. All this shows that giants lived to a later date amongst the Celtic than among the Teutonic peoples.
If we turn to the New World, we have traditions of a race of giants at Tarija on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in Ecuador, who combated gods and men. These old beliefs, which term certain localities “Los campos de los gigantes†– “the fields of giants,†are always concomitant with the existence of Pliocene mammalia and the occurrence of Pliocene raised beaches. “All the giants are not under Mount Ossa,†and it would be poor anthropology indeed that would restrict the traditions of giants to Greek and Bible mythologies. Slavonian countries, Russia especially, teem with legends about the bogaterey (mighty giants) of old, and their folklore, most of which has served for the foundation of national histories, their oldest songs, and their most archaic traditions, speak of the giants of old. Thus we may safely reject the modern theory that would make of the Titans mere symbols standing for cosmic forces. They were real living men, whether twenty or only twelve feet high. Even the Homeric heroes, who, of course, belonged to a far more recent period in the history of the races, appear to have wielded weapons of a size and weight beyond the strength of the strongest men of modern times.
“Not twice ten men the mighty bulk could raise, Such men as live in these degenerate days.â€
If the fossil footprints from Carson, Indiana, U.S.A., are human, they indicate gigantic men. Of their genuineness there can remain no doubt. It is to be deplored that the modern and scientific evidence for gigantic men should rest on footprints alone. Over and over again, the skeletons of hypothetical giants have been identified with those of elephants and mastodons. But all such blunders before the days of geology, and even the traveler’s tales of Sir John Mandeville, who says that he saw giants 56 feet high in India, only show that belief in the existence of giants has never, at any time, died out of the thoughts of men.
RACES OF GIANTS
That which is known and accepted is, that several races of gigantic men have existed and left distinct traces. In the journal of the Anthropological Institute (Vol. 1871, article by Dr. C. Carter Blake), such a race is shown as having existed at Palmyra and possibly in Midian, exhibiting cranial forms quite different from those of the Jews. It is not improbable that another such race existed in Samaria, and that the mysterious people who built the stone circles in Galilee, hewed Neolithic flints in the Jordan valley and preserved an ancient Semitic language quite distinct from the square Hebrew character – was of a very large stature. The English translations of the Bible can never be relied upon, even in their modern revised forms. They tell us of the Nephilim, translating the word by “giants,†and further adding that they were “hairy†men, probably the large and powerful prototypes of the later satyrs so eloquently described by the patristic fancy, some of the Church Fathers assuring their admirers and followers that they had themselves seen these “Satyrs†– some alive, others pickled and preserved. The word “giants†being once adopted as a synonym of Nephilim, the commentators have since identified them with the sons of Anak. The filibusters who seized on the Promised Land found a pre-existing population far exceeding their own in stature, and called it a race of giants. But the races of really gigantic men had disappeared ages before the birth of Moses. This tall people existed in Canaan, and even in Bashan, and may have had representatives in the Nabatheans of Midian. They were of far greater stature than the undersized Jews. Four thousand years ago their cranial conformation and large stature separated them from the children of Heber. Forty thousand years ago their ancestors may have been of still more gigantic size, and four hundred thousand years earlier they must have been in proportion to men in our days as the Brobdingnagians were to the Lilliputians. The Atlanteans of the middle period were called the Great Dragons, and the first symbol of their tribal deities, when the “gods†and the Divine Dynasties had forsaken them, was that of a giant Serpent.
The mystery veiling the origin and the religion of the Druids, is as great as that of their supposed fanes is to the modern Symbologist, but not to the initiated Occultists. Their priests were the descendants of the last Atlanteans, and what is known of them is sufficient to allow the inference that they were eastern priests akin to the Chaldeans and Indians, though little more. It may be inferred that they symbolized their deity as the Hindus do their Vishnu, as the Egyptians did their Mystery God, and as the builders of the Ohio Great-Serpent mound worshipped theirs – namely under the form of the “mighty Serpent,†the emblem of the eternal deity TIME (the Hindu Kala). Pliny called them the “Magi of the Gauls and Britons.†But they were more than that. The author of “Indian Antiquities†finds much affinity between the Druids and the Brahmins of India. Dr. Borlase points to a close analogy between them and the Magi of Persia229; others will see an identity between them and the Orphic priesthood of Thrace, simply because they were connected, in their esoteric teachings, with the universal Wisdom Religion, and thus presented affinities with the exoteric worship of all.
WHERE PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY AGREE
Like the Hindus, the Greeks and Romans (we speak of the Initiates), the Chaldees and the Egyptians, the Druids believed in the doctrine of a succession of worlds, as also in that of seven “creations†(of new continents) and transformations of the face of the earth, and in a seven-fold night and day for each earth or globe (See “Esoteric Buddhismâ€). Wherever the Serpent with the egg is found, there this tenet was surely present. Their Dracontia are a proof of it. This belief was so universal that, if we seek for it in the esotericism of various religions, we shall discover it in all. We shall find it among the Aryan Hindus and Mazdeans, the Greeks, the Latins, and even among the old Jews and early Christians, whose modern stocks hardly comprehend now that which they read in their Scriptures. See what Seneca says in Epistle 9, and Quæst. Nat. III., c., ult.: “The world being melted and having re-entered the bosom of Jupiter, this god continues for some time to remain absorbed in himself and concealed, wholly immersed in contemplation. After which a new world springs from him. . . An innocent race of men and animals are produced anew. . . etc.†Then again, when speaking of periodical mundane dissolution involving universal death, he (Seneca) says that “when the laws of nature shall be buried in ruin, and the last day of the world shall come, the southern pole shall crush, as it falls, all the regions of Africa, and the North pole shall overwhelm all the countries beneath its axis. The affrighted sun shall be deprived of its light; the palace of heaven falling to decay shall produce at once both life and death, and some kind of dissolution shall equally seize upon all deities, who thus shall return into their original chaos.†(Quoted in “Book of God,†p. 160.)
One might imagine oneself reading the Purânic account by Parasâra of the great Pralaya. It is nearly the same thing, idea for idea. Has Christianity nothing of the kind? It has, we say. Let the reader open any English Bible and read Chapter III of the Second Epistle of Peter, from verse iii. till the xivth, and he will find there the same ideas. . . “There shall come in the last days scoffers . . . saying, ‘where is the promise of his coming? . . . . Since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.’ For, they are ignorant . . . . that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth that are now, are reserved unto the fire. . . . wherein the heavens. . . . shall be dissolved, and elements shall melt with fervent heat. . . . we nevertheless look for new heavens and new earth, etc., etc.†If the interpreters chose to see in this a reference to creation, the deluge, and the promised coming of Christ, when they will live in a new Jerusalem in heaven, this is no fault of “Peter.†What the writer of the Epistles meant was the destruction of this Fifth Race of ours by subterranean fires and inundations, and the appearance of new continents for the Sixth Root-Race. For the writers of these Epistles were all learned in symbology, if not in the sciences.
The Secret Doctrine, ii 747 – 757
________________
217 “The flints of Thenay bear unmistakable trace of the work of human hands.†(G. de Mortillet, “Promenades au Musée de St. Germain,†p. 76.)
218 Speaking of the reindeer hunters of Périgord, Joly says of them that “they were of great height, athletic, with a strongly built skeleton . . .†etc. (“Man before Metals,†353).
219 “On the shores of the lake of Beauce,†says the Abbé Bourgeois, “man lived in the midst of a fauna which completely disappeared (Aceratherium, Tapir, Mastodon) . With the fluviatile sands of Orléanais came the anthropomorphous monkey (pliopithecus antiquus); therefore, later than man.†(See Comptes Rendus of the “Prehistoric Congress†of 1867 at Paris.)
220 “In making soundings in the stony soil of the Nile Valley two baked bricks were discovered, one at the depth of 20, the other at 25 yards. If we estimate the thickness of the annual deposit formed by the river at 8 inches per century (more careful calculations have shown no more than from three to five per century), we must assign to the first of these bricks 12,000 years, and to the second 14,000 years. By means of analogous calculations, Burmeister supposes 72,000 years to have elapsed since the first appearance of man on the soil of Egypt, and Draper attributes to the European man, who witnessed the last glacial epoch, an antiquity of more than 250,000 years.†(“Man before Metals,†p. 183.) Egyptian Zodiacs show more than 75,000 years of observation! (See further.) Note well also that Burmeister speaks only of the Delta population.
221 Or on what are now the British Islands, which were not yet detached from the main continent in those days. “The ancient inhabitant of Picardy could pass into Great Britain without crossing the Channel. The British Isles were united to Gaul by an isthmus which has since been submerged.†(“Man before Metals,†p. 184.)
222 He witnessed and remembered it too, as “the final disappearance of the largest continent of Atlantis was an event coincident with the elevation of the Alps,†a master writes (See “Esoteric Buddhism,†p. 70). Pari passu, as one portion of the dry land of our hemisphere disappeared, some land of the new continent emerged from the seas. It is on this colossal cataclysm, which lasted during a period of 150,000 years, that traditions of all the Deluges are built, the Jews building their version on an event which took place later in “Poseidonis.â€
223 The Antiquity of the Human Race, in “Men before Metals,†by M. Joly, Professor at the Science Faculty of Toulouse, p. 184.
224 The scientific “jury†disagreed, as usual; while de Quatrefages, de Mortillet, Worsaæ, Engelhardt, Waldemar, Schmidt, Capellini, Hamy, and Cartailhac, saw upon the flints the traces of human handiwork, Steenstrup, Virchow and Desor refused to do so. Still the majority, if we except some English Scientists, are for Bourgeois.
225 We take the following description from a scientific work. “The first of these animals (the alligator) designed with considerable skill, is no less than 250 ft. long. . . . . The interior is formed of a heap of stones, over which the form has been moulded in fine stiff clay. The great serpent is represented with open mouth, in the act of swallowing an egg of which the diameter is 100 ft. in the thickest part; the body of the animal is wound in graceful curves and the tail is rolled into a spiral. The entire length of the animal is 1,100 ft. This work is unique . . . . and there is nothing on the old continent which offers any analogy to it.†Except its symbolism, however, of the serpent—the cycle of Time—swallowing Kosmos, the egg.
226 It might be better, perhaps, for fact had we more Specialists in Science and fewer “authorities†on universal questions. One never heard that Humboldt gave authoritative and final decisions in the matter of polypi, or the nature of an excrescence.
227 57,000 years is the date assigned by Dr. Dowler to the remains of the human skeleton found buried beneath four ancient forests at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi river
228 Murray says of the Mediterranean barbarians that they marveled at the prowess of the Atlanteans. “Their physical strength was extraordinary (witness indeed their cyclopean buildings), the earth shaking sometimes under their tread. Whatever they did, was done speedily. . . . . They were wise and communicated their wisdom to men†(†Mythology,†p. 4).
229 But the Magi of Persia were never Persians—not even Chaldeans. They came from a far-off land, the Orientalists being of opinion that the said land was Media. This may be so, but from what part of Media? To this we receive no answer.
GLOSSARY
A.
Absoluteness. When predicated of the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE, it denotes an abstract noun, which is more correct and logical than to apply the adjective “absolute†to that which has neither attributes nor limitations, nor can IT have any.
Adam (Heb.). In the Kabalah Adam is the “only-begottenâ€, and means also “red earthâ€. (See “Adam-Adami†in the S.D. II p. 452.) It is almost identical with Athamas or Thomas, and is rendered into Greek by Didumos, the “twinâ€- Adam, “the firstâ€, in chap. 1 of Genesis, being shown, “male-female.â€
Adam Kadmon (Heb). Archetypal Man; Humanity. The “Heavenly Man†not fallen into sin; Kabalists refer it to the Ten Sephiroth on the plane of human perception. [w.w.w.]
In the Kabalah Adam Kadmon is the manifested Logos corresponding to our Third Logos; the Unmanifested being the first paradigmic ideal Man, and symbolizing the Universe in abscondito, or in its “privation†in the Aristotelean sense. The First Logos is the “Light of the Worldâ€, the Second and the Third – its gradually deepening shadows.
Adept (Lat.). Adeptus, “He who has obtained.†In Occultism one who has reached the stage of Initiation, and become a Master in the science of Esoteric philosophy.
Âditi (Sk.). The Vedic name for the Mûlaprakriti of the Vedantists; the abstract aspect of Parabrahman, though both unmanifested and unknowable. In the VedasÂditi is the “Mother-Goddessâ€, her terrestrial symbol being infinite and shoreless space.
Adwaita (Sk.). A Vedânta sect. The non-dualistic (A-dwaita) school of Vedântic philosophy founded by Sankarâchârya, the greatest of the historical Brahmin sages. The two other schools are the Dwaita (dualistic) and the Visishtadwaita; all the three call themselves Vedântic.
Adwaitin (Sk.). A follower of the said school.
Æther (Gr.). With the ancients the divine luminiferous substance which pervades the whole universe, the “garment†of the Supreme Deity, Zeus, or Jupiter. With the moderns, Ether, for the meaning of which in physics and chemistry see Webster’s Dictionary or any other. In esotericism Æther is the third principle of the Kosmic Septenary; the Earth being the lowest, then the Astral light, Ether and Âkâsa (phonetically Âkâsha) the highest.
Agathodæmon (Gr.). The beneficent, good Spirit as contrasted with the bad one, Kakodæmon. The “Brazen Serpent†of the Bible is the former; the flying serpents of fire are an aspect of Kakodæmon. The Ophites called Agathodæmon the Logos and Divine Wisdom, which in the Bacchanalian Mysteries was represented by a serpent erect on a pole.
Agni (Sk.). The God of Fire in the Veda; the oldest and the most revered of Gods in India. He is one of the three great deities: Agni, Vâyu and Sûrya, and also all the three, as he is the triple aspect of fire; in heaven as the Sun; in the atmosphere or air (Vâyu), as Lightning; on. earth, as ordinary Fire. Agni belonged to the earlier Vedic Trimûrti before Vishnu was given a place of honour and before Brahmâ and Siva were invented.
Agnishwattas (Sk.). A class of Pitris, the creators of the first ethereal race of men. Our solar ancestors as contrasted with the Barhishads, the “lunar†Pitris or ancestors, though otherwise explained in the Purânas.
Aham (Sk.). “I†– the basis of Ahankâra, Self-hood.
Ahankâra (Sk.). The conception of “Iâ€, Self-consciousness or Self- identity; the “Iâ€, the egotistical and mâyâvic principle in man, due to our ignorance which separates our “I†from the Universal ONE-SELF Personality, Egoism.
Ahura (Zend.). The same as Asura, the holy, the Breath-like. Ahura Mazda, the Ormuzd of the Zoroastrians or Parsis, is the Lord who bestows light and intelligence, whose symbol is the Sun (See “Ahura Mazdaâ€), and of whom Ahriman, a European form of “Angra Mainyu†(q.v.), is the dark aspect.
Ahura Mazda (Zend). The personified deity, the Principle of Universal Divine Light of the Parsis. From Ahura or Asura, breath, “spiritual, divine†in the oldest Rig Veda, degraded by the orthodox Brahmans into A -sura, “no godsâ€, just as the Mazdeans have degraded the Hindu Devas (Gods) into Dæva (Devils).
Ain Soph (Heb.). The “Boundless†or Limitless; Deity emanating and extending. [w.w.w.]
Ain Soph is also written En Soph and Ain Suph, no one, not even Rabbis, being sure of their vowels. In the religious metaphysics of the old Hebrew philosophers, the ONE Principle was an abstraction, like Parabrahmam, though modern Kabbalists have succeeded now, by dint of mere sophistry and paradoxes, in making a “Supreme God†of it and nothing higher. But with the early Chaldean Kabbalists Ain Soph is “without form or beingâ€, having “no likeness with anything else†(Franck, Die Kabbala, p. 126). That Ain Soph has never been considered as the “Creator†is proved by even such an orthodox Jew as Philo calling the “Creator†the Logos, who stands next the “Limitless Oneâ€, and the “Second Godâ€. “The Second God is its (Ain Soph’s) wisdomâ€, says Philo (Quaest. et Solut). Deity is NO-THING; it is nameless, and therefore called Ain Soph; the word Ain meaning NOTHING. (See Franck’s Kabbala, p. 153 ff.)
Aitareya (Sk.). The name of an Aranyaka (Brâhmana) and a Upanishad of the Rig Veda. Some of its portions are purely Vedântic.
Akâsa (Sk.). The subtle, supersensuous spiritual essence which pervades all space; the primordial substance erroneously identified with Ether. But it is to Ether what Spirit is to Matter, or Âtmâ to Kâma-rûpa. It is, in fact, the Universal Space in which lies inherent the eternal Ideation of the Universe in its ever-changing aspects on the planes of matter and objectivity, and from which radiates the First Logos, or expressed thought. This is why it is stated in the Purânas that Âkâsa has but one attribute, namely sound, for sound is but the translated symbol of Logos- “Speech†in its mystic sense. In the same sacrifice (the Jyotishtoma Agnishtoma) it is called the “God Âkâsaâ€. In these sacrificial mysteries Âkâsa is the all-directing ‘and omnipotent Deva who plays the part of Sadasya, the superintendent over the magical effects of the religious performance, and it had its own appointed Hotri (priest) in days of old, who took its name. The Âkâsa is the indispensable agent of every Krityâ (magical performance) religious or profane. The expression “to stir up the Brahmââ€, means to stir up the power which lies latent at the bottom of every magical operation, Vedic sacrifices being in fact nothing if not ceremonial magic. This power is the Âkâsa – in another aspect, Kundalini – occult electricity, the alkahest of the alchemists in one sense, or the universal solvent, the same anima mundi on the higher plane as the astral light is on the lower. “At the moment of the sacrifice the priest becomes imbued with the spirit of Brahmâ, is, for the time being, Brahmâ himselfâ€. (Isis Unveiled).
Alaya (Sk.). The Universal Soul (See Secret Doctrine Vol. I. pp. 47 et seq.). The name belongs to the Tibetan system of the contemplative Mahâyâna School. Identical with Âkâsa in its mystic sense, and with Mulâprâkriti, in its essence, as it is the basis or root of all things.
Amânasa (Sk.). The “Mindlessâ€, the early races of this planet; also certain Hindu gods.
Ambhâmsi (Sk.). A name of the chief of the Kumâras Sanat-Sujâta, signifying the “watersâ€. This epithet will become more comprehensible when we remember that the later type of Sanat-Sujâta was Michael, the Archangel, who is called in the Talmud “the Prince of Watersâ€, and in the Roman Catholic Church is regarded as the patron of gulfs and promontories. Sanat-Sujâta is the immaculate son of the immaculate mother (Ambâ or Aditi, chaos and space) or the “waters†of limitless space. (See Secret Doctrine-, Vol. I., p. 460.)
Amesha Spentas (Zend). Amshaspends. The six angels or divine Forces personified as gods who attend upon Ahura Mazda, of which he is the synthesis and the seventh. They are one of the prototypes of the Roman Catholic “Seven Spirits†or Angels with Michael as chief, or the “Celestial Hostâ€; the “Seven Angels of the Presenceâ€. They are the Builders, Cosmocratores, of the Gnostics and identical with the Seven Prajâpatis, the Sephiroth, etc. (q.v.).
Ananta-Sesha (Sk.). The Serpent of Eternity – the couch of Vishnu during Pralaya (lit., endless remain).
Anaxagoras (Gr.) A famous Ionian philosopher who lived 500 B.C., studied philosophy under Anaximenes of Miletus, and settled in the days of Pericles at Athens. Socrates, Euripides, Archelaus and other distinguished men and philosophers were among his disciples and pupils. He was a most learned astronomer and was one of the first to explain openly that which was taught by Pythagoras secretly, namely, the movements of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, etc. It was he who taught the theory of Chaos, on the principle that “nothing comes from nothingâ€; and of atoms, as the underlying essence and substance of all bodies, “of the same nature as the bodies which they formedâ€.
These atoms, he taught, were primarily put in motion by Nous (Universal Intelligence, the Mahat of the Hindus), which Nous is an immaterial, eternal, spiritual entity; by this combination the world was formed, the material gross bodies sinking down, and the ethereal atoms (or fiery ether) rising and spreading in the upper celestial regions. Antedating modern science by over 2000 years, he taught that the stars were of the same material as our earth, and the sun a glowing mass; that the moon was a dark, uninhabitable body, receiving its light from the sun; the comets, wandering stars or bodies ; and over and above the said science, he confessed himself thoroughly convinced that the real existence of things, perceived by our senses, could not be demonstrably proved. He died in exile at Lampsacus at the age of seventy-two.
Androgyne Ray (Esot.). The first differentiated ray; the Second Logos; Adam Kadmon in the Kabalah; the “male and female created he themâ€, of the first chapter of Genesis.
AnimaMundi (Lat.). Theâ€Soul of the Worldâ€, the same as the Alaya of the Northern Buddhists; the divine essence which permeates, animates and informs all, from the smallest atom of matter to man and god. It is in a sense the “seven-skinned mother†of the stanzas in the Secret Doctrine, the essence of seven planes of sentience, consciousness and differentiation, moral and physical. In its highest aspect it is Nirvâna, in its lowest Astral Light. It was feminine with the Gnostics, the early Christians and the Nazarenes; bisexual with other sects, who considered it only in its four lower planes. Of igneous, ethereal nature in the objective world of form (and then ether), and divine and spiritual in its three higher planes. When it is said that every human soul was born by detaching itself from the Anima Mundi, it means, esoterically, that our higher Egos are of an essence identical with It, which is a radiation of the ever unknown Universal ABSOLUTE.
Anthropomorphism (Gr.). From “anthropos†meaning man. The act of endowing god or gods with a human form and human attributes or qualities.
Anugîtâ (Sk.). One of the Upanishads. A very occult treatise. (See The sacred Books of the East.)
