chapter xii

, from verse 1 to verse 7.

This has several meanings, and much has been found out with regard to the astronomical and numerical keys of this universal myth. That which may be now given, is a fragment, a few hints as to its secret meaning, as embodying the record of a real war, the struggle between the Initiates of the two Schools. Many and various are the still existing allegories built on this same foundation stone. The true narrative—that which gives the full Esoteric meaning—is in the Secret Books, but the writer has had no access to these.

In the exoteric works, however, the episode of the Târaka War, and some Esoteric Commentaries, may offer a clue perhaps. In every _Purâna_ the event is described with more or less variations which show its allegorical character.

In the Mythology of the earliest Vaidic Âryans as in the later Paurânic narratives, mention is made of Budha, the “Wise,” one “learned in the Secret Wisdom,” who is the planet Mercury in his euhemerization. The _Hindû Classical Dictionary_ credits Budha with being the author of a hymn in the _Rig Veda_. Therefore, he can by no means be “a later fiction of the Brâhmans,” but is a very old personation indeed.

It is by enquiring into his genealogy, or theogony rather, that the following facts are disclosed. As a myth, he is the son of Târâ, the wife of Brihaspati, the “gold coloured,” and of Soma, the (male) Moon who, Paris‐like, carries this new Helen of the Hindû Sidereal Kingdom away from her husband. This causes a great strife and _war_ in Svarga (Heaven). The episode brings on a battle between the Gods and the Asuras. King Soma finds allies in Ushanas (Venus), the leader of the Dânavas; and the Gods are led by Indra and Rudra, who side with Brihaspati. The latter is helped by Shankara (Shiva), who, having had for his Guru Brihaspati’s father, Angiras, befriends his son. Indra is here the Indian prototype of Michael, the Archistrategus and the slayer of the “Dragon’s” Angels—since one of his names is Jishnu, “leader of the celestial host.” Both fight, as some Titans did against other Titans in defence of revengeful Gods, the one party in defence of Jupiter Tonans (in India, Brihaspati is the planet Jupiter, which is a curious coincidence); the other in support of the ever‐thundering Rudra. During this war, Indra is deserted by his body‐ guard, the Storm‐Gods (Maruts). The story is very suggestive in some of its details.

Let us examine some of them, and seek to discover their meaning.

The presiding Genius, or “Regent” of the planet Jupiter is Brihaspati, the wronged husband. He is the Instructor or Spiritual Guru of the Gods, who are the representatives of the Procreative Powers. In the _Rig Veda_, he is called Brahmanaspati, the name “of a deity in whom _the action of the worshipped_ upon the gods is personified.” Hence Brahmanaspati represents the materialization of the “Divine Grace,” so to say, by means of ritual and ceremonies, or the exoteric worship.

Târâ,(1148) his wife, is, on the other hand, the personification of the powers of one initiated into Gupta Vidyâ (Secret Knowledge), as will be shown.

Soma is the Moon astronomically; but in mystical phraseology it is also the name of the sacred beverage drunk by the Brâhmans and the Initiates during their mysteries and sacrificial rites. The Soma plant is the _asclepias acida_, which yields a juice from which that mystic beverage, the Soma drink, is made. Alone the descendants of the Rishis, the Agnihotris, or Fire‐priests, of the great Mysteries knew all its powers. But the real property of the _true_ Soma was (and _is_) to make a “new man” of the Initiate, after he is “reborn,” namely once that he begins to live in his _Astral_ Body;(1149) for, his spiritual nature overcoming the physical, he would soon snap it off and part even from that etherealized form.(1150)

Soma was never given in days of old to the non‐initiated Brâhman—the simple Grihasta, or priest of the exoteric ritual. Thus Brihaspati, “Guru of the Gods” though he was, still represented the dead‐letter form of worship. It is Târâ, his _wife_, the symbol of one who, though wedded to dogmatic worship, longs for true Wisdom, who is shown as initiated into his mysteries by King Soma, the giver of that Wisdom. Soma is thus made _to carry her away_ in the allegory. The result of this is the birth of Budha, _Esoteric Wisdom_—Mercury, or Hermes, in Greece and Egypt. He is represented as “so beautiful,” that even the husband, though well aware that Budha is not the progeny of his dead‐letter worship—claims the “new‐ born” as his Son, the fruit of his ritualistic and meaningless forms.(1151) Such is, in brief, _one_ of the meanings of the allegory.

The War in Heaven refers to several events of this kind on various and different planes of being. The first is a purely astronomical and cosmical fact pertaining to Cosmogony. Mr. John Bentley thought that with the Hindûs the War in Heaven was only a figure referring to their calculations of time periods.(1152)

This served as a prototype, he thinks, for the Western nations to build their War of the Titans upon. The author is not quite wrong, but neither is he quite right. If the sidereal prototype refers indeed to a pre‐ manvantaric period, and rests entirely on the knowledge which the Âryan Initiates claim they have of the whole programme and progress of cosmogony,(1153) the War of the Titans is but a legendary and deified copy of the real war that took place in the Himâlayan Kailâsa (Heaven) instead of in the depths of cosmic interplanetary Space. It is the record of the terrible strife between the “Sons of God” and the “Sons of the Shadow” of the Fourth and the Fifth Races. It is on these two events, blended together by legends borrowed from the exoteric account of the War waged by the Asuras against the Gods, that every subsequent national tradition on the subject has been built.

Esoterically, the Asuras, transformed subsequently into evil Spirits and lower Gods, who are eternally at war with the _Great_ Deities—are the Gods of the Secret Wisdom. In the oldest portions of the _Rig Veda_, they are the Spiritual and the Divine, the term Asura being used for the Supreme Spirit and being the same as the great Ahura of the Zoroastrians.(1154) There was a time when the Gods Indra, Agni, and Varuna themselves belonged to the Asuras.

In the _Taittirîya Brâhmana_, the Breath (Asu) of Brahmâ‐Prajâpati became alive, and from that Breath he created the Asuras. Later on, after the War, the Asuras are called the enemies of the Gods, hence—“_A_‐suras,” the initial _a_ being a negative prefix—or “_No_‐Gods”; the “Gods” being referred to as Suras. This then connects the Asuras and their “Hosts,” enumerated further on, with the “Fallen Angels” of the Christian Churches, a Hierarchy of Spiritual Beings to be found in every Pantheon of ancient and even modern nations—from the Zoroastrian down to that of the Chinaman. They are the Sons of the primeval Creative Breath at the beginning of every new Mahâ Kalpa, or Manvantara, in the same rank as the Angels who had remained “faithful.” These were the _allies_ of Soma (the parent of the Esoteric Wisdom) as against Brihaspati (representing ritualistic or ceremonial worship). Evidently they have been degraded in Space and Time into opposing Powers or Demons by the ceremonialists, on account of their rebellion against hypocrisy, sham‐worship, and the dead‐letter form.

Now what is the real character of all those who fought along with them? They are:

(1) Ushanas, or the “Host” of the Planet Venus, become now in Roman Catholicism Lucifer, the Genius of the “day star,”(1155) the Tsaba, or Army of “Satan.”

(2) The Daityas and Dânavas are the Titans, the Demons and Giants whom we find in the _Bible_(1156)—the progeny of the “Sons of God” and the “Daughters of Men.” Their generic name shows their alleged character, and discloses at the same time the secret _animus_ of the Brâhmans; for they are the Kratu‐dvishas—the “enemies of the sacrifices” or exoteric _shams_. These are the “Hosts” that fought against Brihaspati, the representative of _exoteric_ popular and national religions; and Indra—the God of the _visible_ Heaven, the Firmament, who, in the early _Veda_, is the _highest_ God of cosmic Heaven, the fit habitation for an _extra_‐cosmic and personal God, higher than whom no exoteric worship can ever soar.