Anupâdaka (Sk.). Anupapâdaka, also Aupapâduka; means parentlessâ€, “self-existingâ€, born without any parents or progenitors. A term applied to certain self-created gods, and the Dhyâni Buddhas.
Archæus (Gr.). “The Ancient.†Used of the oldest manifested deity; a term employed in the Kabalah; “archaic “, old, ancient.
Archangel (Gr.). Highest supreme angel. From the Greek arch, “chief†or “primordialâ€, and angelos, “messenger “.
Archæus (Gr.). “The Ancient.†Used of the oldest manifested deity; a term employed in the Kabalah; “archaic “, old, ancient.
Archetypal Universe (Kab.). The ideal universe upon which the objective world was built. [w.w.w.]
Arûpa (Sk.). “Bodilessâ€, formless, as opposed to rûpa, “bodyâ€, or form.
Arvâksrotas (Sk.). The seventh creation, that of man, in the Vishnu Purâna.
Âryasangha (Sk.) The Founder of the first Yogâchârya School. This Arhat, a direct disciple of Gautama, the Buddha, is most unaccountably mixed up and confounded with a personage of the same name, who is said to have lived in Ayôdhya (Oude) about the fifth or sixth century of our era, and taught Tântrika worship in addition to the Yogâchârya system. Those who sought to make it popular, claimed that he was the same Âryasangha, that had been a follower of Sâkyamuni, and that he was 1,000 years old. Internal evidence alone is sufficient to show that the works written by him and translated about the year 600 of our era, works full of Tantra worship, ritualism, and tenets followed now considerably by the “red-cap†sects in Sikhim, Bhutan, and Little Tibet, cannot be the same as the lofty system of the early Yogâcharya school of pure Buddhism, which is neither northern nor southern, but absolutely esoteric. Though none of the genunine Yogâchârya books (the Narjol chodpa) have ever been made public or marketable, yet one finds in the Yogâchârya Bhûmi Shâstra of the pseudo-Âryasangha a great deal from the older system, into the tenets of which he may have been initiated. It is, however, so mixed up with Sivaism and Tantrika magic and superstitions, that the work defeats its own end, notwithstanding its remarkable dialectical subtilty. (See the Theosophical Glossary)
Astral Body, or Astral “Doubleâ€. The ethereal counterpart or shadow of man or animal. The Linga Sharira, the “Doppelgäingerâ€. The reader must not confuse it with the ASTRAL SOUL, another name for the lower Manas, or Kama-Manas so-called, the reflection of the HIGHER EGO.
Astral Light (Occult) The invisible region that surrounds our globe, as it does every other, and corresponding as the second Principle of Kosmos (the third being Life, of which it is the vehicle) to the Linga Sharira or the Astral Double in man. A subtle Essence visible only to a clairvoyant eye, and the lowest but one (viz., the earth), of the Seven Akâsic or Kosmic Principles. Eliphas Levi calls it the great Serpent and the Dragon from which radiates on Humanity every evil influence. This is so; but why not add that the Astral Light gives out nothing but what it has received; that it is the great terrestrial crucible, in which the vile emanations of the earth (moral and physical) upon which the Astral Light is fed, are all converted into their subtlest essence, and radiated back intensified, thus becoming epidemics – moral, psychic and physical. Finally, the Astral Light is the same as the Sidereal Light of Paracelsus and other Hermetic philosophers. “Physically, it is the ether of modern science. Metaphysically, and in its spiritual, or occult sense, ether is a great deal more than is often imagined. In occult physics, and alchemy, it is well demonstrated to enclose within its shoreless waves not only Mr. Tyndall’s ’promise and potency of every quality of life’, but also the realization of the potency of every quality of spirit. Alchemists and Hermetists believe that their astral, or sidereal ether, besides the above properties of sulphur, and white and red magnesia, or magnes, is the anima mundi, the workshop of Nature and of all the Kosmos, spiritually, as well as physically. The ‘grand magisterium’ asserts itself in the phenomenon of mesmerism, in the ‘levitation’ of human and inert objects; and may be called the ether from its spiritual aspect. The designation astral is ancient, and was used by some of the Neo-platonists, although it is claimed by some that the word was coined by the Martinists. Porphyry describes the celestial body which is always joined with the soul as ‘immortal, luminous, and star-like’. The root of this word may be found, perhaps, in the Scythic Aistaer- which means star, or the Assyrian Istar, which, according to Burnouf has the same sense.†(Isis Unveiled.)
Asuras (Sk.). Exoterically, elementals and evil, gods – considered maleficent; demons, and no gods. But esoterically – the reverse. For in the most ancient portions of the Rig Veda, the term is used for the Supreme Spirit, and therefore the Asuras are spiritual and divine It is only in the last book of the Rig Veda, its latest part, and in the Atharva Veda, and the Brâhmanas, that the epithet, which had been given to Agni, the greatest Vedic Deity, to Indra and Varuna, has come to signify the reverse of gods. Asu means breath, and it is with his breath that Prajâpati (Brahmâ) creates the Asuras. When ritualism and dogma got the better of the Wisdom religion, the initial letter a was adopted as a negative prefix, and the term ended by signifying “not a godâ€, and Sura only a deity. But in the Vedas the Suras have ever been connected with Surya, the sun, and regarded as inferior deities, devas.
Aswattha (Sk.) The Bo-tree, the tree of knowledge, ficus religiosa.
Avalokiteswara (Sk.) “The on-looking Lord†In the exoteric interpretation, he is Padmapâni (the lotus bearer and the lotus-born) in Tibet, the first divine ancestor of the Tibetans, the complete incarnation or Avatar of Avalokiteswara; but in esoteric philosophy Avaloki, the “on-lookerâ€, is the Higher Self, while Padmapâni is the Higher Ego or Manas. The mystic formula “Om mani padme hum†is specially used to invoke their joint help. While popular fancy claims for Avalokiteswara many incarnations on earth, and sees in him, not very wrongly, the spiritual guide of every believer, the esoteric interpretation sees in him the Logos, both celestial and human. Therefore, when the Yogâchârya School has declared Avalokiteswara as Padmâpani “to be the Dhyâni Bodhisattva of Amitâbha Buddhaâ€, it is indeed, because the former is the spiritual reflex in the world of forms of the latter, both being one – one in heaven, the other on earth.
Avatâra (Sk.) Divine incarnation. The descent of a god or some exalted Being, who has progressed beyond the necessity of Rebirths, into the body of a simple mortal. Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu. The Dalai Lama is regarded as an avatar of Avalokiteswara, and the Teschu Lama as one of Tson-kha-pa, or Amitâbha. There are two kinds of avatars: those born from woman, and the parentless, the anupapâdaka.
B.
Barhishad (Sk.). A class of the “lunar†Pitris or “Ancestorsâ€, Fathers, who are believed in popular superstition to have kept up in their past incarnations the household sacred flame and made fire-offerings. Esoterically the Pitris who evolved their shadows or chhayas to make there-with the first man. (See Secret Doctrine, Vol. II.)
Bhûta-sarga (Sk.). Elemental or incipient Creation, i.e., when matter was several degrees less material than it is now.
Bhûts (Sk.). Bhûta.: Ghosts, phantoms. To call them “demonsâ€, as do the Orientalists, is incorrect. For, if on the one hand, a Bhûta is “a malignant spirit which haunts cemeteries, lurks in trees, animates dead bodies, and deludes and devours human beingsâ€, in popular fancy, in India in Tibet and China, by Bhûtas are also meant “heretics†who besmear their bodies with ashes, or Shaiva ascetics (Siva being held in India for the King of Bhûtas).
Binah (Heb.). Understanding. The third of the 10 Sephiroth, the third of the Supernal Triad; a female potency, corresponding to the letter hé of the Tetragrammaton IHVH. Binah is called AIMA, the Supernal Mother, and “the great Seaâ€. [ w.w.w.]
Book of the Dead. An ancient Egyptian ritualistic and occult work attributed to Thot-Hermes. Found in the coffins of ancient mummies.
Brahma (Sk.). The student must distinguish between Brahma the neuter, and Brahmâ, the male creator of the Indian Pantheon. The former, Brahma or Brahman, is the impersonal, supreme and uncognizable Principle of the Universe from the essence of which all emanates, and into which all returns, which is incorporeal, immaterial, unborn, eternal, beginningless and endless. It is all-pervading, animating the highest god as well as the smallest mineral atom. Brahmâ on the other hand, the male and the alleged Creator, exists periodically in his manifestation only, and then again goes into pralaya, i.e., disappears and is annihilated.
Brahmâ’s Day. A period of 2,160,000,000 years during which Brahmâ having emerged out of his golden egg (Hiranyagarbha), creates and fashions the material world (being simply the fertilizing and creative force in Nature). After this period, the worlds being destroyed in turn, by fire and water, he vanishes with objective nature, and then comes Brahmâ’s Night.
Brahmâ’s Night. A period of equal duration, during which Brahmâ. is said to be asleep. Upon awakening he recommences the process, and this goes on for an AGE of Brahmâ composed of alternate “Daysâ€, and “Nightsâ€, and lasting 100 years (of 2,160,000,000 years each). It requires fifteen figures to express the duration of such an age; after the expiration of which the Mahapralaya or the Great Dissolution sets in, and lasts in its turn for the same space of fifteen figures.
Brahmâ Vâch (Sk.) Male and female Brahmâ. Vâch is also some-times called the female logos; for Vâch means Speech, literally. (See Manu Book I., and Vishnu Purâna.)
Brahma Vidyâ (Sk.) The knowledge, the esoteric science, about the two Brahmas and their true nature.
Brahm̢ Vir̢j. (Sk.) The same: Brahm̢ separating his body into two halves, male and female, creates in them V̢ch and Vir̢j. In plainer terms and esotericlly Brahm̢ the Universe, differentiating, produced thereby material nature, Vir̢j, and spiritual intelligent Nature, V̢ch Рwhich is the Logos of Deity or the manifested expression of the eternal divine Ideation.
Brâhman (Sk.) The highest of the four castes in India, one supposed or rather fancying himself, as high among men, as Brahman, the ABSOLUTE of the Vedantins, is high among, or above the gods.
Brahmâputrâs (Sk.) The Sons of Brahmâ.
Buddha (Sk.). Lit., “The Enlightenedâ€. The highest degree of knowledge. To become a Buddha one has to break through the bondage of sense and personality; to acquire a complete perception of the REAL SELF and learn not to separate it from all otherselves; to learn by experience the utter unreality of all phenomena of the visible Kosmos foremost of all; to reach a complete detachment from all that is evanescent and finite, and live while yet on Earth in the immortal and the everlasting alone, in a supreme state of holiness.
Buddhi (Sk.). Universal Soul or Mind. Mahâbuddhi is a name of Mahat (see “Alayaâ€); also the spiritual Soul in man (the sixth principle), the vehicle of Atmâ exoterically the seventh.
Buddhism. Buddhism is now split into two distinct Churches : the Southern and the Northern Church. The former is said to be the purer form, as having preserved more religiously the original teachings of the Lord Buddha. It is the religion of Ceylon, Siam, Burmah and other places, while Northern Buddhism is confined to Tibet, China and Nepaul. Such a distinction, however, is incorrect. If the Southern Church is nearer, in that it has not departed, except perhaps in some trifling dogmas due to the many councils held after the death of the Master, from the public or exoteric teachings of Sâkyamuni – the Northern Church is the outcome of Siddhârta Buddha’s esoteric teachings which he confined to his elect Bhikshus and Arhats. In fact, Buddhism in the present age, cannot he justly judged either by one or the other of its exoteric popular forms. Real Buddhism can be appreciated only by blending the philosophy of the Southern Church and the metaphysics of the Northern Schools. If one seems too iconoclastic and stero:, and the other too metaphysical and transcendental, even to being overgrown with the weeds of Indian exotericism – many of the gods of its Pantheon having been transplanted under new names to Tibetan soil – it is entirely due to the popular expression of Buddhism in both Churches. Correspondentially they stand in their relation to each other as Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Both err by an excess of zeal and erroneous interpretations, though neither the Southern nor the Northern Buddhist clergy have ever departed from truth consciously, still less have they acted under the dictates of priestocracy, ambition, or with an eye to personal gain and power, as the two Christian Churches have.
C
Cain or Kayn (Heb.) In Esoteric symbology he is said to be identical with Jehovah or the “Lord God†of the fourth chapter of Genesis. It is held, moreover, that Abel is not his brother, but his female aspect. (See Sec.Doct., sub voce.)
Capricornus (Lat.) The 10th sign of the Zodiac (Makâra in Sanskrit), considered, on account of its hidden meaning, the most important among the constellations of the mysterious Zodiac. it is fully described in the Secret Doctrine, and therefore needs but a few words more. Whether, agreeably with exoteric statements, Capricornus was related in any way to the wet-nurse Amalthæa who fed Jupiter with her milk, or whether it was the god Pan who changed himself into a goat and left his impress upon the sidereal records, matters little. Each of the fables has its significance. Everything in Nature is intimately correlated to the rest, and therefore the students of ancient lore will not be too much surprised when told that even the seven steps taken in the direction of every one of the four points of the compass, or – 28 steps -taken by the new-born infant Buddha, are closely related to the 28 stars of the constellation of Capricornus.
Causal Body. This “bodyâ€, which is no body either objective or subjective, but Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul, is so called because it is the direct cause of the Sushupti condition, leading to the Turya state, the highest state of Samadhi. It is called Karanopadhi, “the basis of the Causeâ€, by the Târaka Raja Yogis; and in the Vedânta system it corresponds to both the Vignânamaya and Anandamaya Kosha, the latter coming next to Atma, and therefore being the vehicle of the universal Spirit. Buddhi alone could not be called a “Causal Body “, but becomes so in conjunction with Manas, the incarnating Entity or EGO.
Chakra (Sk.) A wheel, a disk, or the circle of Vishnu generally. Used also of a cycle of time, and with other meanings.
Chaldeans, or Kasdim. At first a tribe, then a caste of learned Kabbalists. They were the savants, the magians of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. The famous Hillel, the precursor of Jesus in philosophy and in ethics, was a Chaldean. Franck in his Kabbala points to the close resemblance of the “secret doctrine†found in the Avesta and the religious metaphysics of the Chaldees.
Chaos (Gr.) The Abyss, the “Great Deepâ€. It was personified in Egypt by the Goddess Neïth, anterior to all gods. As Deveria says, “the only God, without form and sex, who gave birth to itself, and without fecundation, is adored under the form of a Virgin Motherâ€. She is the vulture-headed Goddess found in the oldest period of Abydos, who belongs, accordingly to Mariette Bey, to the first Dynasty, which would make her, even on the confession of the time-dwarfing Orientalists, about 7,000 years old. As Mr. Bonwick tells us in his excellent work on Egyptian belief – “Neïth, Nut, Nepte, Nuk (her names as variously read !) is a philosophical conception worthy of the nineteenth century after the Christian era, rather than the thirty-ninth before it or earlier than thatâ€. And he adds: “Neith or Nout is neither more nor less than the Great Mother, a yet the Immaculate Virgin, or female God from whom all things proceededâ€. Neïth is the “Father-mother†of the Stanzas of the Secret Doctrine, the Swabhavat of the Northern Buddhists, the immaculate Mother indeed, the prototype of the latest “Virgin†of all; for, as Sharpe says, “the Feast of Candlemas – in honour of the goddess Neïth – is yet marked in our Almanacs as Candlemas day, or the Purification of the Virgin Maryâ€; and Beauregard tells us of “the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, who can henceforth, as well as the Egyptian Minerva, the mysterious Neïth, boast of having come from herself, and of having given birth to Godâ€. He who would deny the working of cycles and the recurrence of events, let him read what Neïth was years ago, in the conception of the Egyptian Initiates, trying to popularize a philosophy too abstract for the masses; and then remember the subjects of dispute at the Council of Ephesus in 431, when Mary was declared Mother of God; and her Immaculate Conception forced on the World as by command of God, by Pope and Council in 1858. Neïth is Swabhdvat and also the Vedic Aditi and the Purânic Akâsa, for “she is not only the celestial vault, or ether, but is made to appear in a tree, from which she gives the fruit of the Tree of Life (like another Eve) or pours upon her worshippers some of the divine water of lifeâ€. Hence she gained the favourite appellation of “Lady of the Sycamoreâ€, an epithet applied to another Virgin (Bonwick). (See The Theosophical Glossary.)
Chelâ (Sk.) A disciple, the pupil of a Guru or Sage, the follower of some adept of a school of philosophy (lit., child).
Cherubim (Heb.) According to the Kabbalists, a group of angels, which they specially associated with the Sephira Jesod. in Christian teaching, an order of angels who are “watchersâ€. Genesis places Cherubim to guard the lost Eden, and the O.T. frequently refers to them as guardians of the divine glory. Two winged representations in gold were placed over the Ark of the Covenant; colossal figures of the same were also placed in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple of Solomon. Ezekiel describes them in poetic language. Each Cherub appears to have been a compound figure with four faces – of a man, eagle, lion, and ox, and was certainly winged. (See The Theosophical Glossary.)
Chhâyâ (Sk.) “Shade†or “Shadowâ€. The name of a creature produced by Sanjnâ, the wife of Surya, from herself (astral body). Unable to endure the ardour of her husband, Sanjnâ left Chhâyâ in her place as a wife, going herself away to perform austerities. Chhâyâ is the astral image of a person in esoteric philosophy.
Chhaya loka (Sk.) The world of Shades; like Hades, the world of the Eidola and Umbræ. We call it Kâmaloka.
Chohan (Tib.) “Lord†or “Master†; a chief; thus Dhyan-Chohan would answer to “Chief of the Dhyanisâ€, or celestial Lights – which in English would he translated Archangels.
Chokmah (Heb) Wisdom; the second of the ten Sephiroth, and the second of the supernal Triad. A masculine potency corresponding to the Yod (I) of the Tetragrammaton IHVH, and to Ab, the Father. [w.w.w.]
Chréstos (Gr.) The early Gnostic form of Christ. It was used in the fifth century B.C. by Æschylus, Herodotus, and others. The Manteumata pythochresta, or the “oracles delivered by a Pythian god†“through a pythoness, are mentioned by the former (Choeph.901). Chréstian is not only “the seat of an oracleâ€, but an offering to, or for, the oracle.
Chréstés is one who explains oracles, “a prophet and soothsayerâ€, and Chrésterios one who serves an oracle or a god. The earliest Christian writer, Justin Martyr, in his first Apology calls his co-religionists Chréstians. It is only through ignorance that men call themselves Christians instead of Chréstians,†says Lactantius (lib. iv., cap. vii.). The terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrést and Chréstians, were borrowed from the Temple vocabulary of the Pagans. Chréstos meant in that vocabulary a disciple on probation, a candidate for hierophantship. When he had attained to this through initiation, long trials, and suffering, and had been “anointed†(i.e., “rubbed with oilâ€, as were Initiates and even idols of the gods, as the last touch of ritualistic observance), his name was changed into Christos, the “purifiedâ€, in esoteric or mystery language. In mystic symbology, indeed, Christés, or Christos, meant that the “Wayâ€, the Path, was already trodden and the goal reached ; when the fruits of the arduous labour, uniting the personality of evanescent clay with the indestructible INDIVIDUALITY, transformed it thereby into the immortal EGO. “At the end of the Way stands the Chréstesâ€, the Purifier, and the union once accomplished, the Chrestos, the “man of sorrowâ€, became Christos himself. Paul, the Initiate, knew this, and meant this precisely, when he is made to say, in bad translation : ‘’I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you†(Gal. iv.19), the true rendering of which is . . . ‘’until ye form the Christos within yourselves†But the profane who knew only that Chréstés was in some way connected with priest and prophet, and knew nothing about the hidden meaning of Christos, insisted, as did Lactantius and Justin Martyr, on being called Chréstians instead of Christians. Every good individual, therefore, may find Christ in his “inner man†as Paul expresses it (Ephes. iii. 16,17), whether he be Jew, Mussulman, Hindu, or Christian. Kenneth Mackenzie seemed to think that the word Chréstos was a synonym of Soter, “an appellation assigned to deities, great kings and heroes,†indicating ‘’Saviour,’’ – and he was right. For, as he adds:â€It has been applied redundantly to Jesus Christ, whose name Jesus or Joshua bears the same interpretation. The name Jesus, in fact, is rather a title of honour than a name – the true name of the Soter of Christianity being Emmanuel, or God with us (Matt.i, 23.). Great divinities among all nations, who are represented as expiatory or self-sacrificing, have been designated by the same title.’’ (R. M. Cyclop.) The Asklepios (or Æsculapius) of the Greeks had the title of Soter.
Codex Nazaraeus (Lat.) The “Book of Adam†– the latter name meaning anthropos, Man or Humanity. The Nazarene faith is called sometimes the Bardesanian system, though Bardesanes (B.C. 155 to 228) does not seem to have had any connection with it. True, he was born at Edessa in Syria, and was a famous astrologer and Sabian before his alleged conversion. But he was a well-educated man of noble family, and would not have used the almost incomprehensible Chaldeo dialect mixed with the mystery language of the Gnostics, in which the Codex is written. The sect of the Nazarenes was pre-Christian. Pliny and Josephus speak of the Nazarites as settled on the banks of the Jordan 150 years B.C. (Ant.Jud. xiii. p. 9); and Munk says that the “Naziareate was an institution established before the laws of Musah†or Moses. (Munk p. 169.) Their modern name is in Arabic – El Mogtasila; in European languages – the Mendæans or “Christians of St. Johnâ€. (See “Baptismâ€.) But if the term Baptists may well be applied to them, it is not with the Christian meaning: for while they were, and still are Sabians, or pure astrolaters, the Mendæans of Syria, called the Galileans, are pure polytheists, as every traveller in Syria and on the Euphrates can ascertain, once he acquaints himself with their mysterious rites and ceremonies. (See Isis Unv. ii. 290, et seq.) So secretly did they preserve their beliefs from the very beginning, that Epiphanius who wrote against the Heresies in the14th century confesses himself unable to say what they believed in (i. 122); he simply states that they never mention the name of Jesus, nor do they call themselves Christians (loc. cit. 190. Yet it is undeniable that some of the alleged philosophical views and doctrines of Bardesanes are found in the codex of the Nazarenes. (See Norberg’s Codex Nazaræous or the “Book of Adamâ€, and also “Mendæans “.)