(3) Then come the Nâgas,(1157) the Sarpas, Serpents or Seraphs. These, again, show their character by the hidden meaning of their glyph. In mythology they are _semi‐divine_ beings with a human face and the tail of a dragon. They are therefore, undeniably, the Jewish Seraphim (compare Serapis, Sarpa, Serpent); the singular being Saraph, “burning, fiery.” Christian and Jewish angelology distinguishes between the Seraphim and the Cherubim or Cherubs, who come second in order: Esoterically, and kabalistically, they are identical; the Cherubim being simply the name for the images or likenesses of any of the divisions of the celestial Hosts. Now, as said before, the Dragons and Nâgas were the names given to the Initiate‐hermits, on account of their great Wisdom and Spirituality and their living in caves. Thus, when Ezekiel(1158) applies the adjective Cherub to the King of Tyre, and tells him that by his _wisdom_ and his _understanding_ there is _no secret_ that can be hidden from him, he shows the Occultist that it is a “Prophet,” perhaps still a follower of _exoteric_ worship, who fulminates against an Initiate of another school and not against an imaginary Lucifer, a fallen Cherub from the stars, and then from the Garden of Eden. Thus the so‐called “War” is, in one of its many meanings, also an allegorical record of the strife between the two classes of Adepts—of the Right and of the Left Path. There were three classes of Rishis in India, who were the earliest Adepts known; the Royal, or Râjarshis, kings and princes, who adopted the ascetic life; the Divine, or Devarshis, or the sons of Dharma or Yoga; and the Brahmarshis, descendants of those Rishis who were the founders of Gotras of Brâhmans, or caste‐races. Now, leaving the mythical and astronomical keys for one moment aside, the secret teachings show many Atlanteans who belonged to these divisions; and there were strifes and wars between them, _de facto_ and _de jure_. Nârada, one of the greatest Rishis, was a Devarshi; and he is shown in constant and everlasting feud with Brahmâ, Daksha, and other Gods and Sages. Therefore we may safely maintain that whatever the _astronomical_ meaning of this universally accepted legend may be, its human phase is based on real and historical events, disfigured into a theological dogma only to suit ecclesiastical purposes. As above so below. Sidereal phenomena, and the behaviour of the celestial bodies in the Heavens, were taken as a model, and the plan was carried out below, on Earth. Thus, Space, in its abstract sense, was called the “realm of divine knowledge,” and by the Chaldees or Initiates Ab Soo, the habitat (or father, _i.e._, the source) of knowledge, because it is in Space that dwell the intelligent Powers which _invisibly_ rule the Universe.(1159)

In the same manner, and on the plan of the Zodiac in the _upper_ Ocean or the Heavens, a certain realm on Earth, an inland sea, was consecrated and called the “Abyss of Learning”; twelve centres on it, in the shape of twelve small islands, representing the Zodiacal Signs—two of which remained for ages the “mystery Signs”(1160)—were the abodes of twelve Hierophants and Masters of Wisdom. This “Sea of Knowledge” or learning(1161) remained for ages there, where now stretches the Shamo or Gobi Desert. It existed until the last great glacial period, when a local cataclysm, which swept the waters South and West and so formed the present great desolate desert, left only a certain oasis, with a lake and one island in the midst of it, as a relic of the Zodiacal Ring on Earth. For ages the Watery Abyss—which, with the nations that preceded the later Babylonians, was the abode of the “Great Mother,” the terrestrial post‐ type of the “Great Mother Chaos” in Heaven, the parent of Ea (Wisdom), himself the early prototype of Oannes, the Man‐Fish of the Babylonians—for ages, then, the “Abyss” or Chaos was the abode of Wisdom and not of Evil. The struggle of Bel and then of Merodach, the Sun‐God, with Tiamat, the Sea and its Dragon—a “War” which ended in the defeat of the latter—has a purely cosmic and geological meaning, as well as a historical one. It is a page torn out of the history of the Secret and Sacred Sciences, their evolution, growth and _death—for the profane masses_. It relates (_a_) to the systematic and gradual drying up of immense territories by the fierce Sun at a certain pre‐historic period, one of the terrible droughts which ended by a gradual transformation of once fertile lands abundantly watered into the sandy deserts which they are now; and (_b_) to the as systematic persecution of the Prophets of the Right Path by those of the Left. The latter, having inaugurated the birth and evolution of the sacerdotal castes, have finally led the world into all those exoteric religions, which have been invented to satisfy the depraved taste of the “hoi polloi” and the ignorant for ritualistic pomp and the materialization of the ever‐ immaterial and Unknowable Principle.

This was a certain improvement on the Atlantean sorcery, the memory of which lingers in the remembrance of all the literary and Sanskrit‐reading portion of India, as well as in the popular legends. Still it was a parody on, and the desecration of, the Sacred Mysteries and their Science. The rapid progress of anthropomorphism and idolatry led the early Fifth, as it had already led the Fourth Race, into sorcery once more, though on a smaller scale. Finally, even the four “Adams” (symbolizing, under other names, the four preceding Races) were forgotten, and, passing from one generation into another, each loaded with some additional myths, were at last drowned in that ocean of popular symbolism called the Pantheons. Yet they exist to this day in the oldest Jewish traditions: the first as the Tzelem, the “Shadow‐Adam,” the Chhâyâs of our doctrine; the second, the “Model” Adam, the copy of the first, and the “male and female” of the exoteric _Genesis_; the third, the “Earthly Adam” before the Fall, an androgyne; and the fourth, the Adam after his “fall,” _i.e._, separated into sexes, or the pure Atlantean. The Adam of the Garden of Eden, or the forefather of our Race—the fifth—is an ingenious compound of the above four. As stated in the _Zohar_, Adam, the first Man, is not found now on Earth, he “is not found in all Below.” For where does the lower Earth come from? “From the _Chain of the Earth_, and from the _Heaven Above_,” _i.e._, from the superior Globes, those which precede and are above our Earth.

And there came out from it [the Chain] creatures differing one from the other. Some of them in garments [solid] (skins), some in shells (_Q’lippoth_), ... some in red shells, some in black, some in white, and some from all the colours.(1162)

As in the Chaldæan Cosmogony of Berosus and the Stanzas just given, some treatises on the _Kabalah_ speak of creatures with two faces, some with four, and some with one face; for “the highest Adam did not come down in all the countries, or produce progeny and have many wives,” but is a mystery.

So is the Dragon a mystery. Truly says Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochaï, that to understand the meaning of the Dragon is not given to the “companions” (students, or Chelâs), but only to the “little ones,” _i.e._, the perfect Initiates.(1163)

The work of the beginning the companions understand; but it is only the little ones who understand the parable on the work in the Principium by the _Mystery of the Serpent of the Great Sea_.(1164)

And those Christians, who may happen to read this, will also understand by the light of the above sentence who their “Christ” was. For Jesus states repeatedly that he who “shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a _little child_, he shall not enter therein”; and if some of his sayings have been meant to apply to children without any metaphor, most of the references to the “little ones” in the Gospels, relate to the Initiates, _of whom Jesus was one_. Paul (Saul) is referred to in the _Talmud_ as the “little one.”

The “Mystery of the Serpent” was this: Our Earth, or rather _terrestrial life_, is often referred to in the Secret Teachings as the Great Sea, the “Sea of Life” having remained to this day a favourite metaphor. The _Siphra Dtzenioutha_ speaks of Primeval Chaos and the Evolution of the Universe after a Destruction (Pralaya), comparing it to an uncoiling serpent:

Extending hither and thither, its tail in its mouth, the head twisting on its neck, it is enraged and angry.... It watches and conceals itself. Every thousand _Days_ it is manifested.(1165)

A commentary on the _Purânas_ says:

Ananta‐Shesha is a form of Vishnu, the Holy Spirit of Preservation, and a symbol of the Universe, on which it is supposed to sleep during the intervals of the _Days_ of Brahmâ. The seven heads of Shesha support the Universe.

So the Spirit of God “sleeps,” or is “breathing” over the Chaos of Undifferentiated Matter, before each new “Creation,” says the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_. Now one Day of Brahmâ is composed, as already explained, of _one thousand_ Mahâ Yugas; and as each Night, or period of rest, is equal in duration to this Day, it is easy to see what this sentence in the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_ refers to—viz., that the Serpent manifests “once in a thousand days.” Nor is it more difficult to see whither the initiated writer of the _Siphra_ is leading us, when he says:

Its head is broken in the waters of the Great Sea, as it is written: Thou dividest the sea by thy strength, thou brakest the _heads_ of the _dragons_ in the waters.(1166)

It refers to the trials of the Initiates in this physical life, the “Sea of Sorrow,” if read with one key; it hints at the successive destruction of the seven Spheres of a Chain of Worlds in the Great Sea of Space, when read with another key; for every sidereal globe or sphere, every world, star, or group of stars, is called in symbolism a “Dragon’s Head.” But however it may read, the Dragon was never regarded as Evil, nor was the Serpent either—in antiquity. In the metaphors, whether astronomical, cosmical, theogonical or simply physiological (or phallic), the Serpent was always regarded as a _divine_ symbol. When mention is made of “the [Cosmic] Serpent which runs with 370 leaps,”(1167) it means the cyclic periods of the great Tropical Year of 25,868 years, divided in the Esoteric calculation into 370 periods or cycles, as one solar year is divided into 365 days. And if Michael was regarded by the Christians as the Conqueror of Satan, the Dragon, it is because in the _Talmud_ this fighting personage is represented as the Prince of Waters, who had seven subordinate Spirits under him—a good reason why the Latin Church made him the patron saint of every promontory in Europe. In the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_ the Creative Force “makes sketches and spiral lines of his creation _in the shape of a Serpent_.” It “holds its tail in its mouth,” because it is the symbol of endless eternity and of cyclic periods. Its meanings, however, would require a volume, and we must end.

Thus the reader may now see for himself what are the several meanings of the “War in Heaven,” and of the “Great Dragon.” Thus the most solemn and dreaded of Church dogmas, the alpha and omega of the Christian faith, and the pillar of its Fall and Atonement, dwindles down to a Pagan symbol, in the many allegories of these pre‐historic struggles.

Section V. Is Plerôma Satan’s Lair?

The subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other aspects.

Whether Milton’s grandiose description of the three _days’_ Battle of the Angels of Light against those of Darkness justifies the suspicion that he must have heard of the corresponding Eastern tradition—it is impossible to say. Nevertheless, if not himself in connection with some Mystic, then it must have been through some one who had obtained access to the secret works of the Vatican. Among these there is a tradition concerning the “Beni Shamash”—the “Children of the Sun”—relating to the Eastern allegory, with far more minute details _in its triple version_, than one can get either from the _Book of Enoch_, or the far more recent _Revelation_ of St. John concerning the “Old Dragon” and his various Slayers, as has been just shown.

It seems inexplicable to find, to this day, authors belonging to mystical societies who yet continue in their preconceived doubts as to the “alleged” antiquity of the _Book of Enoch_. Thus, while the author of the _Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches_ is inclined to see in Enoch an Initiate converted to Christianity (!!),(1168) the English compiler of Éliphas Lévi’s works, _The Mysteries of Magic_, is also of a like opinion. He remarks that:

Outside the erudition of Dr. Kenealy, no modern scholarship attributes any more remote antiquity to the latter work [the _Book of Enoch_] than the fourth century B.C.(1169)

Modern scholarship has been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems but yesterday that the _greatest_ literary critics in Europe denied the very authenticity of that work, together with the Orphic Hymns, and even the Book of Hermes or Thoth, until whole verses from the latter were discovered on Egyptian monuments and tombs of the earliest dynasties. The opinion of Archbishop Laurence is quoted elsewhere.

The “Old Dragon” and Satan, which have now become singly and collectively the symbol of, and the theological term for, the “Fallen Angel,” are not so described either in the _original_ Kabalah (the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_) or in the modern. For the most learned, if not the greatest of modern Kabalists, namely Éliphas Lévi, describes Satan in the following glowing terms:

It is that Angel who was proud enough to believe himself God; brave enough to buy his independence at the price of eternal suffering and torture; beautiful enough to have adored himself in full divine light; strong enough to still reign in darkness amidst agony, and to have made himself a throne out of his inextinguishable pyre. It is the Satan of the republican and heretical Milton ... the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy of pure spirits(!!).(1170)

This description—one which reconciles so cunningly Theological dogma and Kabalistic allegory, and even contrives to include a political compliment in its phraseology—is, when read in the right spirit, quite correct.

Yes, indeed; it is this grandest of ideals, this ever‐living symbol—nay apotheosis—of self‐sacrifice for the intellectual independence of humanity; this ever Active Energy protesting against Static Inertia—the principle to which Self‐assertion is a crime, and Thought and the Light of Knowledge odious. As Éliphas says with unparalleled justice and irony:

It is this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities, who, slanderously charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and claws, which would fit far better his implacable tormentor.(1171)

It is he who has been finally transformed into a Serpent—the Red Dragon. But Éliphas Lévi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic authorities—one may add, too jesuitical—to confess that this Devil was mankind, and never had any existence on Earth outside of that mankind.(1172)

In this, Christian Theology, although following slavishly in the steps of Paganism, has only been true to its own time‐honoured policy. It had to isolate itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do better than turn every Pagan Deity into a Devil. Every bright Sun‐God of antiquity—a glorious Deity by day, and its own Opponent and Adversary by night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the germs of night and day—has now been turned into the antithetical Shadow of God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma. After which all these producers of light and shadow, all the Sun‐ and the Moon‐Gods, have been cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the many and Satan have both been anthropomorphized. But Theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating and finally analyzing all that is artificially forced upon its reverence. History shows in every race and even tribe, especially in the Semitic nations, the natural impulse to exalt its own tribal deity above all others to the hegemony of the Gods, and proves that the God of the Israelites was such a _tribal_ God, and no more, even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the “chosen” people, is pleased to enforce the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the others. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, nevertheless, it _was_ one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only a God “among” other “Gods.”(1173) The _Lord_ appears to Abraham, and while saying, “I am the _Almighty God_,” yet adds, “I will establish my covenant ... to be _a_ God unto thee” (Abraham); and unto _his seed_ after him(1174)—but not unto Âryan Europeans.

But, then, there was the grandiose and ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth to be set off against a dark background, to gain in radiance by the contrast; _and a darker one the Church could hardly invent_. Lacking the _Old Testament_ symbology, ignorant of the real connotation of the name of Jehovah—the Rabbinical secret substitute for the Ineffable and Unpronounceable Name—the Church mistook the cunningly fabricated shadow for the reality, the anthropomorphized _generative_ symbol for the one Secondless Reality, the ever Unknowable Cause of All. As a logical sequence the Church, for purposes of duality, had to invent an anthropomorphic Devil—created, as taught by her, by God himself. Satan has now turned out to be the monster fabricated by the Jehovah‐ Frankenstein—his father’s curse and a thorn in the divine side, a monster, than whom no earthly Frankenstein could have fabricated a more ridiculous bogey.

The author of _New Aspects of Life_ describes the Jewish God very correctly from the kabalistic standpoint as:

The Spirit of the Earth, which had revealed itself to the Jew as Jehovah.(1175)... It was that Spirit again who, after the death of Jesus, assumed his form and personated him as the risen Christ

—the doctrine of Cerinthus and several Gnostic sects with slight variation, as one can see. But the author’s explanations and deductions are remarkable:

None knew ... better than Moses, ... [and] so well as he, how great was the power of those [Gods of Egypt] with whose priests he had contended, ... the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the God [by the Jews only].

Asks the author:

What were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah, the Achad, is claimed to be the God ... by overcoming them?

To which our Occultism answers: Those whom the Church now calls the Fallen Angels and collectively Satan, the Dragon—overcome, if we have to accept _her_ dictum, by Michael and his Host, that Michael being simply Jehovah himself, one of the subordinate Spirits at best. Therefore, the author is again right in saying:

The Greeks believed in the existence of ... _daimons_. But ... they were anticipated by the Hebrews, who held _that there was a class of personating spirits_ which they designated _demons_, “personators.”... Admitting with Jehovah, who expressly asserts it, the existence of other gods, which ... were personators of the One God, were these other gods simply a higher class of personating spirits, ... which had acquired and exercised greater powers? And is not personation _the key to the mystery of the spirit state_? But once granting this position, _how are we to know that Jehovah was not a personating spirit_, a spirit which arrogated to itself that it was, and thus became, the personator of the one unknown and unknowable God? Nay, how do we know that the spirit calling itself Jehovah, in arrogating to itself his attributes did not thus cause its own designation to be imputed to the One who is in reality as nameless as incognizable?(1176)

Then the author shows that “the spirit Jehovah _is_ a personator” on its own admission. It acknowledged to Moses “that it had appeared to the patriarchs as the God Shaddai” and the “God Helion.”

With the same breath it assumed the name of Jehovah; and it is on the faith of the assertion of this personator that the names El, Eloah, Elohim, and Shaddai, have been read and interpreted in juxtaposition with Jehovah as the “Lord God Almighty.” [Then when] the name Jehovah became ineffable, the designation Adonai, “Lord,” was substituted for it, and ... it was owing to this substitution that the “Lord” passed from the Jewish to the Christian “Word” and World as a designation of God.(1177)

And how are we to know, the author may add, that Jehovah was not many spirits personating even that seemingly one—Jod or Jod‐He?

But if the Christian Church was the first to make the existence of Satan a dogma, it was because, as shown in _Isis Unveiled_, the Devil—the powerful Enemy of God (?!!) had to become the corner stone and pillar of the Church. For, as a Theosophist, M. Jules Baissac, truly observes in his _Satan ou le Diable_:

Il fallait éviter de paraître autoriser le dogme du double principe en faisant de ce Satan créateur une puissance réelle, et pour expliquer le mal originel, on profère contre Manes l’hypothèse d’une permission de l’unique Tout‐Puissant.(1178)

The choice and policy were unfortunate, anyhow. Either the personator of the lower God of Abraham and Jacob ought to have been made entirely distinct from the mystic “Father” of Jesus, or—the “Fallen” Angels should have been left unslandered by further fictions.

Every God of the Gentiles is connected with, and closely related to, Jehovah—the Elohim; for they are all One Host, whose units differ only in name in the Esoteric Teachings. Between the “Obedient” and the “Fallen” Angels there is no difference whatever, except in their respective functions, or rather in the inertia of some, and the activity of others, among those Dhyân Chohans, or Elohim, who were “commissioned to create,” _i.e._, to fabricate the manifested world out of the eternal material.

The Kabalists say that the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah turned upside down, for “Satan is not a black God but the negation of the white Deity,” or the Light of Truth. God is Light and Satan is the necessary Darkness or _Shadow_ to set it off, without which pure Light would be invisible and incomprehensible.(1179) “For the Initiates,” says Éliphas Lévi, “the Devil is not a person but a creative Force, for Good as for Evil.” The Initiates represented this Force, which presides at physical generation, under the mysterious form of God Pan—or Nature; whence the horns and hoofs of that mythical and symbolic figure, as also the Christian “goat” of the “Witches’ Sabbath.” With regard to this too, Christians have imprudently forgotten that the “goat” was also the victim selected for the atonement of all the sins of Israel, that the scape‐goat was indeed the sacrificial martyr, the symbol of the greatest mystery on earth—the “fall into generation.” Only, the Jews have long forgotten the real meaning of their (to the non‐initiated) ridiculous hero, selected from the drama of life in the Great Mysteries enacted by them in the desert; and the Christians have never known it.

Éliphas Lévi seeks to explain the dogma of his Church by paradoxes and metaphors, but succeeds very poorly in the face of the many volumes written by pious Roman Catholic Demonologists under the approbation and auspices of Rome, in this nineteenth century of ours. For the true Roman Catholic, the Devil or Satan is a _reality_; the drama enacted in the Sidereal Light according to the seer of Patmos—who desired, perhaps, to improve upon the narrative in the _Book of Enoch_—is as real, and as historical a fact as any other allegory and symbolical event in the _Bible_. But the Initiates give an explanation which differs from that given by Éliphas Lévi, whose genius and crafty intellect had to submit to a certain compromise dictated to him from Rome.

Thus, the true and “uncompromising” Kabalists admit that, for all purposes of Science and Philosophy, it is enough that the profane should know that the Great Magic Agent—called by the followers of the Marquis de St. Martin, the Martinists, the Astral Light, by the mediæval Kabalists and Alchemists the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum, and by the Eastern Occultists Æther, the reflection of Âkâsha—is that which the Church calls Lucifer. That the Latin scholastics have succeeded in transforming the Universal Soul and Plerôma—the _Vehicle of Light_ and the receptacle of all forms, a Force spread throughout the whole Universe, with its direct and indirect effects—into Satan and his works, is no news to any one. But now they are prepared to give out to the above‐mentioned profane even the secrets hinted at by Éliphas Lévi, without _adequate explanation_, for the latter’s policy of veiled revelations could only lead to further superstition and misunderstanding. What, indeed, can a student of Occultism, who is a beginner, gather from the following highly poetical sentences of Éliphas Lévi, which are as apocalyptic as the writings of any of the Alchemists?

Lucifer [the Astral Light] ... is an intermediate force existing in all creation; it serves to create and to destroy, and the Fall of Adam was an erotic intoxication which has rendered his generation a slave to this fatal Light, ... every sexual passion that overpowers our senses is a whirlwind of that Light which seeks to drag us towards the abyss of death. Madness, hallucinations, visions, extasies, are all forms of a very dangerous excitation due to this _interior phosphorus_[?]. Thus light, finally, is of the nature of fire, the intelligent use of which warms and vivifies, and the excess of which, on the contrary, dissolves and annihilates.

Thus man is called upon to assume a sovereign empire over this [Astral] Light and conquer thereby his immortality, and is threatened at the same time with being intoxicated, absorbed, and eternally destroyed by it.

This Light, therefore, inasmuch as it is devouring, revengeful, and fatal, would thus really be hell‐fire, the serpent of the legend; the tormented errors of which it is full, the tears and the gnashing of teeth of the abortive beings it devours, the phantom of life that escapes them, and seems to mock and insult their agony, all this would be the Devil or Satan indeed.(1180)

There is no _false_ statement in all this; nothing save a superabundance of ill‐applied metaphors, as, for instance, in the application of the myth of Adam to the illustration of the astral effects. Âkâsha,(1181) the Astral Light, can be defined in a few words; it is the Universal Soul, the Matrix of the Universe, the Mysterium Magnum from which all that exists is born by separation or _differentiation_. It is the cause of existence; it fills all the infinite Space, _is_ Space itself, in one sense, or both its _sixth_ and seventh principles.(1182) But as the finite in the Infinite, as regards manifestation this Light must have its _shadowy_ side—as already remarked. And as the Infinite can never be manifested, hence the finite world has to be satisfied with the _shadow alone_, which its

## actions draw upon humanity and which men attract and _force into __

## activity_. Hence, while the Astral Light is the Universal Cause in its

unmanifested unity and infinity, it becomes, with regard to mankind, simply the effects of the causes produced by men in their sinful lives. It is not its bright denizens—whether they are called Spirits of Light or Darkness—that produce Good or Evil, but mankind itself that determines the unavoidable action and reaction in the Great Magic Agent. It is mankind which has become the “Serpent of Genesis,” and thus causes daily and hourly the Fall and Sin of the “Celestial Virgin”—which thus becomes the Mother of Gods and Devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever‐ loving, beneficent Deity to all those who stir her _Soul_ and _Heart_, instead of attracting to themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called by Éliphas Lévi—the “fatal light” which kills and destroys. Humanity, in its units, can overpower and master its effects; but only by the holiness of their lives and by producing good causes. It has power only on the manifested _lower_ principles—the shadow of the Unknown and Incognizable Deity in Space. But in antiquity and _reality_, Lucifer, or Luciferus, is the name of the Angelic Entity presiding over the Light of Truth as over the light of the day. In the great Valentinian Gospel _Pistis Sophia_ it is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy Names of the three Triple Powers (Τριδυνάμεις), that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost according to these Gnostics—the most cultured of all), resides in the planet Venus or Lucifer.

Thus to the profane, the Astral Light may be God and Devil at once—_Demon est Deus inversus_—that is to say, through every point of Infinite Space thrill the magnetic and electrical currents of _animate_ Nature, the life‐ giving and death‐giving waves, for death on earth becomes life on another plane. Lucifer is divine and terrestrial Light, the “Holy Ghost” and “Satan,” at one and the same time, _visible_ Space being truly filled with the differentiated Breath invisibly; and the Astral Light, the manifested effects of the two who are one, guided and attracted by ourselves, is the _Karma_ of Humanity, both a personal and impersonal entity—personal, because it is the mystic name given by St. Martin to the Host of Divine Creators, Guides and Rulers of this Planet; _impersonal_, as the Cause and Effect of Universal Life and Death.

The Fall was the _result of man’s knowledge_, for his “eyes were opened.” Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the Hidden Knowledge by the “Fallen Angel,” for the latter had become from that day his Manas, Mind and Self‐ consciousness. In each of us that golden thread of continuous Life—periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous existence on Earth, and super‐sensuous in Devachan—_is_ from the beginning of our appearance upon this Earth. It is the Sûtrâtmâ, the luminous thread of immortal _impersonal_ Monadship, on which our earthly “lives” or evanescent Egos are strung as so many beads—according to the beautiful expression of the Vedântic Philosophy.

And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the “Lord of Phôsphoros”—brimstone was a Theological improvement—and Lucifer, or “Light‐Bearer,” is in us: it is our Mind, our Tempter and Redeemer, our intelligent Liberator and Saviour from pure animalism. Without this principle—the emanation of the very essence of the pure divine principle Mahat (Intelligence), which radiates direct from the Divine Mind—we would be surely no better than animals. The first _man_ Adam was made only a _living soul_ (Nephesh), the last Adam was made a _quickening spirit_(1183)—says Paul, his words referring to the building or _creation_ of man. Without this _quickening_ spirit, or _human mind_ or soul, there would be no difference between man and beast; as there is none, in fact, between animals with respect to their actions. The tiger and the donkey, the hawk and the dove, are each one as pure and as innocent as the other, because _irresponsible_. Each follows its instinct, the tiger and the hawk killing with the same unconcern as the donkey eats a thistle, or the dove pecks at a grain of corn. If the Fall had the significance given to it by Theology; if that Fall occurred as a result of an act never intended by Nature—a _sin_, how about the animals? If we are told that they procreate their species in consequence of that same “original sin,” for which God cursed the Earth—hence everything living on it—we will put another question. We are told by Theology, as also by Science, that the animal was on Earth far earlier than man. We ask the former: How did it _procreate its species_, before the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had been plucked off? As said:

The Christians—far less clear‐sighted than the great Mystic and Liberator whose name they have assumed, whose doctrines they have misunderstood and travestied, _and whose memory they have blackened by their deeds_—took the Jewish Jehovah as he was, and of course strove vainly to reconcile the _Gospel of Light and Liberty_ with the Deity of Darkness and Submission.(1184)

But it is sufficiently proven now that all the _soi‐disant_ evil Spirits who are credited with having made war on the Gods, are identical as personalities; that, moreover, all the ancient religions taught the same tenet, save the final conclusion, which differs from the Christian. The seven primeval Gods had all a dual state, one essential, the other accidental. In their essential state they were all the Builders or Fashioners, the Preservers and the Rulers of this World; and in the accidental state, clothing themselves in visible corporeality, they descended on the Earth and reigned on it as Kings and Instructors of the lower Hosts, who had incarnated once more upon it as men.