Cosmic Gods. Inferior gods, those connected with the formation of matter.
Cosmic ideation (Occult.) Eternal thought, impressed on substance or spirit-matter, in the eternity ; thought which becomes active at the beginning of every new life-cycle.
Cosmocratores (Gr.). “Builders of the Universeâ€, the “world architectsâ€, or the Creative Forces personified.
Crocodile. “The great reptile of Typhon.†The seat of its “worship†was Crocodilopolis and it was sacred to Set and Sebak – its alleged creators. The primitive Rishis in India, the Manus, and Sons of Brahmâ, are each the progenitors of some animal species, of which he is the alleged “fatherâ€; in Egypt, each god was credited with the formation or creation of certain animals which were sacred to him. Crocodiles must have been numerous in Egypt during the early dynasties, if one has to judge by the almost incalculable number of their mummies. Thousands upon thousands have been excavated from the grottoes of Moabdeh, and many a vast necropolis of that Typhonic animal is still left untouched. But the Crocodile was only worshipped where his god and “father†received honours. Typhon (q.v.) had once received such honours and, as Bunsen shows, had been considered a great god. His words are, “Down to the time of Ramses B.C. 1300, Typhon was one of the most venerated and powerful gods, a god who pours blessings and life on the rulers of Egypt.†As explained elsewhere, Typhon is the material aspect of Osiris. When Typhon, the Quaternary, kills Osiris, the triad or divine Light, and cuts it metaphorically into 14 pieces, and separates himself from the “godâ€, he incurs the execration of the masses; he becomes the evil god, the storm and hurricane god, the burning sand of the Desert, the constant enemy of the Nile, and the “slayer of the evening beneficent dewâ€, because Osiris is the ideal Universe, Siva the great Regenerative Force, and Typhon the material portion of it, the evil side of the god, or the Destroying Siva. This is why the crocodile is also partly venerated and partly execrated. The appearance of the crocodile in the Desert, far from the water, prognosticated the happy event of the coming inundation – hence its adoration at Thebes and Ombos. But he destroyed thousands of human and animal beings yearly – hence also the hatred and persecution of the Crocodile at Elephantine and Tentyra.
Cycle. From the Greek Kuklos. The ancients divided time into end less cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or the end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration, the great Orphic cycle, referring to the ethnological change of races, lasting 120,000 years, and the cycle of Cassandrus of 136,000, which brought about a complete change in planetary influences and their correlations between men and gods – a fact entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.
D
Dæmon (Gr.) In the original Hermetic works and ancient classics it has a meaning identical with that of “godâ€, “angel†or “geniusâ€. The Dæmon of Socrates is the incorruptible part of the man, or rather the real inner man which we call Nous or the rational divine Ego. At all events the Dæmon (or Daimon of the great Sage was surely not the demon of the Christian Hell or of Christian orthodox theology. The name was given by ancient peoples, and especially the philosophers of the Alexandrian school, to all kinds of spirits, whether good or bad, human or otherwise. The appellation is often synonymous with that of gods or angels. But some philosophers tried, with good reason, to make a just distinction between the many classes.
Daitya Guru (Sk.) The instructor of the giants, called Daityas (q.v.) Allegorically, it is the title given to the planet Venus-Lucifer, or rather to its indwelling Ruler, Sukra, a male deity (See Sec. Doct.. ii. p. 30).
Daityas (Sk.) Giants, Titans, and exoterically demons, but in truth identical with certain Asuras, the intellectual gods, the opponents of the useless gods of ritualism and the enemies of puja sacrifices.
Dâkinî (Sk.) Female demons, vampires and blood-drinkers (asra-pas). In the Purânas they attend upon the goddess Kâli and feed on human flesh. A species of evil “Elementals†(q.v.).
Daksha (Sk.) A form of Brahmâ and his son in the Purânas But the Rig Veda states that “Daksha sprang from Aditi, and Aditi from Dakshaâ€, which proves him to be a personified correlating Creative Force acting on all the planes. The Orientalists seem very much perplexed what to make of him; but Roth is nearer the truth than any, when saying that Daksha is the spiritual power, and at the same time the male energy that generates the gods in eternity, which is represented by Aditi. The Purânas as a matter of course, anthropomorphize the idea, and show Daksha instituting “sexual intercourse on this earthâ€, after trying every other means of procreation. The generative Force, spiritual at the commencement, becomes of course at the most material end of its evolution a procreative Force on the physical plane ; and so far the Purânic allegory is correct, as the Secret Science teaches that our present mode of procreation began towards the end of the third Root-Race.
Dangma (Sk.) In Esotericism a purified Soul. A Seer and an Initiate; one who has attained full wisdom.
Day of Brahmâ. See “Brahmâ’s Day†etc.
Demeter The Hellenic name for the Latin Ceres, the goddess of corn and tillage. The astronomical sign, Virgo. The Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated in her honour.
Demiurgic Mind. The same as “Universal Mindâ€. Mahat, the first “product†of Brahmâ, or himself.
Demiurgos (Gr) The Demiurge or Artificer; the Supernal Power which built the universe. Freemasons derive from this word their phrase of “Supreme Architect “. With the Occultists it is the third manifested Logos, or Plato’s “second godâ€, the second logos being represented by him as the “Fatherâ€, the only Deity that he dared mention as an Initiate into the Mysteries.
Demons. According to the Kabbalah, the demons dwell in the world of Assiah, the world of matter and of the “shells†of the dead. They are the Klippoth. There are Seven Hells, whose demon dwellers represent the vices personified. Their prince is Samael, his female companion is Isheth Zenunim – the woman of prostitution: united in aspect, they are named “The Beastâ€, Chiva. [w.w.w.]
Demon est Deus inversus (Lat) A Kabbalistic axiom; lit., “the devil is god reversedâ€; which means that there is neither evil nor good, but that the forces which create the one create the other, according to the nature of the materials they find to work upon.
Deva (Sk.). A god, a “resplendent†deity. Deva-Deus, from the root div “to shineâ€. A Deva is a celestial being – whether good, bad, or indifferent. Devas inhabit “the three worldsâ€, which are the three planes above us. There are 33 groups or 330 millions of them.
Deva Sarga (Sk.). Creation: the origin of the principles, said to be Intelligence born of the qualities or the attributes of nature.
Devachan (Sk.). The “dwelling of the godsâ€. A state intermediate between two earth-lives, into which the EGO (Atmâ -Buddhi-Manas, or the Trinity made One) enters, after its separation from Kâma Rupa, and the disintegration of the lower principles on earth.
Devajnânas (Sk.). or Daivajna. The higher classes of celestial beings, those who possess divine knowledge.
Devaki (Sk.). The mother of Krishna. She was shut up in a dungeon by her brother, King Kansa, for fear of the fulfilment of a prophecy which stated that a son of his sister should dethrone and kill him. Notwithstanding the strict watch kept, Devaki was overshadowed by Vishnu, the holy Spirit, and thus gave birth to that god’s avatara, Krishna. (See “Kansaâ€.)
Deva-lôkas (Sk.). The abodes of the Gods or Devas in superior spheres. The seven celestial worlds above Meru.
Devamâtri (Sk.). Lit., “the mother of the godsâ€. A title of Aditi, Mystic Space.
Dhyan Chohans (Sk). Lit., “The Lords of Lightâ€. The highest gods, answering to the Roman Catholic Archangels. The divine Intelligences charged with the supervision of Kosmos.
Dhyâna (Sk.). In Buddhism one of the six Paramitas of perfection, a state of abstraction which carries the ascetic practising it far above this plane of sensuous perception and out of the world of matter. Lit., “contemplationâ€. The six stages of Dhyan differ only in the degrees of abstraction of the personal Ego from sensuous life.
Dhyani Bodhisattyas (Sk.). In Buddhism, the five sons of the Dhyani-Buddhas. They have a mystic meaning in Esoteric Philosophy.
Dhyani Buddhas (Sk.). They “of the Merciful Heartâ€; worshipped especially in Nepaul. These have again a secret meaning.
Dianoia (Gr.). The same as the Logos. The eternal source of thought, “divine ideationâ€, which is the root of all thought. (See “Ennoia.â€)
Drakôn (Gr.) or Dragon. Now considered a “mythical†monster, perpetuated in the West only on seals,. &c., as a heraldic griffin, and the Devil slain by St. George, &c. In fact an extinct antediluvian monster In Babylonian antiquities it is referred to as the “scaly one†and connected on many gems with Tiamat the sea. “The Dragon of the Sea†is repeatedly mentioned. In Egypt, it is the star of the Dragon (then the North Pole Star), the origin of the connection of almost all the gods with the Dragon. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Osiris and Typhon, Sigur and Fafnir, and finally St. George and the Dragon, are the same. They were all solar gods, and wherever we find the Sun there also is the Dragon, the symbol of Wisdom – Thoth-Hermes. The Hierophants of Egypt and of Babylon styled themselves “Sons of the Serpent-God†and “Sons of the Dragonâ€. “I am a Serpent, I am a Druidâ€, said the Druid of the Celto-Britannic regions, for the Serpent and the Dragon were both types of Wisdom, Immortality and Rebirth. As the serpent casts its old skin only to reappear in a new one, so does the immortal Ego cast off one personality but to assume another.
Druids. A sacerdotal caste which flourished in Britain and Gaul. They were Initiates who admitted females into their sacred order, and initiated them into the mysteries of their religion. They never entrusted their sacred verses and scriptures to writing, but, like the Brahmans of old, committed them to memory; a feat which, according to the statement of Cæsar took twenty years to accomplish. Like the Parsis they had no images or statues of their gods. The Celtic religion considered it blasphemy to represent any god, even of a minor character, under a human figure. It would have been well if the Greek and Roman Christians had learnt this lesson from the “pagan†Druids. The three chief commandments of their religion were: – “Obedience to divine laws; concern for the welfare of mankind; suffering with fortitude all the evils of lifeâ€.
Dwapara Yuga (Sk.). The third of the “Four Ages†in Hindu Philosophy ; or the second age counted from below.
Dynasties. In India there are two, the Lunar and the Solar, or the Somavansa and the Suryavansa. In Chaldea and Egypt there were also two distinct kinds of dynasties, the divine and the human. In both countries people were ruled in the beginning of time by Dynasties of Gods. In Chaldea they reigned one hundred and twenty Sari, or in all 432,000 years; which amounts to the same figures as a Hindu Mahayuga 4,320,000 years. The chronology prefacing the Book of Genesis (English translation) is given “Before Christ, 4004â€. But the figures are a rendering by solar years. In the original Hebrew, which preserved a lunar calculation, the figures are 4,320 years. This “coincidence†is well explained in Occultism.
Dzyn or Dzyan (Tib.). Written also Dzen. A corruption of the Sanskrit Dhyan and jn̢na (or gny̢na phonetically) РWisdom, divine knowledge. In Tibetan, learning is called dzin.
E
Eden (Heb.). “Delightâ€, pleasure. In Genesis the “Garden of Delight†built by God ; in the Kabbala the “Garden of Delightâ€, a place of Initiation into the mysteries. Orientalists identify it with a place which was situated in Babylonia in the district of Karduniyas, called also Gan-dunu, which is almost like the Gan-eden of the Jews. (See the works of Sir H. Rawlinson, and G. Smith.) That district has four rivers, Euphrates, Tigris, Surappi, Ukni. The two first have been adopted without any change by the Jews; the other two they have probably transformed into “Gihon and Pisonâ€, so as to have something original. The following are some of the reasons for the identification of Eden, given by Assyriologists. The cities of Babylon, Larancha and Sippara, were founded before the flood, according to the chronology of the Jews.
“Surippak was the city of the ark, the mountain east of the Tigris was the resting place of the ark, Babylon was the site of the tower, and Ur of the Chaldees the birthplace of Abraham.†And, as Abraham, “the first leader of the Hebrew race, migrated from Ur to Harran in Syria and from thence to Palestineâ€, the best Assyriologists think that it is “so much evidence in favour of the hypothesis that Chaldea was the original home of these stories (in the Bible) and that the Jews received them originally from the Babyloniansâ€.
Ego (Lat.). “Self†; the consciousness in man “I am I†– or the feeling of “I-am-shipâ€. Esoteric philosophy teaches the existence of two Egos in man, the mortal or personal, and the Higher, the Divine and the Impersonal, calling the former “personality†and the latter “Individuality Egoity. From the word “Egoâ€. Egoity means “individualityâ€, never “personalityâ€, and is the opposite of egoism or “selfishnessâ€, the characteristic par excellence of the latter.
Elementals. Spirits of the Elements. The creatures evolved in the four Kingdoms or Elements – earth, air, fire, and water. They are called by the Kabbalists, Gnomes (of the earth), Sylphs (of the air), Salamanders (of the fire), and Undines (of the water). Except a few of the higher kinds, and their rulers, they are rather forces of nature than ethereal men and women. These forces, as the servile agents of the Occultists, may produce various effects; but if employed by†Elementaries†(q.v.) – in which case they enslave the mediums – they will deceive the credulous. All the lower invisible beings generated on the 5th 6th, and 7th planes of our terrestrial atmosphere, are called Elementals, Peris, Devs, Djins, Sylvans, Satyrs, Fauns, Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls, Kobolds, Brownies, Nixies, Goblins, Pinkies, Banshees, Moss People, White Ladies, Spooks, Fairies, etc., etc., etc.
Elementaries. Properly, the disembodied souls of the depraved; these souls having at some time prior to death separated from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for immortality; but at the present stage of learning it has been thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of disembodied persons, in general, to those whose temporary habitation is the Kâma Loka. Eliphas Lévi and some other Kabbalists make little distinction between elementary spirits who have been men, and those beings which people the elements, and are the blind forces of nature. Once divorced from their higher triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their Kâma-rupic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in the Kâma Loka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.
Elohîm (Heb.). Also Alhim, the word being variously spelled. Godfrey Higgins, who has written much upon its meaning, always spells it Aleim. The Hebrew letters are aleph, lamed, hé, yod, mem, and are numerically 1, 30, 5, 10, 40 = 86. It seems to be the plural of the feminine noun Eloah, ALH, formed by adding the common plural form IM, a masculine ending; and hence the whole seems to imply the emitted active and passive essences. As a title it is referred to “Binah†the Supernal Mother, as is also the fuller title IHVH ALHIM, Jehovah Elohim. As Binah leads on to seven succeedent Emanations, so “Elohim†has been said to represent a sevenfold power of godhead. [ w.w. w.]
Emanation The Doctrine of. In its metaphysical meaning, it is opposed to Evolution, yet one with it. Science teaches that evolution is physiologically a mode of generation in which the germ that develops the foetus pre-exists already in the parent, the development and final form and characteristics of that germ being accomplished in nature; and that in cosmology the process takes place blindly through the correlation of the elements, and their various compounds. Occultism answers that this is only the apparent mode, the real process being Emanation, guided by intelligent Forces under an immutable LAW. Therefore, while the Occultists and Theosophists believe thoroughly in the doctrine of Evolution as given out by Kapila and Manu, they are Emanationists rather than Evolutionists. The doctrine of Emanation was at one time universal. It was taught by the Alexandrian as well as by the Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, the Chaldean and Hellenic Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in their Kabbala, and even in Genesis). For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt has been translated “angels†from the Septuagint, when it means Emanations, Æons, precisely as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy (xxxiii., 2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as†fiery lawâ€, whilst the correct rendering of the passage should be “from his right hand went [ not a fiery law, but a fire according to law “; viz., that the fire of one flame is imparted to, and caught up by another like as in a trail of inflammable substance. This is precisely emanation. As shown in Isis Unveiled : “In Evolution, as it is now beginning to he understood, there is supposed to be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form – a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher’s tree illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers of this school and the Emanationists may he briefly stated thus The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of’ the Unknowable “; the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved – or, as the word means, unwombed or born – except it has first been involved, thus indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.â€
En (or Ain) Soph (Heb.). The endless, limitless and boundless. The absolute deific Principle, impersonal and unknowable. It means literally “no-thing†i.e., nothing that could be classed with anything else. The word and ideas are equivalent to the Vedantic conceptions of Parabrahmn. [ w.w.w.]
Some Western Kabbalists, however, contrive to make of IT, a personal “Heâ€, a male deity instead of an impersonal deity.
Epimetheus (Gr.). Lit., “He who takes counsel after†the event. A brother of Prometheus in Greek Mythology.
Epinoia (Gr.). Thought, invention, design. A name adopted by the Gnostics for the first passive Æon.
Eros (Gr.). Hesiod makes of the god Eros the third personage of the Hellenic primordial Trinity composed of Ouranos, Gæa and Eros. It is the personified procreative Force in nature in its abstract sense, the propeller to “creation†and procreation. Exoterically, mythology makes of Eros the god of lustful, animal desire, whence the term erotic esoterically, it is different. (See “Kâmaâ€.)
Esoteric (Gr.). Hidden, secret. From the Greek esotericos, “inner†concealed.
Esoteric Bodhism. Secret wisdom or intelligence from the Greek esotericos “innerâ€, and the Sanskrit Bodhi, “knowledgeâ€, intelligence – in contradistinction to Buddhi, “the faculty of knowledge or intelligence†and Buddhism, the philosophy or Law of Buddha (the Enlightened). Also written “Budhismâ€, from Budha (Intelligence and Wisdom) the Son of Soma.
Ether. Students are but too apt to confuse this with Akâsa and with Astral Light. It is neither, in the sense in which ether is described by physical Science. Ether is a material agent, though hitherto undetected by any physical apparatus; whereas Akâsa is a distinctly spiritual agent, identical, in one sense, with the Anima Mundi, while the Astral Light is only the seventh and highest principle of the terrestrial atmosphere, as undetectable as Akâsa and real Ether, because it is something quite on another plane. The seventh principle of the earth’s atmosphere, as said, the Astral Light, is only the second on the Cosmic scale. The scale of Cosmic Forces, Principles and Planes, of Emanations – on the metaphysical – and Evolutions – on the physical plane – is the Cosmic Serpent biting its own tail, the Serpent reflecting the Higher, and reflected in its turn by the lower Serpent. The Caduceus explains the mystery, and the four-fold Dodecahedron on the model of which the universe is said by Plato to have been built by the manifested Logos- synthesized by the unmanifested First-Born – yields geometrically the key to Cosmogony and its microcosmic reflection – our Earth.
Evolution. The development of higher orders of animals from lower. As said in Isis Unveiled: “Modern Science holds but to a one-sided physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the UNKNOWABLE, made their starting- point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the unavoidable, and, from a strictly logical reasoning, the absolutely necessary creative Being, the Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method, but on a far more large and comprehensive basis.†(See “Emanationâ€.)
Exoteric. Outward, public; the opposite of esoteric or hidden.
F
First Point. Metaphysically the first point of manifestation, the germ of primeval differentiation, or the point in the infinite Circle “whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhereâ€. The Point is the Logos.
Fire (Living). A figure of speech to denote deity, the “One†life. A theurgic term, used later by the Rosicrucians. The symbol of the living fire is the sun, certain of whose rays develope the fire of life in a diseased body, impart the knowledge of the future to the sluggish mind, and stimulate to active function a certain psychic and generally dormant faculty in man. The meaning is very occult.
Fohat (Tib.). A term used to represent the active (male) potency of the Sakti (female reproductive power) in nature. The essence of cosmic electricity. An occult Tibetan term for Daiviprakriti primordial light: and in the universe of manifestation the ever-present electrical energy and ceaseless destructive and formative power. Esoterically, it is the same, Fohat being the universal propelling Vital Force, at once the propeller and the resultant.
G
Gabriel. According to the Gnostics, the “Spirit†or Christos, the “messenger of lifeâ€, and Gabriel are one. The former “is called some-times the Angel Gabriel Hebrew ‘the mighty one of God’,†and took with the Gnostics the place of the Logos, while the Holy Spirit was considered one with the Æon Life, (see Irenæus I., xii.). Therefore we find Theodoret saying (in Hævet. Fab., II vii.) : “The heretics agree with us (Christians) respecting the beginning of all things. But they say there is not one Christ (God), but one above and the other below. And this last formerly dwelt in many; but the Jesus, they at one time say is from God, at another they call him a Spirit;†The key to this is given in the esoteric philosophy. The “spirit†with the Gnostics was a female potency exoterically, it was the ray proceeding from the Higher Manas, the Ego, and that which the Esotericists refer to as the Kâma Manas or the lower personal Ego, which is radiated in every human entity by the Higher Ego or Christos, the god within us. Therefore, they were right in saying: “there is not one Christ, but one above and the other belowâ€. Every student of Occultism will understand this, and also that Gabriel – or “the mighty one of God†– is one with the Higher Ego. (See Isis Unveiled.)
Gæa (Gr.). Primordial Matter, in the Cosmogony of Hesiod; Earth, as some think; the wife of Ouranos, the sky or heavens. The female personage of the primeval Trinity, composed of Ouranos, Gæa and Eros.