Thus, Esoteric Philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in both its aspects—good and evil, but Theology cannot admit this philosophical truth. Teaching as it does the dogma of the Fallen Angels in its dead‐letter meaning, and having made of Satan the corner‐stone and pillar of the dogma of redemption—to do so would be suicidal. Having once shown the rebellious Angels _distinct_ from God and the Logos in their personalities, to admit that the downfall of the _disobedient_ Spirits means simply their fall into generation and matter, would be equivalent to saying that God and Satan were identical. For since the Logos, or God, is the aggregate of that once divine Host accused of having fallen, it would naturally follow that the Logos and Satan are one.

Yet such was the real philosophical view in antiquity of the now disfigured tenet. The Verbum, or the “Son,” was shown in a dual aspect by the Pagan Gnostics—in fact, he was a _duality_ in full _unity_. Hence, the endless and various national versions. The Greeks had Jupiter, the son of Cronus, the Father, who hurls him down into the depths of Kosmos. The Âryans had Brahmâ (in later theology) precipitated by Shiva into the Abyss of Darkness, etc. But the Fall of all these Logoi and Demiourgoi from their primitive exalted position, contained in all cases one and the same Esoteric signification; the Curse, in its philosophical meaning, of being incarnated on this Earth; an unavoidable rung in the Ladder of Cosmic Evolution, a highly philosophical and fitting Karmic Law, without which the presence of Evil on Earth would have to remain for ever a closed mystery to the understanding of true Philosophy. To say, as the author of _Esprits Tombés des Paiens_ does, that since—

Christianity is made to rest on two pillars, that of evil (πουηροῦ), and of good (ἀγαθοῦ); on two forces, in short (ἀγαθαὶ καὶ κακαὶ δυνάμεις): hence, if we suppress the punishment of the _evil forces_, the protecting mission of the good powers will have neither value nor sense

—is to utter the most unphilosophical absurdity. If it fits in with, and explains, Christian dogma, it obscures the facts and truths of the primitive Wisdom of the ages. The cautious hints of Paul have all the true Esoteric meaning, and it took centuries of scholastic casuistry to give them the false colouring in their present interpretations. The Verbum and Lucifer are one in their dual aspect; and the “Prince of the Air” (_princeps aeris hujus_) is not the “God of _that_ period,” but an everlasting principle. When the latter was said to be ever _circling_ around the world (_qui circumambulat terram_), the great Apostle referred simply to the never‐ceasing cycles of human incarnations, in which evil will ever predominate unto the day when Humanity is redeemed by the true divine Enlightenment which gives the correct perception of things.

It is easy to disfigure vague expressions written in dead and long‐ forgotten languages, and palm them off on the ignorant masses as truths and _revealed_ facts. The identity of thought and meaning is the one thing that strikes the student in all the religions which mention the tradition of the Fallen Spirits, and in those great religions there is not one that fails to mention and describe it in one or another form. Thus, Hoang‐ty, the Great Spirit, sees his Sons, who had acquired _active wisdom_, falling into the Valley of Pain. Their leader, the Flying Dragon, having drunk of the forbidden Ambrosia, _fell to the Earth_ with his Host (Kings). In the _Zend Avesta_, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), surrounding himself with Fire (the “Flames” of the Stanzas), seeks to conquer the Heavens,(1185) when Ahura Mazda, descending from the _solid_ Heaven he inhabits, to the help of the Heavens _that revolve_ (in time and space, the manifested worlds of cycles including those of incarnation), and the Amshaspands, the “seven bright Sravah,” accompanied by their stars, fight Ahriman, and the vanquished Devas fall to the Earth along with him.(1186) In the _Vendîdâd_ the Daêvas are called “evil‐doing,” and are shown to rush away “into the depths of the ... world of hell,” or Matter.(1187) This is an allegory which shows the Devas _compelled to incarnate_, once that they have separated themselves from their Parent Essence, or, in other words, after the Unit had become multiple, after differentiation and manifestation.

Typhon the Egyptian Python, the Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all belong to the same legend of Spirits peopling the Earth. They are not “_Demons_ commissioned to create and organize this visible universe,” but the Fashioners or “Architects” of the Worlds, and the Progenitors of Man. They are the _Fallen_ Angels, metaphorically—the “true mirrors” of the “Eternal Wisdom.”

What is the complete truth as well as the Esoteric meaning about this universal myth? The whole essence of truth _cannot be transmitted from mouth to ear_. Nor can any pen describe it, not even that of the Recording Angel, unless man finds the answer in the sanctuary of his own heart, in the innermost depths of his divine intuition. It is the great _Seventh Mystery_ of Creation, the first and the last; and those who read St. John’s _Apocalypse_ may find its shadow lurking under the _seventh seal_. It can be represented only in its apparent, objective form, like the eternal riddle of the Sphinx. If the Sphinx threw herself into the sea and perished, it is not because Œdipus _had_ unriddled the secret of the ages, but because, by anthropomorphizing the ever‐spiritual and the subjective, he had dishonoured the great truth for ever. Therefore, we can give it only from its philosophical and intellectual planes, unlocked with three keys respectively—for the last four keys of the seven that throw wide open the portals to the Mysteries of Nature are in the hands of the highest Initiates, and cannot be divulged to the masses at large—not in this century, at any rate.

The dead‐letter is everywhere the same. The dualism in the Mazdean religion was born from exoteric interpretation. The holy Airyaman, the “bestower of weal,”(1188) invoked in the prayer called Airyama‐ishyô, is the divine aspect of Ahriman, “the deadly, the Daêva of the Daêvas,”(1189) and Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. “Keep us from our hater, O Mazda and Ârmaita Spenta,”(1190) has, as a prayer and invocation, an identical meaning with “Lead us not into temptation,” and is addressed by man to the terrible _spirit of duality_ in man himself. For Ahura Mazda is the Spiritual, Divine, and Purified Man, and Ârmaita Spenta, the Spirit of the Earth or materiality, is the same as Ahriman or Angra Mainyu in one sense.

The whole of the Magian or Mazdean literature—or what remains of it—is magical, occult, hence allegorical and symbolical, even its “mystery of the law.”(1191) Now the Mobed and the Parsî keep their eye on the Baresma during the sacrifice—the divine twig off Ormazd’s “Tree” having been transformed into a bunch of metallic rods—and wonder why neither the Amesha Spentas, nor “the high and beautiful golden Haômas, nor even their Vohu‐Manô (good thoughts), nor their Râta (sacrificial offering),” help them much. Let them meditate on the “Tree of Wisdom,” and by study assimilate, one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the Tree of Eternal Life, the white Haôma, the Gaokerena, is through one end of the Earth to the other; and Haôma is in Heaven as it is on Earth. But to become once more a priest of it, and a “healer,” man must heal himself, for this must be done before he can heal others.

This proves once more that, in order to be dealt with, with at least an approximate degree of justice, the so‐called “myths” have to be closely examined from all their aspects. In truth, every one of the seven keys has to be used in its right place, and never mixed with the others—if we would unveil the entire cycle of mysteries. In our day of dreary soul‐killing Materialism, the ancient Priest‐Initiates have become, in the opinion of our learned generations, the synonyms of clever impostors, kindling the fires of superstition in order to obtain an easier sway over the minds of men. This is an unfounded calumny, generated by scepticism and uncharitable thoughts. No one believed more than they did in Gods—or, we may call them, the spiritual and now invisible Powers, or Spirits, the Noumena of the phenomena; and they believed simply because _they knew_. And though after being initiated into the Mysteries of Nature, they were forced to withhold their knowledge from the profane, who would have surely abused it, such secrecy was undeniably less dangerous than the policy of their usurpers and successors. The former taught only that which they well knew. The latter, teaching what _they do not know_, have invented, as a secure haven for their ignorance, a jealous and cruel Deity, who forbids man to pry into his mysteries under the penalty of damnation; as well they may, for _his_ mysteries can at best be only hinted at in polite ears, never described. Turn to King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_, and see for yourself what was the primitive Ark of the Covenant, according to the author, who says:

There is a Rabbinical tradition ... that the Cherubim placed over it were represented as male and female, in the act of copulation, in order to express the grand doctrine of the Essence of _Form_ and _Matter_, the two principles of all things. When the Chaldeans broke into the Sanctuary and beheld this most astounding emblem, they naturally enough exclaimed, “Is this your God, of whom you boast, that He is such a lover of purity!”(1192)

King thinks that this tradition “savours too much of Alexandrian philosophy to demand any credit,” to which we demur. The shape and form of the wings of the two Cherubim standing on the right and left sides of the Ark, these wings meeting over the “Holy of Holies,” are an _emblem_ quite eloquent in itself, not to speak of the “holy” Jod within the Ark! The Mystery of Agathodæmon, whose legend states, “I am Chnumis, Sun of the Universe, 700,” can alone solve the mystery of Jesus, the number of whose name is “888.” It is not the key of St. Peter, or the Church dogma, but the Narthex—the Wand of the Candidate for Initiation—that has to be wrenched from the grasp of the long‐silent Sphinx of the ages. Meanwhile:

The augurs, who, upon meeting each other, have to thrust their tongues into their cheeks to suppress a fit of laughter, may be more numerous in our own age than they ever were in the day of Sylla.