Genesis. The whole of the Book of Genesis down to the death of Joseph, is found to he a hardly altered version of the Cosmogony of the Chaldeans, as is now repeatedly proven from the Assyrian tiles. The first three chapters are transcribed from the allegorical narratives of the beginnings common to all nations. Chapters four and five are a new allegorical adaptation of the same narration in the secret Book of Numbers; chapter six is an astronomical narrative of the Solar year and the seven cosmocratores from the Egyptian original of the Pymander and the symbolical visions of a series of Enoichioi (Seers) – from whom came also the Book of Enoch. The beginning of Exodus, and the story of Moses is that of the Babylonian Sargon, who having flourished (as even that unwilling authority Dr. Sayce tells us) 3750 B.C. preceded the Jewish lawgiver by almost 2300 years. (See Secret Doctrine, vol. II., pp. 691 et seq.) Nevertheless, Genesis is an undeniably esoteric work. It has not borrowed, nor has it disfigured the universal symbols and teachings on the lines of which it was written, but simply adapted the eternal truths to its own national spirit and clothed them in cunning allegories comprehensible only to its Kabbalists and Initiates. The Gnostics have done the same, each sect in its own way, as thousands of years before, India, Egypt, Chaldea and Greece, had also dressed the same incommunicable truths each in its own national garb. The key and solution to all such narratives can be found only in the esoteric teachings.
Genii (Lat.) A name for Æons, or angels, with the Gnostics. The names of their hierarchies and classes are simply legion.
Gnâna (Sk.) Knowledge as applied to the esoteric sciences.
Gnân Devas (Sk.) Lit., “the gods of knowledgeâ€. The higher classes of gods or devas; the “mind-born†sons of Brahmâ, and others including the Manas a-putras (the Sons of Intellect). Esoterically, our reincarnating Egos.
Gnânasakti (Sk.) The power of true knowledge, one of the seven great forces in Nature (six, exoterically).
Gnôsis (Gr.) Lit., “knowledgeâ€. The technical term used by the schools of religious philosophy, both before and during the first centuries of so-called Christianity, to denote the object of their enquiry. This Spiritual and Sacred Knowledge, the Gupta Vidya of the Hindus, could only be obtained by Initiation into Spiritual Mysteries of which the ceremonial “Mysteries†were a type.
Gnostics (Gr.) The philosophers who formulated and taught the Gnôsis or Knowledge (q.v.). They flourished in the first three centuries of the Christian era: the following were eminent, Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion, Simon Magus, etc. [ w.w. w.]
Golden Age. The ancients divided the life cycle into the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages. The Golden was an age of primeval purity, simplicity and general happiness.
Great Age. There were several “great ages†mentioned by the ancients. In India it embraced the whole Maha-manvantara, the “age of Brahmââ€, each “Day†of which represents the life cycle of a chain – i.e. it embraces a period of seven Rounds. (See Esoteric Buddhism, by A. P. Sinnett.) Thus while a “Day†and a “Night†represent, as Manvantara and Pralaya, 8,640,000,000 years, an “age†lasts through a period of 311,040,000,000,000 years; after which the Pralaya, or dissolution of the universe, becomes universal. With the Egyptians and Greeks the “great age†referred only to the tropical or sidereal year, the duration of which is 25,868 solar years. Of the complete age – that of the gods – they say nothing, as it was a matter to he discussed and divulged only in the Mysteries, during the initiating ceremonies. The “great age†of the Chaldees was the same in figures as that of the Hindus.
Grihastha (Sk.) Lit., “a householderâ€, “one who lives in a house with his familyâ€. A Brahman “family priest†in popular rendering, and the sarcerdotal hierarchy of the Hindus.
Gupta Vidyâ (Sk.) The same as Guhya Vidyâ; Esoteric or Secret Science; knowledge.
Guru (Sk.) Spiritual Teacher; a master in metaphysical and ethical doctrines; used also for a teacher of any science.
H
Hades (Gr.), or Aïdes. The “invisibleâ€, i.e., the land of the shadows, one of whose regions was Tartarus, a place of complete darkness, like the region of profound dreamless sleep in the Egyptian Amenti. Judging by the allegorical description of the various punishments inflicted therein, the place was purely Karmic. Neither Hades nor Amenti were the hell still preached by some retrograde priests and clergymen; but whether represented by the Elysian Fields or by Tartarus, Hades was a place of retributive justice and no more. This could only be reached by crossing the river to the “other shoreâ€, i.e. by crossing the river Death, and being once more reborn, for weal or for woe. As well expressed in Egyptian Belief: “The story of Charon, the ferryman (of the, Styx) is to be found not only in Homer, but in the poetry of many lands. The River must be crossed before gaining the Isles of the Blest. The Ritual of Egypt described a Charon and his boat long ages before Homer. He is Khu-en-ua, the hawk-headed steersman.†(See “Amentiâ€, “Hel†and “Happy Fieldsâ€.)
Hanuman (Sk.) The monkey god of the Ramayana; the generalissimo of Rama’s army; the son of Vayu, the god of the wind, and of a virtuous she-demon. Hanuman was the faithful ally of Rama and by his unparalleled audacity and wit, helped the Avatar of Vishnu to finally conquer the demon-king of Lanka, Ravana, who had carried off the beautiful Sita, Rama’s wife, an outrage which led to the celebrated war described in the Hindu epic poem.
Heavenly Adam. The synthesis of the Sephirothal Tree, or of all the Forces in Nature and their informing deific essence. In the diagrams, the Seventh of the lower Sephiroth, Sephira Malkhooth- the Kingdom of Harmony – represents the feet of the ideal Macrocosm, whose head reaches to the first manifested Head. This Heavenly Adam is the natura naturans, the abstract world, while the Adam of Earth (Humanity) is the natura naturata or the material universe. The former is the presence of Deity in its universal essence; the latter the manifestation of the intelligence of that essence. In the real Zohar not the fantastic and anthropomorphic caricature which we often find in the writings of Western Kabbalists – there is not a particle of the personal deity which we find so prominent in the dark cloaking of the Secret Wisdom known as the Mosaic Pentateuch.
Hell. A term with the Anglo-Saxons, evidently derived from the name of the goddess Hela (q.v.), and by the Sclavonians from the Greek Hades: hell being in Russian and other Sclavonian tongues – ad, the only difference between the Scandinavian cold hell and the hot hell of the Christians, being found in their respective temperatures. But even the idea of those overheated regions is not original with the Europeans, many peoples having entertained the conception of an underworld climate; as well may we if we localise our Hell in the centre of the earth. All exoteric religions – the creeds of the Brahmans, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Mahommedans, Jews, and the rest, make their hells hot and dark, though many are more attractive than frightful. The idea of a hot hell is an afterthought, the distortion of an astronomical allegory. With the Egyptians, Hell became a place of punishment by fire not earlier than the seventeenth or eighteenth dynasty, when Typhon was transformed from a god into a devil. But at whatever time this dread superstition was implanted in the minds of the poor ignorant masses, the scheme of a burning hell and souls tormented therein is purely Egyptian. Ra (the Sun) became the Lord of the Furnace in Karr, the hell of the Pharaohs, and the sinner was threatened with misery “in the heat of infernal firesâ€. “A lion was there†says Dr. Birch “and was called the roaring monsterâ€. Another describes the place as “the bottomless pit and lake of fire, into which the victims are thrown†(compare Revelation). The Hebrew word gaï-hinnom (Gehenna) never really had the significance given to it in Christian orthodoxy.
Hermaphrodite (Gr.). Dual-sexed; a male and female Being, whether man or animal.
Hermes Trismegistus (Gr.). The “thrice great Hermesâ€, the Egyptian. The mythical personage after whom the Hermetic philosophy was named. In Egypt the God Thoth or Thot. A generic name of many ancient Greek writers on philosophy and Alchemy. Hermes Trismegistus is the name of Hermes or Thoth in his human aspect, as a god he is far more than this. As Hermes-Thoth-Aah, he is Thoth, the moon, i.e., his symbol is the bright side of the moon, supposed to contain the essence of creative Wisdom, “the elixir of Hermes “. As such he is associated with the Cynocephalus, the dog-headed monkey, for the same reason as was Anubis, one of the aspects of Thoth. (See “Hermanubisâ€.) The same idea underlies the form of the Hindu God of Wisdom, the elephant-headed Ganesa, or Ganpat, the son of Parvati and Siva. (See “Ganesaâ€.) When he has the head of an ibis, he is the sacred scribe of the gods; but even then he wears the crown atef and the lunar disk. He is the most mysterious of gods. As a serpent, Hermes Thoth is the divine creative ‘Wisdom. The Church Fathers speak at length of Thoth-Hermes. (See “Hermeticâ€.)
Hermetic. Any doctrine or writing connected with the esoteric teachings of Hermes, who, whether as the Egyptian Thoth or the Greek Hermes, was the God of Wisdom with the Ancients, and, according to Plato, “discovered numbers, geometry, astronomy and lettersâ€. Though mostly considered as spurious, nevertheless the Hermetic writings were highly prized by St. Augustine, Lactantius, Cyril and others. In the words of Mr. J. Bonwick, “They are more or less touched up by the Platonic philosophers among the early Christians (such as Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus) who sought to substantiate their Christian arguments by appeals to these heathen and revered writings, though they could not resist the temptation of making them say a little too much. Though represented by some clever and interested writers as teaching pure monotheism, the Hermetic or Trismegistic books are, nevertheless, purely pantheistic. The Deity referred to in them is defined by Paul as that in which “we live, and move and have our being†– notwithstanding the “in Him†of the translators.
Higher Self. The Supreme Divine Spirit overshadowing man. The crown of the upper spiritual Triad in man РAtm̢n.
Hochmah (Heb.). See “Chochmahâ€.
Humanity. Occultly and Kabbalistically, the whole of mankind is symbolised, by Manu in India; by Vajrasattva or Dorjesempa, the head of the Seven Dhyani, in Northern Buddhism; and by Adam Kadmon in the Kabbala. All these represent the totality of mankind whose beginning is in this androgynic protoplast, and whose end is in the Absolute, beyond all these symbols and myths of human origin. Humanity is a great Brotherhood by virtue of the sameness of the material from which it is formed physically and morally. Unless, however, it becomes a Brotherhood also intellectually, it is no better than a superior genus of animals.
I
Incarnations (Divine) or Avatars. The Immaculate Conception is as preeminently Egyptian as it is Indian. As the author of Egyptian Belief has it: “It is not the vulgar, coarse and sensual story as in Greek mythology, but refined, moral and spiritual “; and again the incarnation idea was found revealed on the wall of a Theban temple by Samuel Sharpe, who thus analyzes it: “First the god Thoth . . . as the messenger of the gods, like the Mercury of the Greeks (or the Gabriel of the first Gospel), tells the maiden queen Mautmes, that she is to give birth to a son, who is to be king Amunotaph III. Secondly, the god Kneph, the Spirit . . . . and the goddess Hathor (Nature) both take hold of the queen by the hands and put into her mouth the character for life, a cross, which is to be the life of the coming childâ€, etc., etc. Truly divine incarnation, or the avatar doctrine, constituted the grandest mystery of every old religious system!
Individuality. One of the names given in Theosophy and Occultism to the Human Higher EGO. We make a distinction between the immortal and divine Ego, and the mortal human Ego which perishes. The latter, or “personality†(personal Ego) survives the dead body only for a time in the Kama Loka; the Individuality prevails forever.
Initiate. From the Latin Initiatus. The designation of anyone who was received into and had revealed to him the mysteries and secrets of either Masonry or Occultism. In times of antiquity, those who had been initiated into the arcane knowledge taught by the Hierophants of the Mysteries; and in our modern days those who have been initiated by the adepts of mystic lore into the mysterious knowledge, which, notwithstanding the lapse of ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.
Initiation. From the same root as the Latin initia, which means the basic or first principles of any Science. The practice of initiation or admission into the sacred Mysteries, taught by the Hierophants and learned priests of the Temples, is one of the most ancient customs. This was practised in every old national religion. In Europe it was abolished with the fall of the last pagan temple. There exists at present but one kind of initiation known to the public, namely that into the Masonic rites. Masonry, however, has no more secrets to give out or conceal. In the palmy days of old, the Mysteries, according to the greatest Greek and Roman philosophers, were the most sacred of all solemnities as well as the most beneficent, and greatly promoted virtue. The Mysteries represented the passage from mortal life into finite death, and the experiences of the disembodied Spirit and Soul in the world of subjectivity. In our own day, as the secret is lost, the candidate passes through sundry meaningless ceremonies and is initiated into the solar allegory of Hiram Abiff, the “Widow’s Sonâ€.
Inner Man. An occult term, used to designate the true and immortal Entity in us, not the outward and mortal form of clay that we call our body. The term applies, strictly speaking, only to the Higher Ego, the “astral man†being the appellation of the Double and of Kâma Rupa (q.v.) or the surviving eidolon.
Isis. In Egyptian Issa, the goddess Virgin-Mother; personified nature. In Egyptian or Koptic Uasari, the female reflection of Uasar or Osiris. She is the “woman clothed with the sun†of the land of Chemi. Isis Latona is the Roman Isis.
Iswara (Sk.). The “Lord†or the personal god – divine Spirit in man. Lit., sovereign (independent) existence. A title given to Siva and other gods in India. Siva is also called Iswaradeva, or sovereign deva.
J
Jadoo (Hind.). Sorcery, black magic, enchantment.
Jadoogar (Hind.). A Sorcerer, or Wizard.
Jehovah (Heb.). The Jewish “Deity name J’hovah, is a compound of two words, viz of Jah (y, i, or j, Yôdh, the tenth letter of the alphabet) and hovah (Hâvah, or Eve),†says a Kabalistic authority, Mr. J. Ralston Skinner of Cincinnati, U.S.A. And again, “The word Jehovah, or Jah-Eve, has the primary meaning of existence or being as male femaleâ€. It means Kabalistically the latter, indeed, and nothing more; and as repeatedly shown is entirely phallic. Thus, verse 26 in the IVth chapter of Genesis, reads in its disfigured translation....â€then began men to call upon the name of the Lordâ€, whereas it ought to read correctly . . . . “then began men to call themselves by the name of Jah-hovah†or males and females, which they had become after the separation of sexes. In fact the latter is described in the same chapter, when Cain (the male or Jah) “rose up against Abel, his (sister, not) brother and slew him “(spilt his blood, in the original). Chapter IV of Genesis contains in truth, the allegorical narrative of that period of anthropological and physiological evolution which is described in the Secret Doctrine when treating of the third Root race of mankind. It is followed by Chapter V as a blind; but ought to be succeeded by Chapter VI, where the Sons of God took as their wives the daughters of men or of the giants. For this is an allegory hinting at the mystery of the Divine Egos incarnating in mankind, after which the hitherto senseless races “became mighty men, . . . men of renown†(v. 4), having acquired minds (manas) which they had not before.
Jhâna (Sk.) or Jnana. Knowledge; Occult Wisdom.
Jiva (Sk.). Life, as the Absolute; the Monad also or “Atma-Buddhiâ€.
Jivanmukta (Sk.). An adept or yogi who has reached the ultimate state of holiness, and separated himself from matter; a Mahatma, or Nirvânee, a “dweller in bliss†and emancipation. Virtually one who has reached Nirvâna during life.
Jivatma (Sk.). The ONE universal life, generally; but also the divine Spirit in Man.
Jnânam (Sk.). The same as “Gnânaâ€, etc., the same as “Jhâna†(q.v.).
Jnâna Sakti (Sk.). The power of intellect.
Jupiter (Lat.). From the same root as the Greek Zeus, the greatest god of the ancient Greeks and Romans, adopted also by other nations. His names are among others: (1) Jupiter-Aërios; (2) Jupiter-Ammon of Egypt ; (3) Jupiter Bel-Moloch, the Chaldean; (4) Jupiter-Mundus, Deus Mundus, “God of the Worldâ€; (5) Jupiter-Fulgur, “the Fulgurantâ€, etc., etc.
K
Kabalah (Heb.). The hidden wisdom of the Hebrew Rabbis of the middle ages derived from the older secret doctrines concerning divine things and cosmogony, which were combined into a theology after the time of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon. All the works that fall under the esoteric category are termed Kabalistic.
Kabalist. From Q B L H, KABALA, an unwritten or oral tradition. The kabalist is a student of “secret scienceâ€, one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala, and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch, and the Revelation of St. John, are purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine is identical with that of Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or “magicâ€. History catches glimpses of famous kabalists ever since the eleventh century. The Mediæval ages, and even our own times, have had an enormous number of the most learned and intellectual men who were students of the Kabala (or Qabbalah, as some spell it). The most famous among the former were Paracelsus, Henry Khunrath, Jacob Böhmen, Robert Fludd, the two Van Helmonts, the Abbot John Trithemius, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardinal Nicolao Cusani, Jerome Carden, Pope Sixtus IV., and such Christian scholars as Raymond Lully, Giovanni Pico de la Mirandola, Guillaume Postel, the great John Reuchlin, Dr. Henry More, Eugenius Philalethes (Thomas Vaughan), the erudite Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, Christian Knorr (Baron) von Rosenroth; then Sir Isaac Newton., Leibniz, Lord Bacon, Spinosa, etc., etc., the list being almost inexhaustible. As remarked by Mr. Isaac Myer, in his Qabbalah, the ideas of the Kabalists have largely influenced European literature.
Kabiri (PhÅ“n.) or the Kabirim. Deities and very mysterious gods with the ancient nations, including the Israelites, some of whom – as Terah, Abram’s father – worshipped them under the name of Teraphim. With the Christians, however, they are now devils, although the modern Archangels are the direct transformation of these same Kabiri. In Hebrew the latter name means “the mighty onesâ€, Gibborim. At one time all the deities connected with fire – whether they were divine, infernal or volcanic – were called Kabirian.
Kadmon (Heb.). Archetypal man. See.â€Adam Kadmonâ€.
Kaliyuga (Sk.). The fourth, the black or iron age, our present period, the duration of which us 432,000 years. The last of the ages into which the evolutionary period of man is divided by a series of such ages. It began 3,102 years B.C. at the moment of Krishna’s death, and the first cycle of 5,ooo years will end between the years 1897 and 1898.
Kalpa (Sk.). The period of a mundane revolution, generally a cycle of time, but usually, it represents a “day†and “night†of Brahmâ, a period of 4,320,000,000 years.
Kama (Sk.) Evil desire, lust, volition; the cleaving to existence. Kama is generally identified with Mara the tempter.
Kamadeva (Sk.). In the popular notions the god of love, a Visva-deva, in the Hindu Pantheon. As the Eros of Hesiod, degraded into Cupid by exoteric law, and still more degraded by a later popular sense attributed to the term, so is Kama a most mysterious and metaphysical subject. The earlier Vedic description of Kama alone gives the key-note to what he emblematizes. Kama is the first conscious, all embracing desire for universal good, love, and for all that lives and feels, needs help and kindness, the first feeling of infinite tender compassion and mercy that arose in the consciousness of the creative ONE Force, as soon as it came into life and being as a ray from the ABSOLUTE. Says the Rig Veda, “Desire first arose in IT, which was the primal germ of mind, and which Sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered in their heart to be the bond which connects Entity with non-Entityâ€, or Manas with pur e Atma-Buddhi. There is no idea of sexual love in the conception. Kama is preeminently the divine desire of creating happiness and love; and it is only ages later, as mankind began to materialize by anthropomorphization its grandest ideals into cut and dried dogmas, that Kama became the power that gratifies desire on the animal plane. This is shown by what every Veda and some Brahmanas say. In the Atharva Veda, Kama is represented as the Supreme Deity and Creator. In the Taitarîya Brahmana, he is the child of Dharma, the god of Law and Justice, of Sraddha and faith. In another account he springs from the heart of Brahmâ. Others show him born from water, i.e., from primordial chaos, or the “Deepâ€. Hence one of his many names, Irâ-ja, “the water-bornâ€; and Aja, “unborn†; and Atmabhu or “Self-existentâ€. Because of the sign of Makara (Capricornus) on his banner, he is also called “Makara Ketuâ€. The allegory about Siva, the “Great Yogin “, reducing Kama to ashes by the fire from his central (or third) Eye, for inspiring the Mahadeva with thoughts of his wife, while he was at his devotions – is very suggestive, as it is said that he thereby reduced Kama to his primeval spiritual form.
Kamaloka (Sk.). The semi-material plane, to us subjective and invisible, where the disembodied “personalitiesâ€, the astral forms, called Kamarupa remain, until they fade out from it by the complete exhaustion of the effects of the mental impulses that created these eidolons of human and animal passions and desires; (See “Kam Arupaâ€.) It is the Hades of the ancient Greeks and the Amenti of the Egyptians, the land of Silent Shadows; a division of the first group of the Trailôkya. (See “Kamadhâtuâ€.)
Kamarupa (Sk.). Metaphysically, and in our esoteric philosophy, it is the subjective form created through the mental and physical desires and thoughts in connection with things of matter, by all sentient beings, a form which survives the death of their bodies. After that death three of the seven “principles†– or let us say planes of senses and consciousness on which the human instincts and ideation act in turn – viz., the body, its astral prototype and physical vitality, – being of no further use, remain on earth; the three higher principles, grouped into one, merge into the state of Devachan (q.v.), in which state the Higher Ego will remain until the hour for a new reincarnation arrives; and the eidolon of the ex-Personality is left alone in its new abode. Here, the pale copy of the man that was, vegetates for a period of time, the duration of which is variable and according to the element of materiality which is left in it, and which is determined by the past life of the defunct. Bereft as it is of its higher mind, spirit and physical senses, if left alone to its own senseless devices, it will gradually fade out and disintegrate. But, if forcibly drawn back into the terrestrial sphere whether by the passionate desires and appeals of the surviving friends or by regular necromantic practices – one of the most pernicious of which is medium-ship – the “spook†may prevail for a period greatly exceeding the span of the natural life of its body. Once the Kam Arupa has learnt the way back to living human bodies, it becomes a vampire, feeding on the vitality of those who are so anxious for its company. In India these eidolons are called Pisâchas, and are much dreaded, as already explained elsewhere.
Karabtanos (Gr.). The spirit of blind or animal desire; the symbol of Kama-rupa. The Spirit “without sense or judgment†in the Codex of the Nazarenes. He is the symbol of matter and stands for the father of the seven spirits of concupiscence begotten by him on his mother, the “Spiritus†or the Astral Light.
Kârana (Sk.). Cause (metaphysically).
Kârana Sarîra (Sk.). The “Causal bodyâ€. It is dual in its meaning. Exoterically, it is Avidya, ignorance, or that which is the cause of the evolution of a human ego and its reincarnation ; hence the lower Manas esoterically – the causal body or Kâranopadhi stands in the Taraka Raja yoga as corresponding to Buddhi and the Higher “Manas,†or Spiritual Soul.
Kâranopadhi (Sk.). The basis or upadhi of Karana, the “causal soulâ€. In Taraka Rajayoga, it corresponds with both Manas and Buddhi. See Table in the Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 157.
Karma (Sk.). Physically, action: metaphysically, the LAW OF RETRIBUTION, the Law of cause and effect or Ethical Causation. Nemesis, only in one sense, that of bad Karma. It is the eleventh Nidana in the concatenation of causes and effects in orthodox Buddhism; yet it is the power that controls all things, the resultant of moral action, the meta physical Samskâra, or the moral effect of an act committed for the attainment of something which gratifies a personal desire. There is the Karma of merit and the Karma of demerit. Karma neither punishes nor rewards, it is simply the one Universal LAW which guides unerringly, and, so to say, blindly, all other laws productive of certain effects along the grooves of their respective causations. When Buddhism teaches that “Karma is that moral kernel (of any being) which alone survives death and continues in transmigration ’ or reincarnation, it simply means that there remains nought after each Personality but the causes produced by it ; causes which are undying, i.e., which cannot be eliminated from the Universe until replaced by their legitimate effects, and wiped out by them, so to speak, and such causes – unless compensated during the life of the person who produced them with adequate effects, will follow the reincarnated Ego, and reach it in its subsequent reincarnation until a harmony between effects and causes is fully reestablished. No “personality†– a mere bundle of material atoms and of instinctual and mental characteristics – can of course continue, as such, in the world of pure Spirit. Only that which is immortal in its very nature and divine in its essence, namely, the Ego, can exist for ever. And as it is that Ego which chooses the personality it will inform, after each Devachan, and which receives through these personalities the effects of the Karmic causes produced, it is therefore the Ego, that self which is the “moral kernel†referred to and embodied karma, “which alone survives death.â€
Kartikeya (Sk), or Kartika. The Indian God of War, son of Siva, born of his seed fallen into the Ganges. He is also the personification of the power of the Logos. The planet Mars. Kartika is a very occult personage, a nursling of the Pleiades, and a Kumâra. (See Secret Doctrine.)
Kether (Heb.). The Crown, the highest of the ten Sephiroth; the first of the Supernal Triad. It corresponds to the Macroprosopus, vast countenance, or Arikh Anpin, which differentiates into Chokmah and Binah. [w.w.w.]
Khem (Eg.). The same as Horus. “The God Khem will avenge his father Osirisâ€; says a text in a papyrus.
Kosmos (Gr.). The Universe, as distinguished from the world, which may mean our globe or earth.
Krishna (Sk.).. The most celebrated avatar of Vishnu, the “Saviour†of the Hindus and their most popular god. He is the- eighth Avatar, the son of Devaki, and the nephew of Kansa, the Indian King Herod, who while seeking for him among the shepherds and cow-herds who concealed him, slew thousands of their newly-born babes. The story of Krishna’s conception, birth, and childhood are the exact prototype of the New Testament story. The missionaries, of course, try to show that the Hindus stole the story of the Nativity from the early Christians who came to India.
Krita- Yuga (Sk.). The first of the four Yugas or Ages of the Brahmans; also called Satya-Yuga, a period lasting 1,728,000 years.
Kriyasakti (Gk.). The power of thought; one of the seven forces of Nature. Creative potency of the Siddhis (powers) of the full Yogis.
Kronos (Gr.). Saturn. The God of Boundless Time and of the Cycles.
Kshetrajna or Kshetrajneswara (Sk.). Embodied spirit, the Conscious Ego in its highest manifestations; the reincarnating Principle; the “Lord†in us.
Kumâra (Sk.). A virgin boy, or young celibate. The first Kumâras are the seven sons of Brahmâ born out of the limbs of the god, in the so-called ninth creation. It is stated that the name was given to them owing to their formal refusal to “procreate their speciesâ€, and so they “remained Yogisâ€, as the legend says.
L
Lanoo (Sk.). A disciple, the same as “chelaâ€.
Laya or Layam (Sk.). From the root Li “to dissolve, to disintegrate†a point of equilibrium (zero-point) in physics and chemistry. In occultism, that point where substance becomes homogeneous and is unable to act or differentiate.
Lemuria. A modern term first used by some naturalists, and now adopted by Theosophists, to indicate a continent that, according to the Secret Doctrine of the East, preceded Atlantis. Its Eastern name would not reveal much to European ears.
Lha (Tib.). Spirits of the highest spheres, whence the name of Lhassa, the residence of the Dalaï-Lama. The title of Lha is often given in Tibet to some Narjols (Saints and Yogi adepts) who have attained great occult powers.
Lhamayin (Tib.). Elemental sprites of the lower terrestrial plane. Popular fancy makes of them demons and devils.
Linga or Lingam (Sk.). A sign or a symbol of abstract creation. Force becomes the organ of procreation only on this earth. In India there are 12 great Lingams of Siva, some of which are on mountains and rocks, and also in temples. Such is the Kedâresa in the Himalaya, a huge and shapeless mass of rock. In its origin the Lingam had never the gross meaning connected with the phallus, an idea which is altogether of a later date. The symbol in India has the same meaning which it had in Egypt, which is simply that the creative or procreative Force is divine. It also denotes who was the dual Creator – male and female, Siva and his Sakti. The gross and immodest idea connected with the phallus is not Indian but Greek and pre-eminently Jewish. The Biblical Bethels were real priapic stones, the “Beth-el†(phallus) wherein God dwells. The same symbol was concealed within the ark of the Covenant, the “Holy of Holiesâ€. Therefore the “Lingam†even as a phallus is not “a symbol of Siva†only, but that of every “Creator†or creative god in every nation, including the Israelites and their “God of Abraham and Jacobâ€.
Linga Purâna (Sk.). A scripture of the Saivas or worshippers of Siva. Therein Maheswara, “the great Lordâ€, concealed in the Agni Linga explains the ethics of life – duty, virtue, self-sacrifice and finally liberation by and through ascetic life at the end of the Agni Kalpa (the Seventh Round). As Professor Wilson justly observed “the Spirit of the worship (phallic) is as little influenced by the character of the type as can well be imagined. There is nothing like the phallic orgies of antiquity; it is all mystical and spiritual.â€
Linga Sharîra (Sk.). The “bodyâ€, i.e., the aerial symbol of the body. This term designates the döppelganger or the “astral body†of man or animal. It is the eidolon of the Greeks, the vital and prototypal body; the reflection of the men of flesh. It is born before and dies or fades out, with the disappearance of the last atom of the body.
Lipikas (Sk.). The celestial recorders, the “Scribesâ€, those who record every word and deed, said or done by man while on this earth. As Occultism teaches, they are the agents of KARMA – the retributive Law.
Logos (Gr.). The manifested deity with every nation and people; the outward expression, or the effect of the cause which is ever concealed. Thus, speech is the Logos of thought; hence it is aptly translated by the “Verbum†and “Word†in its metaphysical sense.
Loka (Sk.). A region or circumscribed place. In metaphysics, a world or sphere or plane. The Purânas in India speak incessantly of seven and fourteen Lokas, above, and below our earth; of heavens and hells,
Lotus (Gr.). A most occult plant, sacred in Egypt, India and else where; called “the child of the Universe bearing the likeness of its mother in its bosomâ€. There was a time “when the world was a golden lotus†(padma) says the allegory. A great variety of these plants, from the majestic Indian lotus, down to the marsh-lotus (bird’s foot trefoil) and the Grecian “Dioscoridisâ€, is eaten at Crete and other islands. It is a species of nymphala, first introduced from India to Egypt to which it was-not indigenous. See the text of Archaic Symbolism in the Appendix Viii. “The Lotus, as a Universal Symbolâ€.
Lucifer (Lat.). The planet Venus, as the bright “Morning Starâ€. Before Milton, Lucifer had never been a name of the Devil. Quite the reverse, since the Christian Saviour is made to say of himself in Revelations (xvi. 22.) “I am . . . the bright morning star†or Lucifer. One of the early Popes of Rome bore that name; and there was even a Christian sect in the fourth century which was called the Luciferians.
Lunar Gods. Called in India the Fathers, “Pitris†or the lunar ancestors. They are subdivided, like the rest, into seven classes or Hierarchies, In Egypt although the moon received less worship than in Chaldea or India, still Isis stands as the representative of Luna-Lunus, “the celestial Hermaphroditeâ€. Strange enough while the modern connect the moon only with lunacy and generation, the ancient nations, who knew better, have, individually and collectively, connected their “wisdom gods†with it. Thus in Egypt the lunar gods are Thoth-Hermes and Chons; in India it is Budha, the Son of Soma, the moon; in Chaldea Nebo is the lunar god of Secret Wisdom, etc., etc. The wife of Thoth, Sifix, the lunar goddess, holds a pole with five rays or the five-pointed star, symbol of man, the Microcosm, in distinction from the Septenary Macrocosm. As in all theogonies a goddess precedes a god, on the principle most likely that the chick can hardly precede its egg, in Chaldea the moon was held as older and more venerable than the Sun, because, as they said, darkness precedes light at every periodical rebirth (or “creationâ€) of the universe. Osiris although connected with the Sun and a Solar god is, nevertheless, born on Mount Sinai, because Sin is the Chaldeo-Assyrian word for the moon; so was Dio-Nysos, god of Nyssi or Nisi, which latter appelation was that of Sinai in Egypt, where it was called Mount Nissa. The crescent is not – as proven by many writers – an ensign of the Turks, but was adopted by Christians for their symbol before the Mahommedans. For ages the crescent was the emblem of the Chaldean Astarte, the Egyptian Isis, and the Greek Diana, all of them Queens of Heaven, and finally became the emblem of Mary the Virgin. “The Greek Christian Empire of Constantinople held it as their palladium. Upon the conquest by the Turks, the Sultan adopted it . . . and since that, the crescent has been made to oppose the idea of the crossâ€.
M
Macrocosm (Gr.). The “Great Universe†literally, or Kosmos.
Macroprosopus (Gr.). A Kabalistic term, made of a compound Greek word: meaning the Vast or Great Countenance (See “Kabalistic Facesâ€); a title of Kether, the Crown, the highest Sephira. It is the name of the Universe, called Arikh-Anpin, the totality of that of which Microprosopus or Zauir-Anpin “the lesser countenanceâ€, is the part and antithesis. In its high or abstract metaphysical sense, Microprosopus is Adam Kadmon, the vehicle of Ain-Suph, and the crown of the Sephirothal Tree, though since Sephira and Adam Kadmon are in fact one under two aspects, it comes to the same thing. Interpretations are many, and they differ.
Mahâ Buddhi (Sk.). Mahat. The Intelligent Soul of the World. The seven Prakritis or seven “natures†or planes, are counted from Mahâbuddhi downwards.
Mahâ Manvantara (Sk.). Lit., the great interludes between the “Manusâ€. The period of universal activity. Manvantara implying here simply a period of activity, as opposed to Pralaya, or rest – without reference to the length of the cycle.
Mahâ Mâyâ (Sk.). The great illusion of manifestation. This universe, and all in it in their mutual relation, is called the great Illusion or Mahâmâyâ It is also the usual title given to Gautama the Buddha’s Immaculate Mother – Mayâdêvi, or the “Great Mysteryâ€, as she is called by the Mystics.
Mahâ Pralaya (Sk.). The opposite of Mahâmanvantara, literally “the great Dissolutionâ€, the “Night†following the “Day of Brahmââ€. It is the great rest and sleep of all nature after a period of active manifestation; orthodox Christians would refer to it as the “Destruction of the Worldâ€.
Mahâ Yuga (Sk.). The aggregate of four Yugas or ages, of 4,320,000 solar years; a “Day of Brahmââ€, in the Brahmanical system ; lit., “the great ageâ€.
Mahat (Sk.). Lit., “The great oneâ€. The first principle of Universal Intelligence and Consciousness. In the Purânic philosophy the first product of root-nature or Pradhâna (the same as Mulaprakriti); the producer of Manas the thinking principle, and of Ahankâra, egotism or the feeling of “I am I†(in the lower Manas).
Mahâtma. Lit., “great soulâ€. An adept of the highest order. Exalted beings who, having attained to the mastery over their lower principles are thus living unimpeded by the “man of fleshâ€, and are in possession of knowledge and power commensurate with the stage they have reached in their spiritual evolution. Called in Pali Rahats and Arhats.
Maitreya Buddha (Sk.). The same as the Kalki Avatar of Vishnu (the “White Horse†Avatar), and of Sosiosh and other Messiahs. The only difference lies in the dates of their appearances. Thus, while Vishnu is expected to appear on his white horse at the end of the present Kali Yuga age “for the final destruction of the wicked, the renovation of creation and the restoration of purityâ€, Maitreya is expected earlier. Exoteric or popular teaching making slight variations on the esoteric doctrine states that Sakyamuni (Gautama Buddha) visited him in Tushita (a celestial abode) and commissioned him to issue thence on earth as his successor at the expiration of five thousand years after his (Buddha’s) death. This would be in less than 3,000 years hence. Esoteric philosophy teaches that the next Buddha will appear during the seventh (sub) race of this Round. The fact is that Maitreya was a follower of Buddha, a well-known Arhat, though not his direct disciple, and that he was the founder of an esoteric philosophical school. As shown by Eitel (Sanskrit-Chinese Dict), “statues were erected in his honour as early as B.C. 350â€.
Makâra (Sk.). “The Crocodile.†In Europe the same as Capricorn; the tenth sign of the Zodiac. Esoterically, a mystic class of devas. With the Hindus, the vehicle of Varuna, the water-god.
Manas (Sk.). Lit., “the mindâ€, the mental faculty which makes of man an intelligent and moral being, and distinguishes him from the mere animal; a synonym of Mahat. Esoterically, however, it means, when unqualified, the Higher EGO, or the sentient reincarnating Principle in man. When qualified it is called by Theosophists Buddhi-Manas or the Spiritual Soul in contradistinction to its human reflection – Kâma-Manas.
Manas, Kâma (Sk.). Lit., “the mind of desire.†With the Buddhists it is the sixth of the Chadâyatana (q.v.), or the six organs of knowledge, hence the highest of these, synthesized by the seventh called Klichta, the spiritual perception of that which defiles this (lower) Manas, or the “Human-animal Soulâ€, as the Occultists term it. While the Higher Manas or the Ego is directly related to Vijnâna (the 10th of the 12 Nidânas) – which is the perfect knowledge of all forms of knowledge, whether relating to object or subject in the nidânic concatenation of causes and effects; the lower, the Kâma Manas is but one of the Indriya or organs (roots) of Sense. Very little can be said of the dual Manas here, as the doctrine that treats of it, is correctly stated only in esoteric works. Its mention can thus be only very superficial.
Manas Taijasi (Sk.). Lit., the “radiant†Manas; a state of the Higher Ego, which only high metaphysicians are able to realize and comprehend.
Mânasa or Manaswin (Sk.). “The efflux of the divine mind,†and explained as meaning that this efflux signifies the manasa or divine sons of Brahmâ-Virâj. Nilakantha who is the authority for this statement, further explains the term “manasa†by manomâtrasarira. These Manas a are the Arupa or incorporeal sons of the Prajâpati Virâj, in another version. But as Arjuna Misra identifies Virâj with Brahmâ, and as Brahmâ is Mahat, the universal mind, the exoteric blind becomes plain. The Pitris are identical with the Kumâra, the Vairaja, the Manasa-Putra (mind sons), and are finally identified with the human “Egosâ€.
Mânasa Dhyânis (Sk.). The highest Pitris in the Purânas; the Agnishwatthas, or Solar Ancestors of Man, those who made of Man a rational being, by incarnating in the senseless forms of semi-ethereal flesh of the men of the third race. (See Vol. II. of Secret Doctrine.)
Mânasas (Sk.). Those who endowed humanity with manas or intelligence, the immortal EGOS in men. (See “Manasâ€.)
M̢nava Dharma Sh̢stra Рis the ancient code of law of, or by Manu.
Manu (Sk.). The great Indian legislator. The name comes from the Sanskrit root man “to think†– mankind really, but stands for Swâyambhuva, the first of the Manus, who started from Swâyambhu, “the self-existent†hence the Logos, and the progenitor of mankind. Manu is the first Legislator, almost a Divine Being.
Manus (Sk.). The fourteen Manus are the patrons or guardians of the race cycles in a Manvantara, or Day of Brahmâ. The primeval Manus are seven, they become fourteen in the Purânas.
Manushi or Manushi Buddhas (Sk.). Human Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, or incarnated Dhyan Chohans.
Manvantara (Sk.). A period of manifestation, as opposed to Pralaya (dissolution, or rest), applied to various cycles, especially to a Day of Brahm̢, 4,320,000,000 Solar years Рand to the reign of one Manu Р308,448,000. (See Vol. II. of the Secret Doctrine, p. 68 et. seq.) Lit., Manuantara- between Manus.
Mârttanda, (Sk.). The Vedic name of the Sun.
Mâyâ (Sk.). Illusion ; the cosmic power which renders phenomenal existence and the perceptions thereof possible. In Hindu philosophy that alone which is changeless and eternal is called reality; all that which is subject to change through decay and differentiation and which has therefore a begining and an end is regarded as mâyâ- illusion.
Monad (Gr.). The Unity, the one; but in Occultism it often means the unified triad, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or the duad, Atma-Buddhi, that immortal part of man which reincarnates in the lower kingdoms, and gradually progresses through them to Man and then to the final goal РNirv̢na.
Monas (Gr.). The same as the term Monad; “Aloneâ€, a unit. In the Pythagorean system the duad emanates from the higher and solitary Monas, which is thus the “First Causeâ€.
Moon. The earth’s satellite has figured very largely as an emblem in the religions of antiquity; and most commonly has been represented as Female, but this is not universal, for in the myths of the Teutons and Arabs, as well as in the conception of the Rajpoots of India (see Tod, Hist.), and in Tartary the moon was male. Latin authors speak of Luna. and also of Lunus, but with extreme rarity. The Greek name is Selene, the Hebrew Lebanah and also Yarcah. In Egypt the moon was associated with Isis, in Phenicia with Astarte and in Babylon with Ishtar. From certain points of view the ancients regarded the moon also as Androgyne. The astrologers allot an Influence to the moon over the several parts of a man, according to the several Zodiacal signs she traverses; as well as a special influence produced by the house she occupies in a figure.
The division of the Zodiac into the 28 mansions of the moon appears to be older than that into 12 signs: the Copts, Egyptians, Arabs, Persians and Hindoos used the division into 28 parts centuries ago, and the Chinese use it still.
The Hermetists said the moon gave man an astral form, while Theosophy teaches that the Lunar Pitris were the creators of our human bodies and lower principles. (See Secret Doctrine 1. 386.) [w.w.w.]
Mummy. The name for human bodies embalmed and preserved according to the ancient Egyptian method. The process of mummification is a rite of extreme antiquity in the land of the Pharaohs, and was considered as one of the most sacred ceremonies. It was, moreover, a process showing considerable learning in chemistry and surgery. Mummies 5,000 years old and more, reappear among us a preserved and fresh as when they first came from the hands of the Parashistes.
Munis (Sk.). Saints, or Sages.
Mysteries. Greek teletai, or finishings, celebrations of initiation or the Mysteries. They were observances, generally kept secret from the profane and uninitiated, in which were taught by dramatic representation and other methods, the origin of things, the nature of the human spirit, its relation to the body, and the method of its purification and restoration to higher life. Physical science, medicine, the laws of music, divination, were all taught in the same manner. The Hippocratic oath was but a mystic obligation. Hippocrates was a priest of Asklepios, some of whose writings chanced to become public. But the Asklepiades were initiates of the Æsculapian serpent-worship, as the Bacchantes were of the Dionysia; and both rites were eventually incorporated with the Eleusinia. The Sacred Mysteries were enacted in the ancient Temples by the initiated Hierophants for the benefit and instruction of the candidates. The most solemn and occult Mysteries were certainly those which were performed in Egypt by “the band of secret-keepersâ€, as Mr. Bonwick calls the Hierophants. Maurice describes their nature very graphically in a few lines. Speaking of the Mysteries performed in Philæ (the Nile-island), he says that “it was in these gloomy caverns that the grand and mystic arcana of the goddess (Isis) were unfolded to the adoring aspirant, while the solemn hymn of initiation resounded through the long extent of these stony recessesâ€. The word “mysteries†is derived from the Greek muô, “to close the mouthâ€, and every symbol connected with them had, a hidden meaning. As Plato and many other sages of antiquity affirm, the Mysteries were highly religious, moral and beneficent as a school of ethics. The Grecian mysteries, those of Ceres and Bacchus, were only imitations of the Egyptian; and the author of Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought, informs us that our own “word chapel or capella is said to be the Caph-El or college of El, the Solar divinityâ€. The well-known Kabiri are associated with the Mysteries. In short, the Mysteries were in every country a series of dramatic performances, in which the mysteries of cosmogony and nature, in general, were personified by the priests and neophytes, who enacted the part of various gods and goddesses, repeating supposed scenes (allegories) from their respective lives. These were explained in their hidden meaning to the candidates for initiation, and incorporated into philosophical doctrines.