Section VI. Prometheus, the Titan.

His Origin In Ancient India.

In our modern day there is not the slightest doubt in the minds of the best European symbologists that the name Prometheus possessed the greatest and most mysterious significance in antiquity. While giving the history of Deucalion, whom the Bœotians regarded as the ancestor of the human races, and who was the son of Prometheus, according to the significant legend, the author of the _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_ remarks:

Thus Prometheus is something more than the archetype of humanity; he is its _generator_. In the same way that we saw Hephæstus moulding the first woman [Pandora] and endowing her with life, so Prometheus kneads the moist clay, of which he fashions the body of the first man whom he will endow with the soul‐spark.(1193) After the flood of Deucalion, Zeus, they said, had commanded Prometheus and Athena to call forth a new race of men from the mire left by the waters of the deluge,(1194) and, in the day of Pausanias, the slime which the hero had used for this purpose was still shown in Phocis.(1195) On several archaic monuments we still see Prometheus modelling a human body, either alone or with Athena’s help.(1196)

The same author reminds us of another equally mysterious personage, though one less generally known than Prometheus, whose legend offers remarkable analogies with that of the Titan. The name of this second ancestor and generator is Phoroneus, the hero of an ancient poem, now unfortunately no longer extant, the Phoroneidæ. His legend was localized in Argolis, where a perpetual flame was preserved on his altar as a reminder that he was the bringer of fire upon earth.(1197) A benefactor of men, like Prometheus, he had made them participators of every bliss on earth. Plato(1198) and Clemens Alexandrinus(1199) say that Phoroneus was the first man, or the “father of mortals.” His genealogy, which assigns to him the river Inachos as his father, reminds us of that of Prometheus, which makes that Titan the son of the Oceanid Clymene. But the mother of Phoroneus was the nymph Melia: a significant descent which distinguishes him from Prometheus.(1200)

Melia, Decharme thinks, is the personification of the “Ash‐tree,” whence, according to Hesiod, issued the race of the age of Bronze,(1201) and which with the Greeks is the _celestial tree_ common to every Âryan mythology. This Ash is the Yggdrasil of Norse antiquity, which the Norns sprinkle daily with the waters from the fountain of Urd, that it may not wither. It remains verdant till the last days of the Golden Age. Then the Norns—the three sisters who gaze respectively into the Past, the Present, and the Future—make known the decree of Orlog or Fate (Karma), but men are conscious only of the Present.

[But when] Gultweig (gold‐ore) comes, the bewitching enchantress ... who, thrice cast into the fire, arises each time more beautiful than before and fills the souls of gods and men with unappeasable longing, then the Norns ... enter into being, and the blessed peace of childhood’s dreams passes away, and sin comes into existence with all its evil consequences [and Karma].(1202)

The thrice‐purified Gold is—Manas, the Conscious Soul.

With the Greeks, the Ash‐tree represented the same idea. Its luxuriant boughs are the Sidereal Heaven, golden by day and studded with stars by night—the fruits of Melia and Yggdrasil, under whose protecting shadow humanity lived during the Golden Age without desire as without fear. “That tree had a fruit, or an inflamed bough, _which was lightning_”—Decharme guesses.

And here steps in the killing Materialism of the age, that peculiar twist in the modern mind, which, like a Northern blast, bends all on its way, and freezes every intuition, allowing it no hand in the physical speculations of the day. After having seen in Prometheus no more than “fire by friction,” the learned author of the _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_ perceives in this “fruit” a trifle more than an allusion to terrestrial fire and its discovery. It is no longer fire, owing to the fall of lightning setting some dry fuel in a blaze, and thus revealing all its priceless benefits to palæolithic men—but something more mysterious this time, though still as earthly!

A divine bird, nestled in the branches [of the celestial Ash‐ tree], stole that bough [or the fruit] and carried it down on the earth in its bill. Now the Greek word Φορώνευς is the rigid equivalent of the Sanskrit word _bhuranyu_, “the rapid,” an epithet of Agni, considered as the carrier of the divine spark. Phoroneus, son of Melia or of the celestial ash, thus corresponds to a conception far more ancient, probably, than that one which transformed the _pramantha_ [of the old Âryan Hindûs] into the Greek Prometheus. Phoroneus is the [personified] bird, that brings the heavenly lightning to the earth. Traditions relating to the birth of the race of Bronze, and those which made of Phoroneus the father of the Argolians, are an evidence to us that this thunderbolt [or lightning], as in the legend of Hephæstus or Prometheus, was the origin of the human race.(1203)

This still affords us no more than the external meaning of the symbols and the allegory. It is now supposed that the name of Prometheus has been unriddled. But the modern Mythologists and Orientalists see in it no longer what their fathers saw on the authority of the whole of classical antiquity. They only find therein something far more appropriate to the spirit of the age, namely, a phallic element. But the name of Phoroneus, as well as that of Prometheus, bears not one, nor even two, but a series of esoteric meanings. Both relate to the _seven_ Celestial Fires; to Agni Abhimânin, his three sons, and their forty‐five sons, constituting the Forty‐nine Fires. Do all these numbers relate only to the terrestrial mode of fire and to the flame of sexual passion? Did the Hindû Âryan mind never soar above such purely sensual conceptions; that mind which is declared by Prof. Max Müller to be the most spiritual and mystically inclined on the whole globe? The number of those fires alone ought to have suggested an inkling of the truth.

We are told that one is no longer permitted, in this age of rational thought, to explain the name of Pro‐metheus as the old Greeks did. The latter, it seems:

Basing themselves on the apparent analogy of προμηθεύς with the verb προμανθύνειν, saw in him the type of the “foreseeing” man, to whom, for the sake of symmetry, a brother was added—Epi‐metheus, or “he who takes counsel _after_ the event.”(1204)

But now the Orientalists have decided otherwise. They know the real meaning of the two names better than those who invented them. The legend is based upon an event of universal importance. It was built to commemorate

A great event which must have strongly impressed itself upon the imagination of the first witnesses, and its remembrance has never since faded out from popular memory.(1205)

What was this? Laying aside every poetical _fiction_, all those dreams of the Golden Age, let us imagine—argue the modern scholars—in all its gross realism, the first miserable state of humanity, the striking picture of which was traced for us after Æschylus by Lucretius, and the exact truth of which is now confirmed by Science; and then we may understand better that a new life really began for man, on that day when he saw the first spark produced by the friction of two pieces of wood, or from the veins of a flint. How could men help feeling gratitude to that mysterious and marvellous being which they were henceforth enabled to create at their will, and which was no sooner born, than it grew and expanded, developing with singular power.

This terrestrial flame, was it not analogous in nature to that which sent them from above its light and heat, or which frightened them in the thunderbolt? Was it not derived from the same source? And if its origin was in heaven, must it not have been brought down some day on earth? If so, who was the powerful being, the beneficent being, God or man, who had conquered it? Such are the questions which the curiosity of the Âryans offered in the early days of their existence, and which found their answer in the myth of Prometheus.(1206)

The Philosophy of Occult Science finds two weak points in the above reflections, and proceeds to point them out. The miserable state of Humanity described by Æschylus and Lucretius was no more wretched then, in the early days of the Âryans, than it is now. That “state” was limited to the savage tribes; and the now‐existing savages are not a whit more happy or unhappy than their forefathers were a million years ago.

It is an accepted fact in Science that “rude implements, exactly resembling those in use _among existing savages_,” are found in river‐ gravels and caves, geologically “implying an enormous antiquity.” So great is that resemblance that, as the author of _The Modern Zoroastrian_ tells us:

If the collection in the Colonial Exhibition of stone celts and arrow‐heads used by the Bushmen of South Africa were placed side by side with one from the British Museum of similar objects from Kent’s Cavern or the Caves of Dordogne, no one but an expert could distinguish between them.(1207)

And if there are Bushmen existing now, in our age of the highest civilization, who are no higher intellectually than the race of men which inhabited Devonshire and Southern France during the Palæolithic age, why could not the latter have lived simultaneously with, and have been the contemporary of, other races as highly civilized for their day as we are for ours? That the sum of knowledge increases daily in mankind, “but that intellectual capacity does not increase with it,” is shown when the intellect, if not the physical knowledge, of the Euclids, Pythagorases, Pâninis, Kapilas, Platos, and Socrates, is compared with that of the Newtons, Kants, and the modern Huxleys and Hæckels. On comparing the results obtained by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, the Craniologist,(1208) with regard to the internal capacity of the skull—its volume being taken as the standard and test for judging of the intellectual capacities—Dr. Pfaff finds that this capacity among the French (certainly in the highest rank of mankind) is 88.4 cubic inches, being thus “perceptibly smaller than that of the Polynesians generally, which, even among many Papuans and Alfuras of the lowest grade, amounts to 89 and 89.7 cubic inches”; which shows that it is the _quality_ and not the _quantity_ of the brain that is the cause of intellectual capacity. The average index of skulls among various races having been now recognized to be “one of the most characteristic marks of difference between different races,” the following comparison is suggestive:

The index of breadth among the Scandinavians [is] at 75; among the English at 76; among Holsteiners at 77; in Bresgau at 80; Schiller’s skull shows an index of breadth even of 82 ... the Madurese also 82!