N
Nâga (Sk.). Literally “Serpentâ€. The name in the Indian Pantheon of the Serpent or Dragon Spirits, and of the inhabitants of Pâtâla, hell. But as Pâtâla means the antipodes, and was the name given to America by the ancients, who knew and visited that continent before Europe had ever heard of it, the term is probably akin to the Mexican Nagals the (now) sorcerers and medicine men. The Nagas are the Burmese Nats, serpent-gods, or “dragon demonsâ€. In Esotericism, however, and as already stated, this is a nick-name for the “wise men†or adepts in China and Tibet, the “Dragons.†are regarded as the titulary deities of the world, and of various spots on the earth, and the word is explained as meaning adepts, yogis, and narjols. The term has simply reference to their great knowledge and wisdom. This is also proven in the ancient Sûtras and Buddha’s biographies. The Nâga is ever a wise man, endowed with extraordinary magic powers, in South and Central America as in India, in Chaldea as also in ancient Egypt. In China the “worship†of the Nâgas was widespread, and it has become still more pronounced since Nâgarjuna (the “great Nâgaâ€, the “great adept†literally), the fourteenth Buddhist patriarch, visited China. The “Nâgas†are regarded by the Celestials as “the tutelary Spirits or gods of the five regions or the four points of the compass and the centre, as the guardians of the five lakes and four oceans†(Eitel). This, traced to its origin and translated esoterically, means that the five continents and their five root-races had always been under the guardianship of “terrestrial deitiesâ€, i.e., Wise Adepts. The tradition that Nâgas washed Gautama Buddha at his birth, protected him and guarded the relics of his body when dead, points again to the Nâgas being only wise men, Arhats, and no monsters or Dragons. This is also corroborated by the innumerable stories of the conversion of Nâgas to Buddhi sm. The Nâga of a lake in a forest near Râjagriha and many other “Dragons†were thus converted by Buddha to the good Law.
Nârada (Sk.). One of the Seven great Rishis, a Son of Brahmâ This “Progenitor†is one of the most mysterious personages in the Brahmanical sacred symbology. Esoterically Nârada is the Ruler of events during various Karmic cycles, and the personification, in a certain sense, of the great human cycle; a Dhyan Chohan. He plays a great part in Brahmanism, which ascribes to him some of the most occult hymns in the Rig Veda, in which sacred work he is described as “of the Kanwa familyâ€. He is called Deva-Brahmâ, but as such has a distinct character from the one he assumes on earth – or Pâtâla. Daksha cursed him for his interference with his 5,000 and 10,000 sons, whom he persuaded to remain Yogins and celibates, to be reborn time after time on this earth (Mahâbhârata). But this is an allegory. He was the inventor of the Vina, a kind of lute, and a great “lawgiverâ€. The story is too long to be given here.
Nârâyana (Sk.). The “mover on the Waters†of space: a title of Vishnu, in his aspect of the Holy Spirit, moving on the Waters of Creation. (See Mânu, Book II.) In esoteric symbology it stands for the primeval manifestation of the life-principle, spreading in infinite Space.
Nâstika (Sk.). Atheist, or rather he who does not worship or recognize the gods and idols.
Nephesh (Heb.). Breath of life. Anima, Mens, Vita, Appetites. This term is used very loosely in the Bible. It generally means prana “lifeâ€; in the Kabbalah it is the animal passions and the animal Soul. [w.w.w.]. Therefore, as maintained in theosophical teachings, Nephesh is the synonym of the Prâna-Kâmic Principle, or the vital animal Soul in man. [H. P. B.]
Nidâna (Sk.). The 12 causes of existence, or a chain of causation, “a concatenation of cause and effect in the whole range of existence through 12 linksâ€. This is the fundamental dogma of Buddhist thought, “the understanding of which solves the riddle of life, revealing the insanity of existence and preparing the mind for Nirvânaâ€. (Eitel’s Sans. Chin. Dict.) The 12 links stand thus in their enumeration. (1) Jail, or birth, according to one of the four modes of entering the stream of life and reincarnation – or Chatur Yoni (q.v.), each mode placing the being born in one of the six Gâti (q.v.). (2) Jarârnarana, or decrepitude and death, following the maturity of the Skandhas (q.v.). (3) Bhava, the Karmic agent which leads every new sentient being to be born in this or another mode of existence in the Trailokya and Gâti. (4) Upâdâna, the creative cause of Bhava which thus becomes the cause of Jati which is the effect; and this creative cause is the clinging to life. (5) Trishnâ, love, whether pure or impure. (6) Vêdâna, or sensation; perception by the senses, it is the 5th Skandha. (7) Sparsa, the sense of touch. (8) Chadâyatana, the organs of sensation. (9) Nâmarûpa, personality, i.e., a form with a name to it, the symbol of the unreality of material phenomenal appearances. (10) Vinâna, the perfect knowledge of every perceptible thing and of all objects in their concatenation and unity. (11) Samskâra, action on the plane of illusion. (12) Avidyâ, lack of true perception, or ignorance. The Nidânas belonging to the most subtle and abstruse doctrines of the Eastern metaphysical system, it is impossible to go into the subject at any greater length.
Nirguna (Sk.). Negative attribute; unbound, or without Gunas (attributes), i.e., that which is devoid of all qualities, the opposite of Saguna, that which has attributes (Secret Doctrine, II. 95), e.g., Parabrahmam is Nirguna; Brahmâ, Saguna. Nirguna is a term which shows the impersonality of the thing spoken of.
Nirmânakâya (Sk.). Something entirely different in esoteric philosophy from the popular meaning attached to it, and from the fancies of the Orientalists. Some call the Nirmânakâya body “Nirvana with remains†(Schlagintweit, etc.) on the supposition, probably, that it is a kind of Nirvânic condition during which consciousness and form are retained. Others say that it is one of the Trikâya (three bodies), with the “power of assuming any form of appearance in order to propagate Buddhi sm†(Eitel’s idea); again, that “it is the incarnate avatâra of a deity†(ibid.), and so on. Occultism, on the other hand, says:that Nirmânakâya, although meaning literally a transformed “bodyâ€, is a state. The form is that of the adept or yogi who enters, or chooses, that post mortem condition in preference to the Dharmakâya or absolute Nirvânic state. He does this because the latter kâya separates him for ever from the world of form, conferring upon him a state of selfish bliss, in which no other living being can participate, the adept being thus precluded from the possibility of helping humanity, or even devas. As a Nirmânakâya, however, the man leaves behind him only his physical body, and retains every other “principle†save the Kamic – for he has crushed this out for ever from his nature, during life, and it can never resurrect in his post mortem state. Thus, instead of going into selfish bliss, he chooses a life of self-sacrifice, an existence which ends only with the life-cycle, in order to be enabled to help mankind in an invisible yet most effective manner. (See The Voice of the Silence, third treatise, “The Seven Portalsâ€.) Thus a Nirmânakâya is not, as popularly believed, the body “in which a Buddha or a Bodhisattva appears on earthâ€, but verily one, who whether a Chutuktu or a Khubilkhan, an adept or a yogi during life, has since become a member of that invisible Host which ever protects and watches over Humanity within Karmic limits. Mistaken often for a “Spiritâ€, a Deva, God himself, &c., a Nirmânakâya is ever a protecting, compassionate, verily a guardian angel, to him who becomes worthy of his help. Whatever objection may be brought forward against this doctrine; however much it is denied, because, forsooth, it has never been hitherto made public in Europe and therefore since it is unknown to Orientalists, it must needs be “a myth of modern invention†– no one will be bold enough to say that this idea of helping suffering mankind at the price of one’s own almost interminable self-sacrifice, is not one of the grandest and noblest that was ever evolved from human brain.
Nirvâna (Sk.). According to the Orientalists, the entire “blowing outâ€, like the flame of a candle, the utter extinction of existence. But in the esoteric explanations it is the state of absolute existence and absolute consciousness, into which the Ego of a man who has reached the highest degree of perfection and holiness during life goes, after the body dies, and occasionally, as in the case of Gautama Buddha and others, during life. (See “Nirvânîâ€.)
Nirvânî (ee) (Sk.). One who has attained Nirvana – an emancipated soul. That Nirvâna means nothing of the kind asserted by Orientalists every scholar who has visited China, India and Japan is well aware. It is “escape from misery†but only from that of matter, freedom from Klêsha, or Kâma, and the complete extinction of animal desires. If we are told that Abidharma defines Nirvâna “as a state of absolute annihilationâ€, we concur, adding to the last word the qualification “of everything connected with matter or the physical worldâ€, and this simply because the latter (as also all in it) is illusion, mâyâ. Sâkyamûni Buddha said in the last moments of his life that “the spiritual body is immortal†(See Sans. Chin. Dict.). As Mr. Eitel, the scholarly Sinologist, explains it: “The popular exoteric systems agree in defining Nirvâna negatively as a state of absolute exemption from the circle of transmigration; as a state of entire freedom from all forms of existence; to begin with, freedom from all passion and exertion; a state of indifference to all sensibility†and he might have added “death of all compassion for the world of sufferingâ€. And this is why the Bodhisattvas who prefer the Nirmânakâya to the Dharmakâya vesture, stand higher in the popular estimation than the Nirvânîs. But the same scholar adds that: “Positively (and esoterically) they define Nirvâna as the highest state of spiritual bliss, as absolute immortality through absorption of the soul (spirit rather) into itself, but preserving individuality so that, e.g., Buddhas, after entering Nirvâna, may reappear on earth†– i.e., in the future Manvantara.
Norns (Scand.). The three sister goddesses in the Edda, who make known to men the decrees of Orlog or Fate. They are shown as coming out of the unknown distances enveloped in a dark veil to the Ash Yggdrasil (q.v.), and “sprinkle it daily with water from the Fountain of Urd, that it may not wither but remain green and fresh and strong†(Asgard and the Gods). Their names are “Urdâ€, the Past; “Werdandiâ€, the Present; and “Skuldâ€, the Future, “which is either rich in hope or dark with tearsâ€. Thus they reveal the decrees of Fate “for out of the past and present the events and actions of the future are born†(loc. cit.).
Nous. (Gr.). A Platonic term for the Higher Mind or Soul. It means Spirit as distinct from animal Soul – psyche; divine consciousness or mind in man: Nous was the designation given to the Supreme deity (third logos) by Anaxagoras. Taken from Egypt where it was called Nout, it was adopted by the Gnostics for their first conscious Æon which, with the Occultists, is the third logos, cosmically, and the third “principle†(from above) or manas, in man. (See “Noutâ€.)
Nout. (Gr.). In the Pantheon of the Egyptians it meant the “One- only-Oneâ€, because they did not proceed in their popular or exoteric religion higher than the third manifestation which radiates from the Unknown and the Unknowable, the first unmanifested and the second logoi in the esoteric philosophy of every nation. The Nous of Anaxagoras was the Mahat of the Hindu Brahmâ, the first manifested Deity – “the Mind or Spirit self-potentâ€; this creative Principle being of course the primum mobile of everything in the Universe – its Soul and Ideation. (See “Seven Principles†in man.)
O
Occult Sciences. The science of the secrets of nature – physical and psychic, mental and spiritual; called Hermetic and Esoteric Sciences. In the West, the Kabbalah may be named; in the East, mysticism, magic, and Yoga philosophy, which latter is often referred to by the Chelas in India as the seventh “Darshana†(school of philosophy), there being only six Darshanas in India known to the world of the profane. These sciences are, and have been for ages, hidden from the vulgar for the very good reason that they would never be appreciated by the selfish educated classes, nor understood by the uneducated; whilst the former might misuse them for their own profit, and thus turn the divine science into black magic. It is often brought forward as an accusation against the Esoteric philosophy and the Kabbalah that their literature is full of “a barbarous and meaningless jargon†unintelligible to the ordinary mind. But do not exact Sciences – medicine, physiology, chemistry, and the rest – do the same? Do not official Scientists equally veil their facts and discoveries with a newly coined and most barbarous Græco-Latin terminology? As justly remarked by our late brother, Kenneth Mackenzie – “To juggle thus with words, when the facts are so simple, is the art of the Scientists of the present time, in striking contrast to those of the XVIIth century, who called spades spades, and not ‘agricultural implements ‘.†Moreover, whilst their facts would be as simple and as comprehensible if rendered in ordinary language, the facts of Occult Science are of so abstruse a nature, that in most cases no words exist in European languages to express them; in addition to which our “jargon†is a double necessity – (a) for the purpose of describing clearly these facts to him who is versed in the Occult terminology; and (b) to conceal them from the profane.
Occultist. One who studies the various branches of occult science. The term is used by the French Kabbalists (See Eliphas Lévi’s works). Occultism embraces the whole range of psychological, physiological, cosmical, physical, and spiritual phenomena. From the word occultus hidden or secret. It therefore applies to the study of the Kabbalah, astrology, alchemy, and all arcane sciences.
Oeaohoo, or Oeaihwu. The manner of pronunciation depends on the accent. This is an esoteric term for the six in one or the mystic seven. The occult name for the “seven vowelled†ever-present manifestation of the Universal Principle.
Ophiomorphos (Gr.). The same, but in its material aspect, as the Ophis- Christos. With the Gnostics the Serpent represented “Wisdom in Eternityâ€.
Orlog (Scand.). Fate, destiny, whose agents were the three Norns, the Norse Parcæ.
Osiris. (Eg.). The greatest God of Egypt, the Son of Seb (Saturn), celestial fire, and of Neith, primordial matter and infinite space. This shows him as the self-existent and self-created god, the first manifesting deity (our third Logos), identical with Ahura Mazda and other “First Causesâ€. For as Ahura Mazda is one with, or the synthesis of, the Amshaspends, so Osiris, the collective unit, when differentiated and personified, becomes Typhon, his brother, Isis and Nephtys his sisters, Horus his son and his other aspects. He was born at Mount Sinai, the Nyssa of the 0. T. (See- Exodus xvii. 15), and buried at Abydos, after being killed by Typhon at the early age of twenty-eight, according to the allegory. According to Euripides he is the same as Zeus and Dionysos or Dio-Nysos “the god of Nysaâ€, for Osiris is said by him to have been brought up in Nysa, in Arabia “the Happyâ€. Query: how much did the latter tradition influence, or have anything in common with, the statement in the Bible, that “Moses built an altar and called the name Jehovah Nissiâ€, or Kabbalistically – “Dio-Iao-Nyssiâ€? (See Isis Unveiled Vol. II. p. 165.) The four chief aspects of Osiris were – Osiris-Phtah (Light), the spiritual aspect; Osiris-Horus (Mind), the intellectual manasic aspect; Osiris-Lunus, the “Lunar†or psychic, astral aspect; Osiris-Typhon, Daïmonic, or physical, material, therefore passional turbulent aspect. In these four aspects he symbolizes the dual Ego – the divine and the human, the cosmico-spiritual and the terrestrial.
Of the many supreme gods, this Egyptian conception is the most suggestive and the grandest, as it embraces the whole range of physical and metaphysical thought. As a solar deity he had twelve minor gods under him – the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Though his name is the “Ineffableâ€, his forty-two attributes bore each one of his names, and his seven dual aspects completed the forty-nine, or 7 × 7; the former symbolized by the fourteen members of his body, or twice seven. Thus the god is blended in man, and the man is deified into a god.
As to his human development, he is, as the author of the Egyptian Belief has it . . . “One of the Saviours or Deliverers of Humanity . . . . As such he is born in the world. He came as a benefactor, to relieve man of trouble . . . . In his efforts to do good he encounters evil . . . and he is temporarily overcome. He is killed . . Osiris is buried. His tomb was the object of pilgrimage for thousands of years. But he did not rest in his grave. At the end of three days, or forty, he rose again and ascended to Heaven. This is the story of his Humanity†(Egypt. Belief).
Ouranos (Gr.). The whole expanse of Heaven called the “Waters of Spaceâ€, the Celestial Ocean, etc. The name very likely comes from the Vedic Varuna, personified as the water god and regarded as the chief Aditya among the seven planetary deities. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Ouranos (or Uranus) is the same as CÅ“lus (Heaven) the oldest of all the gods and the father of the divine Titans.
P
Padma Kalpa (Sk.). The name of the last Kalpa or the preceding Manvantara, which was a year of Brahmâ.
Pagan (Lat.). Meaning at first no worse than a dweller in the country or the woods; one far removed from the city-temples, and therefore unacquainted with the state religion and ceremonies. The word “heathen†has a similar significance, meaning one who lives on the heaths and in the country. Now, however, both come to mean idolaters.
Pagan Gods. The term is erroneously understood to mean idols. The philosophical idea attached to them was never that of something objective or anthropomorphic, but in each case an abstract potency, a virtue, or quality in nature. There are gods who are divine planetary spirits (Dhyan Chohans) or Devas, among which are also our Egos. With this exception, and especially whenever represented by an idol or in anthropomorphic form, the gods represent symbolically in the Hindu, Egyptian, or Chaldean Pantheons -formless spiritual Potencies of the “Unseen Kosmosâ€.
Palæolithic A newly-coined term meaning in geology “ancient stone†age, as a contrast to the term neolithic, the “newer†or later stone age.
Pandora (Gr.). A beautiful woman created by the gods under the orders of Zeus to be sent to Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus; she had charge of a casket in which all the evils, passions and plagues which torment humanity were locked up. This casket Pandora, led by curiosity, opened, and thus set free all the ills which prey on mankind.
Para (Sk.). “I nfinite†and “supreme†in philosophy – the final limit.
Parabrahm (Sk.). “Beyond Brahmââ€, literally. The Supreme Infinite Brahma, “Absolute†– the attributeless, the secondless reality. The impersonal and nameless universal Principle.
Paracelsus. The symbolical name adopted by the greatest Occultist of the middle ages – Philip Bombastes Aureolus Theophrastus von Hohenheim – born in the canton of Zurich in 1493. He was the cleverest physician of his age, and the most renowned for curing almost any illness by the power of talismans prepared by himself. He never had a friend, but was surrounded by enemies, the most bitter of whom were the Churchmen and their party. That he was accused of being in league with the devil stands to reason, nor is it to be wondered at that finally he was murdered by some unknown foe, at the early age of forty-eight. He died at Salzburg, leaving a number of works behind him, which are to this day greatly valued by the Kabbalists and Occultists. Many of his utterances have proved prophetic. He was a clairvoyant of great powers, one of the most learned and erudite philosophers and mystics, and a distinguished Alchemist. Physics is indebted to him for the discovery of nitrogen gas, or Azote.
Paramartha (Sk) Absolute existence.
Paranirvâna (Sk.). Absolute Non-Being, which is equivalent to absolute Being or “Be-nessâ€, the state reached by the human Monad at the end of the great cycle (See Secret Doctrine I, 135). The same as Paraniskpanna.
Pentagon (Gr.), from pente “fiveâ€, and gonia “angle†; in geometry a plane figure with five angles.
Personality. In Occultism – which divides man into seven principles, considering him under the three aspects of the divine, the thinking or the rational, and the animal man – the lower quaternary or the purely astrophysical being; while by Individuality is meant the Higher Triad, considered as a Unity. Thus the Personality embraces all the characteristics and memories of one physical life, while the Individuality is the imperishable Ego which re-incarnates and clothes itself in one personality after another.
Phenomenon (Gr.). In reality “an appearanceâ€, something previously unseen, and puzzling when the cause of it is unknown. Leaving aside various kinds of phenomena, such as cosmic, electrical, chemical, etc., and holding merely to the phenomena of spiritism, let it be remembered that theosophically and esoterically every “miracle†– from the biblical to the theumaturgic – is simply a phenomenon, but that no phenomenon is ever a miracle, i.e., something supernatural or outside of the laws of nature, as all such are impossibilities in nature.
Pitris (Sk.). The ancestors, or creators of mankind. They are of seven classes, three of which are incorporeal, arupa, and four corporeal. In popular theology they are said to be created from Brahmâ’s side. They are variously genealogized, but in esoteric philosophy they are as given in the Secret Doctrine. In Isis Unveiled it is said of them “It is generally believed that the Hindu term means the spirits of our ancestors, of disembodied people, hence the argument of some Spiritualists that fakirs (and yogis) and other Eastern wonder-workers, are mediums. This is in more than one sense erroneous. The Pitris are not the ancestors of the present living men, but those of the human kind, or Adamic races; the spirits of human races, which on the great scale of descending evolution preceded our races of men, and they were physically, as well as spiritually, far superior to our modern pigmies. In Mânava Dharma Shâstra they are called the Lunar Ancestors.†The Secret Doctrine has now explained that which was cautiously put forward in the earlier Theosophical volumes.
Planetary Spirits. Primarily the rulers or governors of the planets. As our earth has its hierarchy of terrestrial planetary spirits, from the highest to the lowest plane, so has every other heavenly body. In Occultism, however, the term “Planetary Spirit†is generally applied only to the seven highest hierarchies corresponding to the Christian archangels. These have all passed through a stage of evolution corresponding to the humanity of earth on other worlds, in long past cycles. Our earth, being as yet only in its fourth round, is far too young to have produced high planetary spirits. The highest planetary spirit ruling over any globe is in reality the “Personal God†of that planet and far more truly its “over-ruling providence†than the self-contradictory Infinite Personal Deity of modern Churchianity.
Plato. An Initiate into the Mysteries and the greatest Greek philosopher, whose writings are known the world over. He was the pupil of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle. He flourished over 400 years before our era.
Popol Vuh. The Sacred Books of the Guatemalians. Quiché MSS., discovered by Brasseur de Bourbourg.
Pragna (Sk.) or Prajna. A synonym of Mahat the Universal Mind. The capacity for perception. (S. D., I. 139) Consciousness.
Praj̢patis (Sk.). Progenitors; the givers of life to all on this Earth. They are seven and then ten Рcorresponding to the seven and ten Kabbalistic Sephiroth; to the Mazdean Amesha-Spentas, &c. Brahm̢ the creator, is called Praj̢pati as the synthesis of the Lords of Being.
Prakriti (Sk.). Nature in general, nature as opposed to Purusha – spiritual nature and Spirit, which together are the “two primeval aspects of the One Unknown Deityâ€. (Secret Doctrine, I. 51.)
Pralaya (Sk.). A period of obscuration or repose – planetary, cosmic or universal – the opposite of Manvantara (S. D., I. 370.).
Pramantha (Sk.). An accessory to producing the sacred fire by friction. The sticks used by Brahmins to kindle fire by friction.
Prâna (Sk.). Life-Principle ; the breath of Life.
Pranidhâna (Sk.). The fifth observance of the Yogis; ceaseless devotion. (See Yoga Shâstras, ii. 32.)
Pratyasarga (Sk.). In Sankhya philosophy the “intellectual evolution of the Universe†; in the Purânas the 8th creation.
Prometheus (Gr.). The Greek logos; he, who by bringing on earth divine fire (intelligence and consciousness) endowed men with reason and mind. Prometheus is the Hellenic type of our Kumâras or Egos, those who, by incarnating in men, made of them latent gods instead of animals. The gods (or Elohim) were averse to men becoming “as one of us (Genesis iii., 22), and knowing “good and evilâ€. Hence we see these gods in every religious legend punishing man for his desire to know. As the Greek myth has it, for stealing the fire he brought to men from Heaven, Prometheus was chained by the order of Zeus to a crag of the Caucasian Mountains.
Protogonos (Gr.). The “first-bornâ€; used of all the manifested gods and of the Sun in our system.
Psyche (Gr.). The animal, terrestrial Soul; the lower Manas.
Purânas (Sk.). Lit., “ancientâ€. A collection of symbolical and allegorical writings – eighteen in number now – supposed to have been composed by Vyâsa, the author of Mahâbhârata.
Purusha (Sk.). “Manâ€, heavenly man. Spirit, the same as Nârâyana in another aspect. “The Spiritual Self.â€
Pymander (Gr.). The “Thought divineâ€. The Egyptian Prometheus and the personified Nous or divine light, which appears to and instructs Hermes Trismegistus, in a hermetic work called “Pymanderâ€.
Q
Qabbalah (Heb.). The ancient Chaldean Secret Doctrine, abbreviated into Kabala. An occult system handed clown by oral transmission; but which, though accepting tradition, is not in itself composed of merely traditional teachings, as it was once a fundamental science, now disfigured by the additions of centuries, and by interpolation by the Western Occultists, especially by Christian Mystics. It treats of hitherto esoteric interpretations of the Jewish Scriptures, and teaches several methods of interpreting Biblical allegories. Originally the doctrines were transmitted “from mouth to ear†only, says Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, “in an oral manner from teacher to pupil who received them; hence the name Kabbalah, Qabalah, or Cabbala from the Hebrew root QBL, to receive. Besides this Theoretic Kabbalah, there was created a Practical branch, which is concerned with the Hebrew letters, as types a like of Sounds, Numbers, and Ideas.†(See “Gematriaâ€, “Notariconâ€, “Temuraâ€.) For the original book of the Qabbalah- the Zohar- see further on. But the Zohar we have now is not the Zohar left by Simeon Ben Jochai to his son and secretary as an heirloom. The author of the present approximation was one Moses de Leon, a Jew of the XIIIth century. (See “Kabalah†and “Zoharâ€.)
Qadmon, Adam, or Adam Kadmon (Heb.). The Heavenly or Celestial Man, the Microcosm (q.v.), He is the manifested Logos; the third Logos according to Occultism, or the Paradigm of Humanity.
R
Ra (Eg.). The divine Universal Soul in its manifested aspect – the everburning light; also the personified Sun.
Rajasâs (Sk.). The elder Agnishwattas- the Fire-Pitris, “fire†standing as a symbol of enlightenment and intellect.
Râkshasas (Sk.). Lit., “raw eatersâ€, and in the popular superstition evil spirits, demons. Esoterically, however, they are the Gibborim (giants) of the Bible, the Fourth Race or the Atlanteans. (See Secret Doctrine, II., 165.)
Reincarnation. The doctrine of rebirth, believed in by Jesus and the Apostles, as by all men in those days, but denied now by the Christians. All the Egyptian converts to Christianity, Church Fathers and others, believed in this doctrine, as shown by the writings of several. In the still existing symbols, the human-headed bird flying towards a mummy, a body, or “the soul uniting itself with its sahou (glorified body of the Ego, and also the kâmalokic shell) proves this belief. “The song of the Resurrection†chanted by Isis to recall her dead husband to life, might be translated “Song of Rebirthâ€, as Osiris is collective Humanity. “Oh! Osiris [here follows the name of the Osirified mummy, or the departed], rise again in holy earth (matter), august mummy in the coffin, under thy corporeal substancesâ€, was the funeral prayer of the priest over the deceased. “Resurrection†with the Egyptians never meant the resurrection of the mutilated mummy, but of the Soul that informed it, the Ego in a new body. The putting on of flesh periodically by the Soul or the Ego, was a universal belief; nor can anything be more consonant with justice and Karmic law.
Rudras (Sk.). The mighty ones; the lords of the three upper worlds. One of the classes of the “fallen†or incarnating spirits; they are all born of Brahmâ.
Rûpa (Sk.). Body; any form, applied even to the forms of the gods, which are subjective to us.
S
Sacred Science. The name given to the inner esoteric philosophy, the secrets taught in days of old to the initiated candidates, and divulged during the last and supreme Initiation by the Hierophants.
Samvritisatya (Sk.). Truth mixed with false conceptions (Samvriti); the reverse of absolute truth Рor Param̢rthasatya, self-consciousness in absolute truth or reality.
Sanat Kumâra (Sk.). The most prominent of the seven Kumâras, the Vaidhâtra the first of which are called Sanaka, Sananda, Sanâtana and Sanat Kumâra; which names are all significant qualifications of the degrees of human intellect.
Sânkhya (Sk.). The system of philosophy founded by Kapila Rishi, a system of analytical metaphysics, and one of the six Darshanas or schools of philosophy. It discourses on numerical categories and the meaning of the twenty-five tatwas (the forces of nature in various degrees). This “atomistic schoolâ€, as some call it, explains nature by the interaction of twenty-four elements with purusha (spirit) modified by the three gunas (qualities), teaching the eternity of pradhâna (primordial, homogeneous matter), or the self-transformation of nature and the eternity of the human Egos.
Sanskrit (Sk.). The classical language of the Brahmans, never known nor spoken in its true systematized form (given later approximately by Pânini), except by the initiated Brahmans, as it was pre-eminently “a mystery languageâ€. It has now degenerated into the so-called Prâkrita.
Saptarshi (Sk.). The seven Rishis. As stars they are the constellation of ‘the Great Bear, and called as such the Riksha and Chitrasikhandinas, bright-crested.
Satya Yuga (Sk). The golden age, or the age of truth and purity; the first of the four Yugas, also called Krita Yuga.
Secret Doctrine. The general name given to the esoteric teachings of antiquity.
Sephira (Heb.) An emanation of Deity; the parent and synthesis of the ten Sephiroth when she stands at the head of the Sephirothal Tree; in the Kabbalah, Sephira, or the “Sacred Agedâ€, is the divine Intelligence (the same as Sophia or Metis), the first emanation from the “Endless†or Ain-Suph.
Sephiroth (Heb.). The ten emanations of Deity; the highest is formed by the concentration of the Ain Soph Aur, or the Limitless Light, and each: Sephira produces by emanation another Sephira. The names of the Ten Sephiroth are – 1. Kether – The Crown; 2. Chokmah – Wisdom; 3. Binah – Understanding; 4. Chesed- – Mercy; Geburah – Power; 6. Tiphereth – Beauty; 7. Netzach – Victory; 8. Hod – Splendour; 9. Jesod_Foundation; and 10. Malkuth – The Kingdom.
The conception of Deity embodied in the Ten Sephiroth is a very sublime one, and each Sephira is a picture to the Kabbalist of a group of exalted ideas, titles and attributes, which the name but faintly represents. Each Sephira is called either active or passive, though this attribution may lead to error; passive does not mean a return to negative existence; and the two words only express the relation between individual Sephiroth, and not any absolute quality. [w.w.w.]
Sesha (Sk.) Ananta, the great Serpent of Eternity, the couch of Vishnu; the symbol of infinite Time in Space. In the exoteric beliefs Sesha is represented as a thousand-headed and seven-headed cobra; the former the king of the nether world, called Pâtâla, the latter the carrier or support of Vishnu on the Ocean of Space.
Sharîra (Sarîra) (Sk.). Envelope or body.
Shekinah (Heb.). A title applied to Malkuth, the tenth Sephira, by the Kabbalists; but by the Jews to the cloud of glory which rested on the Mercy-seat in the Holy of Holies. As taught, however, by all the Rabbins of Asia Minor, its nature is of a more exalted kind, Shekinah being the veil of Ain-Soph, the Endless and the Absolute; hence a kind of Kabbalistic Mûlaprakriti. [w.w.w.]
Siddhas (Sk.). Saints and sages who have become almost divine also a hierarchy of Dhyan Chohans.
Sishta (Sk.). The great elect or Sages, left after every minor Pralaya (that which is called “obscuration†in Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism), when the globe goes into its night or rest, to become, on its re-awakening, the seed of the next humanity. Lit. “remnant.â€
Siva (Sk.). The third person of the Hindu Trinity (the Trimûrti). He is a god of the first order, and in his character of Destroyer higher than Vishnu, the Preserver, as he destroys only to regenerate on a higher plane. He is born as Rudra, the Kumâra, and is the patron of all the Yogis, being called, as such, Mahâdeva the great ascetic, His titles are significant Trilochana, “the three-eyedâ€, Mahâdeva, “the great god “, Sankara, etc., etc., etc.
Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes. As expressed by Eliphas Lévi,â€this Tablet of Emerald is the whole of magic in a single pageâ€; but India has a single word which, when understood, contains “the whole of magic “. This is a tablet, however, alleged to have been found by Sarai, Abraham’s wife (!) on the dead body of Hermes. So say the Masons and Christian Kabbalists. But in Theosophy we call it an allegory. May it not mean that Sarai-swati, the wife of Brahmâ, or the goddess of secret wisdom and learning, finding still much of the ancient wisdom latent in the dead body of Humanity, revivified that wisdom? This led to the rebirth of the Occult Sciences, so long forgotten and neglected, the world over. The tablet itself, however, although containing the “whole of magic “, is too long to be reproduced here.
Soma (Sk.). The moon, and also the juice of the plant of that name used in the temples for trance purposes; a sacred beverage. Soma, the moon, is the symbol of the Secret Wisdom. In the Upanishads the word is used to denote gross matter (with an association of moisture) capable of producing life under the action of heat. (See “Soma-drinkâ€.)
Soul. The yuch, or nephesh of the Bible; the vital principle, or the breath of life, which every animal, down to the infusoria, shares with man. In the translated Bible it stands indifferently for life, blood and soul. “Let us not kill his nepheshâ€, says the original text: “let us not kill him “, translate the Christians (Genesis xxxvii. 21), and so on.
Spirit. The lack of any mutual agreement between writers in the use of this word has resulted in dire confusion. It is commonly made synonymous with soul; and the lexicographers countenance the usage. In Theosophical teachings. the term “Spirit†is applied solely to that which belongs directly to Universal Consciousness, and which is its homogeneous and unadulterated emanation. Thus, the higher Mind in Man or his Ego (Manas) is, when linked indissolubly with Buddhi, a spirit; while the term “Soulâ€, human or even animal (the lower Manas acting in animals as instinct), is applied only to Kâma -Manas, and qualified as the living soul. This is nephesh, in Hebrew, the “breath of lifeâ€. Spirit is formless and immaterial, being, when individualised, of the highest spiritual substance – Suddasatwa, the divine essence, of which the body of the manifesting highest Dhyanis are formed. Therefore, the Theosophists reject the appellation “Spirits†for those phantoms which appear in the phenomenal manifestations of the Spiritualists, and call them “shellsâ€, and various other names. (See “Sukshma Sarîraâ€.) Spirit, in short, is no entity in the sense of having form ; for, as Buddhist philosophy has it, where there is a form, there is a cause for pain and suffering. But each individual spirit – this individuality lasting only throughout the manvantaric life-cycle – may be described as a centre of consciousness, a self-sentient and self-conscious centre; a state, not a conditioned individual. This is why there is such a wealth of words in Sanskrit to express the different States of Being, Beings and Entities, each appellation showing the philosophical difference, the plane to which such unit belongs, and the degree of its spirituality or materiality. Unfortunately these terms are almost untranslatable into our Western tongues.
Sushupti Avasthâ (Sk.). Deep sleep; one of the four aspects of Prânava.
Sûtrâtman (Sk.). Lit., “the thread of spiritâ€; the immortal Ego, the Individuality which incarnates in men one life after the other, and upon which are strung, like beads on a string, his countless Personalities. The universal life-supporting air, Samashti prau; universal energy.
Svabhâvat (Sk.). Explained by the Orientalists as “plastic substanceâ€, which is an inadequate definition. Svabhâvat is the world-substance and stuff, or rather that which is behind it – the spirit and essence of substance. The name comes from Subhâva and is composed of three words – su, good, perfect, fair, handsome; sva, self; and bkâva, being, or state of being. From it all nature proceeds and into it all returns at the end of the life-cycles. In Esotericism it is called “Father-Motherâ€. It is the plastic essence of matter.
Svasamvedanâ (Sk.). Lit., “the reflection which analyses itself “; a synonym of Paramârtha.
Svastika (Sk.). In popular notions, it is the Jaina cross, or the “four-footed†cross (croix cramponnée). In Masonic teachings, “the most ancient Order of the Brotherhood of the Mystic Cross†is said to have been founded by Fohi, 1,027 B.C., and introduced into China fifty-two years later, consisting of the three degrees. In Esoteric Philosophy, the most mystic and ancient diagram. It is “the originator of the fire by friction, and of the ‘Forty-nine Fires’.†Its symbol was stamped on Buddha’s heart, and therefore called the “Heart’s Sealâ€. It is laid on the breasts of departed Initiates after their death ; and it is mentioned with the greatest respect in the Râmâyana. Engraved on every rock, temple and prehistoric building of India, and wherever Buddhists have left their landmarks; it is also found in China, Tibet and Siam, and among the ancient Germanic nations as Thor’s Hammer. As described by Eitel in his Hand-Book of Chinese Buddhism.. (1) it is “found among Bonpas and Buddhistsâ€; (2) it is “one of the sixty-five figures of the Sripâda†; (it is “the symbol of esoteric Buddhism†; (4) “the special mark of all deities worshipped by the Lotus School of Chinaâ€. Finally, and in Occultism, it is as sacred to us as the Pythagorean Tetraktys, of which it is indeed the double symbol.
T
Tanha (Pali). The thirst for life. Desire to live and clinging to life on this earth. This clinging is that which causes rebirth or reincarnation.
Tan m̢tras (Sk.). The types or rudiments of the five Elements; the subtile essence of these, devoid of all qualities and identical with the properties of the five basic Elements Рearth, water, fire, air and ether; i.e., the tanm̢tras are, in one of their aspects, smell, taste, touch, sight, and hearing.
Tetragrammaton. The four-lettered name of God, its Greek title: the four letters are in Hebrew “yod, hé vau, héâ€, or in English capitals, IHVH. The true ancient pronunciation is now unknown; the sincere Hebrew considered this name too sacred for speech, and in reading the sacred writings he substituted the title “Adonaiâ€, meaning Lord. In the Kabbalah, I is associated with Chokmah, H with Binah, V with Tiphereth, and H final with Malkuth. Christians in general call IHVH Jehovah, and many modern Biblical scholars write it Yahveh. In the Secret Doctrine, the name Jehovah is assigned to Sephira Binah alone, but this attribution is not recognised by the Rosicrucian school of Kabbalists, nor by Mathers in his translation of Knorr Von Rbsenroth’s Kabbalah Denudata: certain Kabbalistic authorities have referred Binah alone to IHVH, but only in reference to the Jehovah of the exoteric Judaism. The IHVH of the Kabbalah has but a faint resemblance to the God of the Old Testament. [w.w.w.]
The Kabbalah of Knorr von Rosenroth is no authority to the Eastern Kabbalists; because it is well known that in writing his Kabbalah Denudata he followed the modern rather than the ancient (Chaldean) MSS.; and it is equally well known that those MSS. and writings of the Zohar that are classified as “ancientâ€, mention, and some even use, the Hebrew vowel or Massoretic points. This alone would make these would-be Zoharic books spurious, as there are no direct traces of the Massorah scheme before the tenth century of our era, nor any remote trace of it before the seventh.
Theosophia (Gr.). Wisdom-religion, or “Divine Wisdomâ€. The substratum and basis of all the world-religions and philosophies, taught and practised by a few elect ever since man became a thinking being. In its practical bearing, Theosophy is purely divine ethics; the definitions in dictionaries are pure nonsense, based on religious prejudice and ignorance of the true spirit of the early Rosicrucians and mediæval philosophers who called themselves Theosophists.
Theosophists. A name by which many mystics at various periods of history have called themselves. The Neo-Platonists of Alexandria were Theosophists; the Alchemists and Kabbalists during the mediæval ages were likewise so called, also the Martinists, the Quietists, and other kinds of mystics, whether acting independently or incorporated in a brotherhood or society. All real lovers of divine Wisdom and Truth had, and have, a right to the name, rather than those who, appropriating the qualification, live lives or perform actions opposed to the principles of Theosophy. As described by Brother Kenneth R. Mackenzie, the Theosophists of the past centuries -†entirely speculative, and founding no schools, have still exercised a silent influence upon philosophy; and, no doubt, when the time arrives, many ideas thus silently propounded may yet give new directions to human thought. One of the ways in which these doctrines have obtained not only authority, but power, has been among certain enthusiasts in the higher degrees of Masonry. This power has, however, to a great degree died with the founders, and modern Freemasonry contains few traces of theosophic influence. However accurate and beautiful some of the ideas of Swedenborg, Pernetty, Paschalis, Saint Martin, Marconis, Ragon, and Chastanier may have been, they have but little direct influence on society.†This is true of the Theosophists of the last three centuries, but not of the later ones. For the Theosophists of the current century have already visibly impressed themselves on modern literature, and introduced the desire and craving for some philosophy in place of the blind dogmatic faith of yore, among the most intelligent portions of human-kind. Such is the difference between past and modern THEOSOPHY.
Titans (Gr.). Giants of divine origin in Greek mythology who made war against the gods. Prometheus was one of them.
To On (Gr.). The “Beingâ€, the “Ineffable All†of Plato. He†whom no person has seen except the Sonâ€.
Tretâ Yuga (Sk.). The second age of the world, a period of 1,296,000 years.
Triad, or the Three. The ten Sephiroth are contemplated as a group of three triads: Kether, Chochmah and Binah form the supernal triad; Chesed, Geburah and Tiphereth, the second; and Netzach, Hod and Yesod, the inferior triad. The tenth Sephira, Malkuth, is beyond the three triads. [w.w.w.]
The above is orthodox Western Kabalah. Eastern Occultists recognise but one triad – - the upper one (corresponding to Atmâ -Buddhi and the “Envelope†which reflects their light, the three in one) – and count seven lower Sephiroth, everyone of which stands for a “principleâ€, beginning with the Higher Manas and ending with the Physical Body – of which Malkuth is the representative in the Microcosm and the Earth in the Macrocosm.
Typhon (Eg.). An aspect or shadow of Osiris. Typhon is not, as Plutarch asserts, the distinct “Evil Principle†or the Satan of the Jews; but rather the lower cosmic “principles†of the divine body of Osiris, the god in them – Osiris being the personified universe as an ideation, and Typhon as that same universe in its material realization. The two in one are Vishnu-Siva. The true meaning of the Egyptian myth is that Typhon is the terrestrial and material envelope of Osiris, who is the indwelling spirit thereof. In chapter 42 of the Ritual (†Book of the Deadâ€), Typhon is described as “Set, formerly called Thothâ€. Orientalists find themselves greatly perplexed by discovering Set-Typhon addressed in some papyri as “a great and good god “, and in others as the embodiment of evil. But is not Siva, one of the Hindu Trimûrti, described in some places as “the best and most bountiful of godsâ€, and at other times, “a dark, black, destroying, terrible “and†fierce godâ€? Did not Loki, the Scandinavian Typhon, after having been described in earlier times as a beneficent being, as the god of fire, the presiding genius of the peaceful domestic hearth, suddenly lose caste and become forthwith a power of evil, a cold-hell Satan and a demon of the worst kind? There is a good reason for such an invariable transformation. So long as these dual gods, symbols of good and necessary evil, of light and darkness, keep closely allied, i.e., stand for a combination of differentiated human qualities, or of the element they represent – they are simply an embodiment of the average personal god. No sooner, however, are they separated into two entities, each with its two characteristics, than they become respectively the two opposite poles of good and evil, of light and darkness ; they become in short, two independent and distinct entities or rather personalities. It is only by dint of sophistry that the Churches have succeeded to this day in preserving in the minds of the few the Jewish deity in his primeval integrity. Had they been logical they would have separated Christ from Jehovah, light and goodness from darkness and badness. And this was what happened to Osiris Typhon ;but no Orientalist has understood it, and thus their perplexity goes on increasing. (See the Theosophical Glossary)
U
Upâdhi (Sk.). Basis; the vehicle, carrier or bearer of something less material than itself: as the human body is the upâdhi of its spirit, ether the upâdhi of light, etc., etc.; a mould; a defining or limiting substance.