Finally, the same comparison between the oldest skulls known and the European, brings to light the startling fact that:

_Most of these old skulls, belonging to the stone period, are above rather than below the average of the brain of the now living man in volume._

Calculating the measures for the height, breadth, and length in inches from the average measurements of several skulls, the following sums are obtained:

1. Old Northern skulls of the stone age: 18.877 ins. 2. Average of 48 skulls of the same period from England: 18.858 ins. 3. Average of 7 skulls of the same period from Wales: 18.649 ins. 4. Average of 36 skulls of the stone age from France: 18.220 ins.

The average of the now living Europeans is 18.579 inches; of Hottentots, 17.795 inches!

These figures show plainly that:

The size of the brain of the oldest populations known to us is not such as to place them on a lower level than that of the now living inhabitants of the Earth.(1209)

Besides which, they show the “missing link” vanishing into thin air. Of these, however, more anon: we must return to our direct subject.

As the “Prometheus Vinctus” of Æschylus tells us, the race which Jupiter so ardently desired “to quench, and plant a new one in its stead” (v. 241), suffered _mental_, not physical misery. The first boon Prometheus gave to mortals, as he tells the Chorus, was to hinder them “from _foreseeing_ death” (v. 256); he “saved the mortal race from sinking blasted down to Hades’ gloom” (v. 244); and then only, “besides” that, he gave them fire (v. 260). This shows plainly the dual character at any rate of the Promethean myth, if Orientalists will not accept the existence of the _seven keys_ taught in Occultism. This relates to the first opening of man’s spiritual perceptions, not to his first seeing or “discovering” fire. For fire was never _discovered_, but existed on Earth since its beginning. It existed in the seismic activity of the early ages, volcanic eruptions being as frequent and constant in those periods as fog is in England now. And if we are told that men appeared so late on Earth that all but a few volcanoes were already extinct, and that geological disturbances had made room for a more settled state of things, we answer: Let a new race of men—whether evolved from Angel or Gorilla—appear now on any uninhabited spot of the Globe, with the exception perhaps of the Sahara, and a thousand to one it would not be a year or two old before “discovering fire,” through lightning setting the grass or something else in flames. This assumption, that primitive man lived ages on Earth before he was made acquainted with fire, is one of the most painfully illogical of all. But old Æschylus was an Initiate, and knew well what he was giving out.(1210)

No Occultist acquainted with symbology and the fact that Wisdom came to us from the East, will for a moment deny that the myth of Prometheus has reached Europe from Âryâvarta. Nor is he likely to deny that in one sense Prometheus represents “fire by friction.” Therefore, he admires the sagacity of M. F. Baudry, who shows in “Les Mythes du Feu et du Breuvage Céleste”(1211) one of the aspects of Prometheus and his origin from India. He shows the reader the _supposed_ primitive process to obtain fire, still in use to‐day in India to light the sacrificial flame. This is what he says:

This process, such as it is minutely described in the Vedic Sûtras, consists in rapidly turning a stick in a socket made in the centre of a piece of wood. The friction develops intense heat and ends by setting on fire the particles of wood in contact. The motion of the stick is not a continuous rotation, but a series of motions in contrary senses, by means of a cord fixed to the stick in its middle; the operator holds one of the ends in each hand and pulls them alternately.... The full process is designated in Sanskrit by the verb _manthâmi, mathnáni_, which means “to rub, agitate, shake and obtain by rubbing,” and is especially applied to rotatory friction, as is proved by its derivative _mandala_, which signifies a circle.... The pieces of wood serving for the production of fire have each their name in Sanskrit. The stick which turns is called _pramantha_; the discus which receives it is called _arani_ and _aranî_: “the two aranis” designating the _ensemble_ of the instrument.(1212)

It remains to be seen what the Brâhmans will say to this. But even supposing that Prometheus, in one of the aspects of his myth, was conceived as the producer of fire by means of the Pramantha, or as an animate and divine Pramantha, would this imply that the symbolism had no other than the phallic meaning attributed to it by modern symbologists? Decharme, at any rate, seems to have a correct glimmering of the truth; for he unconsciously corroborates all that the Occult Sciences teach with regard to the Mânasa Devas, who have endowed man with the consciousness of his immortal soul—that consciousness which hinders man “from foreseeing death,” and makes him _know_ he is immortal.(1213) “How did Prometheus come into possession of the [divine] spark?” he asks.

Fire having its abode in heaven, it is there he must have gone to find it before he could carry it down to men, and, to approach the gods, he must have been a god himself.(1214)

The Greeks held that he was of the _Divine_ Race, “the son of the Titan Iapetos”;(1215) the Hindûs, that he was a Deva.

But celestial fire belonged in the beginning to the gods alone; it was a treasure they reserved for themselves ... over which they jealously watched.... “The prudent son of Iapetus,” says Hesiod, “deceived Jupiter by stealing and concealing in the cavity of a narthex, the indefatigable fire of the resplendent glow.”(1216) ... Thus the gift made by Prometheus to men was a conquest made from heaven. Now according to Greek ideas [in this identical with those of the Occultists], this possession forced from Jupiter, this human trespassing upon the property of the gods, had to be followed by an expiation.... Prometheus, moreover, belongs to that race of Titans who had rebelled(1217) against the gods, and whom the master of Olympus had hurled down into Tartarus; like them, he is the genius of evil, doomed to cruel suffering.(1218)

What is most revolting in the explanations that follow, is the one‐sided view taken of this grandest of all myths. The most intuitional among modern writers cannot, or will not, rise in their conceptions above the level of the Earth and cosmic phenomena. It is not denied that the moral idea in the myth, as presented in the _Theogony_ of Hesiod, plays a certain part in the primitive Greek conception. The Titan is more than a thief of the celestial fire. He is the representation of humanity—active, industrious, intelligent, but at the same time ambitious, which aims at equalling divine powers. Therefore it is humanity punished in the person of Prometheus, but it is only so with the Greeks. With them, Prometheus is not a criminal, save in the eyes of the Gods. In his relation with the Earth, he is, on the contrary, a God himself, a friend of mankind (φιλάνθρωπος), which he has raised to civilization and initiated into the knowledge of all the arts; a conception which found its most poetical expounder in Æschylus. But with all other nations Prometheus is—what? The Fallen Angel, Satan, as the Church would have it? Not at all. _He is simply the image of the pernicious and dreaded effects of lightning._ He is the “evil fire” (_mal feu_)(1219) _and the symbol of the divine reproductive male organ_.

Reduced to its simple expression, the myth we are trying to explain is then simply a [cosmic] genius of fire.(1220)

It is the former idea (the phallic) which was _preëminently_ Âryan, if we believe Adalbert Kuhn(1221) and F. Baudry. For:

The fire used by man being the result of the action of _pramantha_ in the _arani_, the Âryas _must have_ ascribed [?] the same origin to celestial fire, and they _must have_(1222) imagined [?] that a god armed with the pramantha, or a divine pramantha, caused a violent friction in the bosom of the clouds, which gave birth to lightning and thunderbolts.(1223)

This idea is supported by the fact that, according to Plutarch’s testimony,(1224) the Stoics thought that thunder was the result of the struggle of storm‐clouds, and lightning a conflagration due to friction; while Aristotle saw in the thunderbolt only the action of clouds which clashed with each other. What was this theory, if not the scientific translation of the production of fire by friction?... Everything leads us to think that, from the highest antiquity, and before the dispersion of the Âryas, it was believed that the pramantha lighted the fire in the storm‐cloud as well as in the aranis.(1225)

Thus, suppositions and idle hypotheses are made to stand for discovered truths. Defenders of the biblical dead‐letter could not help the writers of missionary tracts more effectually than do materialistic Symbologists in thus taking for granted that the ancient Âryans based their religious conceptions on no higher thought than the physiological.

But it is not so, and the very spirit of Vedic Philosophy is against such an interpretation. For if, as Decharme himself confesses:

This idea of the creative power of fire is explained ... by the ancient assimilation of the human soul to a celestial spark(1226)

—as shown by the imagery often made use of in the _Vedas_ when speaking of Arani, it would mean something higher than simply a gross sexual conception. A Hymn to Agni in the _Veda_ is cited as an example:

Here is the pramantha; the generator is ready. Bring the mistress of the race (the female aranî). Let us produce Agni by attrition, according to ancient custom.