V
Vâch (Sk.). To call Vâch “speech†simply, is deficient in clearness. Vâch is the mystic personification of speech, and the female Logos, being one with Brahmâ, who created her out of one-half of his body, which he divided into two portions; she is also one with Virâj (called the “female†Virâj) who was created in her by Brahmâ. In one sense Vâch is “speech†by which knowledge was taught to man; in another she is the “mystic, secret speech†which descends upon and enters into the primeval Rishis, as the “tongues of fire†are said to have “sat upon†the apostles. For, she is called “the female creator “, the “mother of the Vedas “, etc., etc. Esoterically, she is the subjective Creative Force which, emanating from the Creative Deity (the subjective Universe, its “privation “, or ideation) becomes the manifested “world of speech “, i.e., the concrete expression of ideation, hence the “Word†or Logos. Vâch is “the male and female†Adam of the first chapter of Genesis, and thus called “Vâch-Virâj†by the sages. (See Atharva Veda.) She is also “the celestial Saraswatî produced from the heavens “, a “voice derived from speechless Brahmâ†(Mahâbhârata); the goddess of wisdom and eloquence. She is called Sata-rûpa, the goddess of a hundred forms.
Vâhan(a) (Sk.). A vehicle, the carrier of something immaterial and formless. All the gods and goddesses are, therefore, represented as using vâhanas to manifest themselves, which vehicles are ever symbolical. So, for instance, Vishnu has during Pralayas, Ânanta the infinite†(Space), symbolized by the serpent Sesha, and during the Manvantaras – Garuda the gigantic half-eagle, half-man, the symbol of the great cycle; Brahma appears as Brahmâ, descending into the planes of manifestations on Kâlahamsa, the “swan in time or finite eternityâ€; Siva (phonet, Shiva) appears as the bull Nandi; Osiris as the sacred bull Apis; Indra travels on an elephant; Kârttikeya, on a peacock; Kâmadeva on Makâra, at other times a parrot; Agni, the universal (and also solar) Fire-god, who is, as all of them are, “a consuming Fireâ€, manifests itself as a ram and a lamb, Ajâ, “the unbornâ€; Varuna, as a fish; etc., etc., while the vehicle of MAN is his body.
Vaishnava (Sk.). A follower of any sect recognising and worshipping Vishnu as the one supreme God. The worshippers of Siva are called Saivas.
Vaivaswata (Sk.). The name of the Seventh Manu, the forefather of the postdiluvian race, or our own fifth humankind. A reputed son of Sûrya (the Sun), he became, after having been saved in an ark (built by the order of Vishnu) from the Deluge, the father of Ikshwâku, the founder of the solar race of kings. (See “Sûryavansaâ€.)
Vâyu (Sk.). Air: the god and sovereign of the air; one of the five states of matter, namely the gaseous; one of the five elements, called, as wind, Vâta. The Vishnu Purâna makes Vâyu King of the Gandharvas. He is the father of Hanumân, in the Râmâyana. The trinity of the mystic gods in Kosmos closely related to each other, are “Agni (fire) whose place is on earth; Vâyu (air, or one of the forms of Indra), whose place is in the air ; and Sûrya (the sun) whose place is in the air (Nirukta.) In esoteric interpretation, these three cosmic principles, correspond with the three human principles, Kâma, Kâma -Manas and Manas, the sun of the intellect.
Vedânta (Sk.). A mystic system of philosophy which has developed from the efforts of generations of sages to interpret the secret meaning of the Upanishads (q.v.). It is called in the Shad-Darshanas (six schools or systems of demonstration), Uttara Mîmânsâ, attributed to Vyâsa, the compiler of the Vedas, who is thus referred to as the founder of the Vedânta. The orthodox Hindus call Vedânta_a term meaning literally the “end of all (Vedic) knowledge†– Brahmâ-jnâna, or pure and spiritual knowledge of Brahmâ. Even if we accept the late dates assigned to various Sanskrit schools and treatises by our Orientalists, the Vedânta must be 3,300 years old, as Vyâsa is said to have lived I,400 years B.C. If, as Elphinstone has it in his History of India, the Brahmanas are the Talmud of the Hindus, and the Vedas the Mosaic books, then the Vedânta may be correctly called the Kabalah of India. But how vastly more grand! Sankarâchârya, who was the popularizer of the Vedântic system, and the founder of the Adwaita philosophy, is sometimes called the founder of the modern schools of the Vedânta.
Vedas (Sk.). The “revelationâ€. the scriptures of the Hindus, from the root vid, “to know “, or “divine knowledgeâ€. They are the most ancient as well as the most sacred of the Sanskrit works. The Vedas, on the date and antiquity of which no two Orientalists can agree, are claimed by the Hindus themselves, whose Brahmans and Pundits ought to know best about their own religious works, to have been first taught orally for thousands of years and then compiled on the shores of Lake Mânasa-Sarovara (phonetically, Mansarovara) beyond the Himalayas, in Tibet.
The Vedic writings are all classified in two great divisions, exoteric and esoteric, the former being called Karma-Kânda, “division of actions or works “, and the Jnâna Kânda, “division of (divine) knowledgeâ€, the Upanishads (q.v.) coming under this last classification. Both departments are regarded as Sruti or revelation. To each hymn of the Rig -Veda, the name of the Seer or Rishi to whom it was revealed is prefixed. It, thus, becomes evident on the authority of these very names (such as Vasishta, Viswâmitra, Nârada, etc.), all of which belong to men born in various manvantaras and even ages, that centuries, and perhaps millenniums, must have elapsed between the dates of their composition.
Vendîdâd (Pahlavi). The first book (Nosk) in the collection of Zend fragments usually known as the Zend-Avesta. The Vendidâd is a corruption of the compound-word “Vidaêvo-dâternâ€, meaning “the anti- demoniac law “, and is full of teachings how to avoid sin and defilement by purification, moral and physical – each of which teachings is based on Occult laws. It is a pre-eminently occult treatise, full of symbolism and often of meaning quite the reverse of that which is expressed in its dead-letter text. The Vendîdâd, as claimed by tradition, is the only one of the twenty-one Nosks (works) that has escaped the auto-da-fé at the hands of the drunken Iskander the Rûmi, he whom posterity calls Alexander the Great – though the epithet is justifiable only when applied to the brutality, vices and cruelty of this conqueror. It is through the vandalism of this Greek that literature and knowledge have lost much priceless lore in the Nosks burnt by him. Even the Vendidâd has reached us in only a fragmentary state. The first chapters are very mystical, and therefore called “mythical†in the renderings of European Orientalists. The two “creators†of “spirit-matter†or the world of differentiation – Ahura- Mazda and Angra-Mainyu (Ahriman) – are introduced in them, and also Yima (the first man, or mankind personified). The work is divided into Fargards or chapters, and a portion of these is devoted to the formation of our globe, or terrestrial evolution. (See Zend-Avesta.)
Vishnu (Sk.). The second person of the Hindu Trimûrti (trinity), composed of Brahmâ, Vishnu and Siva. From the root vish,†to pervadeâ€. in the Rig -Veda, Vishnu is no high god, but simply a manifestation of the solar energy, described as “striding through the seven regions of the Universe in three steps and enveloping all things with the dust (of his beams “.) Whatever may be the six other occult significances of the statement, this is related to the same class of types as the seven and ten Sephiroth, as the seven and three orifices of the perfect Adam Kadmon, as the seven “principles†and the higher triad in man, etc., etc. Later on this mystic type becomes a great god, the preserver and the renovator, he “of a thousand names – Sahasranâma “.
W
Wisdom. The “very essence of wisdom is contained in the Non- Being“. say the Kabbalists; but they also apply the term to the WORD or Logos, the Demiurge, by which the universe was called into existence. “The one Wisdom is in the Sound “, say the Occultists; the Logos again being meant by Sound, which is the substratum of Âkâsa. Says the Zohar, the “Book of Splendour†“It is the Principle of all the Principles, the mysterious Wisdom, the crown of all that which there is of the most Highâ€. (Zohar, iii., fol. 288, Myers Qabbalah) And it is explained, “Above Kether is the Ayin, or Ens, i.e., Ain, the NOTHINGâ€. “It is so named because we do not know, and it is impossible to know, that which there is in that Principle, because . . . it is above Wisdom itself.†(iii., fol. 288.) This shows that the real Kabbalists agree with the Occultists that the essence, or that which is in the principle of Wisdom, is still above that highest Wisdom.
Wisdom Religion. The one religion which underlies all the now-existing creeds. That “faith†which, being primordial, and revealed directly to human kind by their progenitors and informing EGOS (though the Church regards them as the “fallen angelsâ€), required no “graceâ€, nor blind faith to believe, for it was knowledge. (See “Gupta Vidyââ€, Hidden Knowledge.) It is on this Wisdom Religion that Theosophy is based.
Y
Years of Brahmâ. The whole period of “Brahma’s Age†(100 Years). Equals 31I,040,000,000,000 years. (See “Yuga “.)
Yggdrasil (Scand.). The “World Tree of the Norse Cosmogony; the ash Yggdrasil ; the tree of the Universe, of time and of lifeâ€. It has three roots, which reach down to cold Hel, and spread thence to Jotun heim, the land of the Hrimthurses, or “Frost Giantsâ€, and to Midgard, the earth and dwelling of the children of men. Its upper boughs stretch out into heaven, and its highest branch overshadows Waihalla, the Devachan of the fallen heroes. The Yggdrasil is ever fresh and green, as it is daily sprinkled by the Norns, the three fateful sisters, the Past, the Present, and the Future, with the waters of life from the fountain of Urd that flows on our earth. It will wither and disappear only on the day when the last battle between good and evil is fought ; when, the former prevailing, life, time and space pass out of life and space and time. Every ancient people had their world-tree. The Babylonians had their “tree of lifeâ€, which was the world-tree, whose roots penetrated into the great lower deep or Hades, whose trunk was on the earth, and whose upper boughs reached Zikum, the highest heaven above. Instead of in Walhalla, they placed its upper foliage in the holy house of Davkina, the “great mother†of Tammuz, the Saviour of the world – the Sun-god put to death by the enemies of light.
Yoga (Sk.). (1) One of the six Darshanas or schools of India; a school of philosophy founded by Patanjali, though the real Yoga doctrine, the one that is said to have helped to prepare the world for the preaching of Buddha, is attributed with good reasons to the more ancient sage Yâjnawalkya, the writer of the Shatapatha Brâhmana, of Yajur Veda, the Brihad Âranyaka, and other famous works. (2) The practice of meditation as a means of leading to spiritual liberation. Psychospiritual powers are obtained thereby, and induced ecstatic states lead to the clear and correct perception of the eternal truths, in both the visible and invisible universe.
Yogâchârya (Sk.). (1) A mystic school. (2) Lit., a teacher (âchârya) of Yoga, one who has mastered the doctrines and practices of ecstatic meditation – the culmination of which are the Mahâsiddhis. It is incorrect to confuse this school with the Tantra, or Mahâtantra school founded by Samantabhadra, for there are two Yogâchârya Schools, one esoteric, the other popular. The doctrines of the latter were compiled and glossed by Asamgha in the sixth century of our era, and his mystic tantras and mantras, his formularies, litanies, spells and mudrâ would certainly, if attempted without a Guru, serve rather purposes of sorcery and black magic than real Yoga. Those who undertake to write upon the subject are generally learned missionaries and haters of Eastern philosophy in general. From these no unbiassed views can be expected. Thus when we read in the Sanskrit -Chinese Dictionary of Eitel, that the reciting of mantras (which he calls “spellsâ€!) “should he accompanied by music and distortions of the fingers (mudrâ), that a state of mental fixity (Samâdhi} might he reached ’ – one acquainted, however slightly,. with the real practice of Yoga can only shrug his shoulders. These distortions of the fingers or ,mudrâ are necessary, the author thinks, for the reaching of Samâdhi, “characterized by there being neither thought nor annihilation of thought, and consisting of six-fold bodily (sic) and mental happiness (yogi) whence would result endowment with supernatural miracle-working powerâ€. Theosophists cannot be too much warned against such fantastic and prejudiced explanations.
Yuga (Sk.). A 1,000th part of a Kalpa. An age of the World of which there are four, and the series of which proceed in succession during the manvantaric cycle. Each Yuga is preceded by a period called in the Purânas Sandhyâ, twilight, or transition period, and is followed by another period of like duration called Sandhyânsa, “portion of twilightâ€. Each is equal to one-tenth of the Yuga. The group of four Yugas is first computed by the divine years, or “years of the gods†– each such year being equal to 360 years of mortal men. Thus we have, in “divine†years :
| AGE | YEARS | |
| 1 | Krita or Satya Yuga | 4,000 |
| Sandhyâ | 400 | |
| Sandhyansa | 400 | |
| 4,800 |
| 2 | Tretâ Yuga | 3,000 |
| Sandhyâ | 300 | |
| Sandhyânsa | 300 | |
| 3,600 |
| 3 | Dwâpara Yuga | 2,000 |
| Sandhya | 200 | |
| Sandhyânsa | 200 | |
| 2,400 |
| 4 | Kali Yuga | 1,000 |
| Sandhyâ | 100 | |
| Sandhyânsa | 100 | |
| 1,200 | ||
| Total = | 12,000 |
This rendered in years of mortals equals:
| 4,800 | X | 360 | = | 1,728,000 |
| 3,600 | X | 360 | = | 1,296,000 |
| 2,400 | X | 360 | = | 864,000 |
| 1,200 | X | 360 | = | 432,000 |
| Total | = | 4,320,000 |
The above is called a Mahâyuga or Manvantara.2,000 such Mahâyugas, or a period of 8,640,000 years, make a Kalpa the latter being only a “day and a nightâ€, or twenty-four hours, of Brahmâ. Thus an “age of Brahmââ€, or one hundred of his divine years, must equal 311,040,000,000,000 of our mortal years. The old Mazdeans or Magi (the modern Parsis) had the same calculation, though the Orientalists do not seem to perceive it, for even the Parsi Moheds themselves have forgotten it. But their “Sovereign time of the Long Period†(Zervan Dareghâ Hvadâta) lasts 12,000 years, and these are the 12,000 divine years of a Mahâyuga as shown above, whereas the Zervan Akarana (Limitless Time), mentioned by Zarathustra, is the Kâla, out of space and time, of Parabrahm.
Z
Zend-Avesta (Pahl.). The general name for the sacred books of the Parsis, fire or sun worshippers, as they are ignorantly called. So little is understood of the grand doctrines which are still found in the various fragments that compose all that is now left of that collection of religious works, that Zoroastrianism is called indifferently Fire-worship, Mazdaism, or Magism, Dualism, Sun-worship, and what not. The Avesta has two parts as now collected together, the first portion containing the Vendîdâd, the Vispêrad and the Yasna; and the second portion, called the Khorda Avesta (Small Avesta), being composed of short prayers called Gâh, Nyâyish, etc. Zend means “a commentary or explanationâ€, and Avesta (from the old Persian âbashtâ, “the lawâ€. (See Darmsteter.) As the translator of the Vendîdâd remarks in a foot note (see int. xxx.): “what it is customary to call ‘the Zend language’, ought to be named ‘the Avesta language’, the Zend being no language at all and if the word be used as the designation of one, it can be rightly applied only to the Pahlaviâ€. But then, the Pahlavi itself is only the language into which certain original portions of the Avesta are translated. What name should be given to the old Avesta language, and particularly to the “special dialect, older than the general language of the Avesta†(Darmst.), in which the five Ghthas in the Yasna are written? To this day the Orientalists are mute upon the subject. Why should not the Zend be of the same family, if not identical with the Zen-sar, meaning also the speech explaining the abstract symbol, or the “mystery language,†used by Initiates?
Zeus (Gr.). The “Father of the godsâ€. Zeus-Zen is Æther, there fore Jupiter was called Pater Æther by some Latin races.
Zodiac (Gr.). From the word zodion, a diminutive of zoon, animal. This word is used in a dual meaning; it may refer to the fixed and intellectual Zodiac, or to the movable and natural Zodiac. “In astronomyâ€, says Science, “it is an imaginary belt in the heavens 16° or 18° broad, through the middle of which passes the sun’s path (the ecliptic) .â€It contains the twelve constellations which constitute the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and from which they are named. As the nature of the zodiacal light- that elongated, luminous, triangular figure which, lying almost in the ecliptic, with its base on the horizon and its apex at greater and smaller altitudes, is to be seen only during the morning and evening twilights – is entirely unknown to science, the origin and real significancé and occult meaning of the Zodiac were, and are still, a mystery, to all save the Initiates. The latter preserved their secrets well. Between the Chaldean stargazer and the modern astrologer there lies to this day a wide gulf indeed; and they wander, in the words of Albumazar, “‘twixt the poles, and heavenly hinges, ‘mongst eccentricals, centres, concentricks, circles and epicyclesâ€, with vain pretence to more than profane human skill. Yet, some of the astrologers, from Tycho Braire and Kepler of astrological memory, down to the modern Zadkiels and Raphaels, have contrived to make a wonderful science from such scanty occult materials as they have had in hand from Ptolemy downwards. (See “Astrologyâ€.) To return to the astrological Zodiac proper, however, it is an imaginary circle passing round the earth in the plane of the equator, its first point being called Aries 0°. It is divided into twelve equal parts called “Signs of the Zodiacâ€, each containing 30° of space, and on it is measured the right ascension of celestial bodies. The movable or natural Zodiac is a succession of constellations forming a belt of in width, lying north and south of the plane of the ecliptic. The precession of the Equinoxes is caused by the “motion†of the sun through space, which makes the constellations appear to move forward against the order of the signs at the rate of 501/3 seconds per year. A simple calculation will show that at this rate the constellation Taurus (Heb. Aleph) was in the first sign of the Zodiac at the beginning of the Kali Yuga, and consequently the Equinoctial point fell therein. At this time, also, Leo was in the summer solstice, Scorpio in the autumnal Equinox, and Aquarius in the winter solstice ; and these facts form the astronomical key to half the religious mysteries of the world- – the Christian scheme included. The Zodiac was known in India and Egypt for incalculable ages, and the knowledge of the sages (magi) of these countries, with regard to the occult influence of the stars and heavenly bodies on our earth, was far greater than profane astronomy can ever hope to reach to. If, even now, when most of the secrets of the Asuramayas and the Zoroasters are lost, it is still amply shown that horoscopes and judiciary astrology are far from being based on fiction, and if such men as Kepler and even Sir Isaac Newton believed that stars and constellations influenced the destiny of our globe and its humanities, it requires no great stretch of faith to believe that men who were initiated into all the mysteries of nature, as well as into astronomy and astrology, knew precisely in what way nations and mankind, whole races as well as individuals, would be affected by the so-called “signs of the Zodiacâ€.
Zohar, or Sohar. A compendium of Kabbalistic Theosophy, which shares with the Sepher Yetzirah the reputation of being the oldest extant treatise on the Hebrew esoteric religious doctrines. Tradition assigns its authorship to Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai, AD. 80, but modern criticism is inclined to believe that a very large portion of the volume is no older than 1280, when it was certainly edited and published by Rabbi Moses de Leon, of Guadalaxara in Spain. The reader should consult the references to these two names. In Lucifer (Vol. I., p. 141) will be found also notes on this subject : further discussion will be attainable in the works of Zunz, Graetz, Jost, Steinschneider, Frankel and Ginsburg. The work of Franck (in French) upon the Kabalah may be referred to with advantage. The truth seems to lie in a middle path, viz., that while Moses de Leon was the first to produce the volume as a whole, yet a large part of some of its constituent tracts consists of traditional dogmas and illustrations, which have come down from the time of Simeon ben Jochai and the Second Temple. There are portions of the doctrines of the Zohar which bear the impress of Chaldee thought and civilization, to which the Jewish race had been exposed in the Babylonish captivity. Yet on the other hand, to condemn the theory that it is ancient in its entirety, it is noticed that the Crusades are mentioned; that a quotation is made from a hymn by Ibn Gebirol, A,D. 1050; that the asserted author, Simeon ben Jochai, is spoken of as more eminent than Moses; that it mentions the vowel-points, which did not come into use until Rabbi Mocha (AD. 570) introduced them to fix the pronunciation of words as a help to his pupils, and lastly, that it mentions -a comet which can be proved by the evidence of the context to have appeared in 1264. There is no English translation of the Zohar as a whole, nor even a Latin one.
Zoroaster. Greek form of Zarathustra (q.v.).
Zoroastrian. One who follows the religion of the Parsis, sun, or fire-worshippers.
For additional explanations of theosophical terminology, readers should consult THE THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY at http://www.theosophytrust.org/HPB_index.php.
“Arjuna’s doubt is the one which naturally arises in one who for the first time is brought face to face with the great duality of nature – or of God. This duality may be expressed metaphysically by the words thought and action, for these mean in this the same as ideation and expression. Brahman, as the unmanifested God, conceives the idea of the Universe, and it at once expresses itself in what is called creation by the Christian and by the scientist evolution. This creation or evolution is the action of God. With him there is no difference in time between the arising of the idea and its expression in manifested objects. Coming down to consider the ‘created’ objects, or the planes on which the thought of God has its expression through its own laws, we find the duality expressed by action and reaction, attraction and repulsion, day and night, outbreathing and inbreathing, and so on. When face to face with these, one is first confused by the multiplicity of objects, and we strive to find one simple thing, some law or doctrine, practice, dogma, or philosophy, by which, being known, happiness can be secured.â€
William Q. Judge
Notes on the Bhagavad-Gita, Chp II.