This means no worse than an abstract idea expressed in the tongue of mortals. The female Aranî, the “mistress of the race,” is Aditi, the Mother of the Gods, or Shekinah, Eternal Light—in the World of Spirit, the “Great Deep” and Chaos; or Primordial Substance in its first remove from the Unknown, in the Manifested Kosmos. If, ages later, the same epithet is applied to Devakî, the Mother of Krishna, or the incarnated Logos; and if the symbol, owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread of exoteric religions, may now be regarded as having a sexual significance, this in no way mars the original purity of the image. The subjective had been transformed into the objective; Spirit had fallen into Matter. The universal kosmic polarity of Spirit‐Substance had become, in human thought, the mystic, but still sexual, union of Spirit and Matter, and had thus acquired an anthropomorphic colouring which it had never had in the beginning. Between the _Vedas_ and the _Purânas_ there is an abyss of which they are the poles, like as are the seventh principle, the Âtmâ, and the first or lowest principle, the Physical Body, in the septenary constitution of Man. The primitive and purely spiritual language of the _Vedas_, conceived many decades of millenniums earlier than the Paurânic accounts, found a purely human expression for the purpose of describing events which took place 5,000 years ago, the date of Krishna’s death, from which day the Kali Yuga, or Black Age, began for mankind.

As Aditi is called Surârani, the Matrix or “Mother” of the Suras or Gods, so Kuntî, the mother of the Pândavas, is called in the _Mahâbhârata_ Pândavârani(1227)—and the term is now _physiologized_. But Devakî, the antetype of the Roman Catholic Madonna, is a later anthropomorphized form of Aditi. The latter is the Goddess‐mother, or Deva‐mâtri, of seven Sons (the six and the seven Âdityas of early Vedic times); the mother of Krishna, Devakî, has six embryos conveyed into her womb by Jagad‐dhâtri, the “Nurse of the World,” the seventh, Krishna, the Logos, being transferred to that of Rohinî. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the mother of seven children, of five sons and two daughters (a later transformation of sex), in Matthew’s Gospel.(1228) No one of the worshippers of the Roman Catholic Virgin would object to reciting in her honour the prayer addressed by the Gods to Devakî. Let the reader judge.

Thou art that Prakriti [essence], infinite and subtile, which formerly bore Brahmâ in its womb.... Thou, eternal being, comprising, in thy substance, the essence of all created things, wast identical with creation; thou wast the parent of the tri‐form sacrifice, becoming the germ of all things. Thou art sacrifice, whence all fruit proceeds; thou art the Aranî, whose attrition engenders fire.(1229) As Aditi, thou art the parent of the gods.... Thou art light [Jyotsnâ, the morning twilight],(1230) whence day is begotten. Thou art humility [Samnati, a daughter of Daksha], the mother of wisdom; thou art Niti, the parent of harmony (Naya);(1231) thou art modesty, the progenitrix of affection [Prashraya, explained by Vinaya]; thou art desire, of whom love is born.... Thou art ... the mother of knowledge [Avabodha]; thou art patience [Dhriti], the parent of fortitude [Dhairya].(1232)

Thus Aranî is shown here to be the same as the Roman Catholic “Vase of Election.” As to its primitive meaning, it was purely metaphysical. No unclean thought traversed these conceptions in the ancient mind. Even in the _Zohar_—far less metaphysical in its symbology than any other symbolism—the idea is an abstraction and nothing more. Thus, when the _Zohar_ says:

All that which exists, all that which has been formed by the ancient, whose name is holy, can only exist through a male and female principle.(1233)

It means no more than that the divine Spirit of Life is ever coalescing with Matter. It is the Will of the Deity that acts; and the idea is purely Schopenhauerian.

When Atteekah Kaddosha, the ancient and the concealed of the concealed, desired to form all things, it formed all things like male and female. This wisdom comprises _all_ when it goeth forth.

Hence Chokmah (male Wisdom) and Binah (female Consciousness or Intellect) are said to create all between the two—the active and the passive principles. As the eye of the expert jeweller discerns under the rough and uncouth oyster shell the pure immaculate pearl, enshrined within its bosom, his hand touching the shell but to get at its contents, so the eye of the true Philosopher reads between the lines of the _Purânas_ the sublime Vedic truths, and corrects the form with the help of the Vedântic Wisdom. Our Orientalists, however, never perceive the pearl under the thick coating of the shell and—act accordingly.

From all that has been said in this Section, one sees clearly that, between the Serpent of Eden and the Devil of Christianity, there is an abyss. Alone the sledge hammer of Ancient Philosophy can kill this dogma.

Section VII. Enoïchion‐Henoch.

The history of the evolution of the Satanic Myth would not be complete if we omitted to notice the character of the mysterious and cosmopolitan Enoch, variously called Enos, Hanoch, and finally Enoïchion by the Greeks. It is from his book that the first notions of the Fallen Angels were taken by the early Christian writers.

The _Book of Enoch_ is declared apocryphal. But what is an _apocryphon_? The very etymology of the term shows that it is simply a _secret_ book, _i.e._, one that belonged to the catalogue of temple‐libraries under the guardianship of the Hierophants and Initiated Priests, and was never meant for the profane. _Apocryphon_ comes from the verb _crypto_ (κρύπτω), “to hide.” For ages the _Enoïchion_, the Book of the Seer, was preserved in the “city of letters” and secret works—the ancient Kirjath‐sepher, later on, Debir.(1234)

Some of the writers interested in the subject—especially Masons—have tried to identify Enoch with Thoth of Memphis, the Greek Hermes, and even with the Latin Mercury. As individuals, all of these are distinct one from the other; professionally—if one may use this word, now so limited in its sense—one and all belong to the same category of sacred writers, of Initiators and Recorders of Occult and ancient Wisdom. Those who in the _Korân_(1235) are generically termed the Edris, or the “Learned,” the Initiated, bore in Egypt the name of “Thoth,” the inventor of Arts, Sciences, of writing or letters, of Music and Astronomy. Among the Jews Edris became “Enoch,” who, according to Bar‐Hebræus, “was the first inventor of writing,” books, Arts, and Sciences, the first who reduced to a system the progress of the planets.(1236) In Greece he was called Orpheus, and thus changed his name with every nation. The number seven being attached to, and connected with, each of those primitive Initiators,(1237) as well as the number 365, of the days in the year, astronomically, it identifies the mission, character, and the sacred office of all these men, but certainly not their personalities. Enoch is the _seventh_ Patriarch; Orpheus is the possessor of the Phorminx, the seven‐stringed lyre, which is the seven‐fold mystery of Initiation. Thoth, with the seven‐rayed Solar Discus on his head, travels in the Solar Boat (the 365 degrees), jumping out every fourth (leap) year for one day. Finally, Thoth‐Lunus is the septenary God of the seven days, or the week. Esoterically and spiritually, Enoïchion means the “Seer of the Open Eye.”

The story about Enoch, told by Josephus, namely, that he had concealed his precious Rolls or Books under the pillars of Mercury or Seth, is the same as that told of Hermes, the “Father of Wisdom,” who concealed his Books of Wisdom under a pillar, and then, discovering the two pillars of stone, found the Science written thereon. Yet Josephus, notwithstanding his constant efforts in the direction of Israel’s unmerited glorification, and though he does attribute that Science (of Wisdom) to the _Jewish_ Enoch—writes _history_. He shows these pillars as still existing during his own time.(1238) He tells us that they were built by Seth; and so they may have been, only neither by the Patriarch of that name, the fabled son of Adam, nor by the Egyptian God of Wisdom—Teth, Set, Thoth, Tat, Sat (the later Sat‐an), or Hermes, who are all one—but by the “Sons of the Serpent‐ God,” or “Sons of the Dragon,” the name under which the Hierophants of Egypt and Babylon were known before the Deluge, as were their forefathers, the Atlanteans.

What Josephus tells us, therefore, with the exception of the application made of it, must be true _allegorically_. According to his version the two famous pillars were entirely covered with hieroglyphics, which, after their discovery, were copied and reproduced in the most secret corners of the inner temples of Egypt, and thus became the source of its Wisdom and exceptional learning. These two “pillars,” however, are the prototypes of the two “tables of stones” hewn by Moses at the command of the “Lord.” Hence, in saying that all the great Adepts and Mystics of antiquity—such as Orpheus, Hesiod, Pythagoras and Plato—got the elements of their Theology from those hieroglyphics, he is right in one sense, and wrong in another. The Secret Doctrine teaches us that the Arts, Sciences, Theology, and especially the Philosophy of every nation which preceded the last _universally known_, but not universal, Deluge, had been recorded ideographically from the primitive oral records of the Fourth Race, and that these were the inheritance of the latter from the early Third Root‐ Race before the allegorical Fall. Hence, also, the Egyptian pillars, the tablets, and even the “white oriental porphyry stone” of the Masonic legend—which Enoch, fearing that the real and precious secrets would be lost, concealed before the Deluge in the bowels of the Earth—were simply the more or less symbolical and allegorical copies from the primitive Records. The _Book of Enoch_ is one of such copies, and is, moreover, a Chaldæan, and now very incomplete, compendium. As already said, Enoïchion means in Greek the “Inner Eye,” or the Seer; in Hebrew, _with the help of Masoretic points_, it means the “Initiator” and “Instructor” (חֲנוֹךּ). Enoch is a generic title; and, moreover, his legend is that of several other prophets, Jewish and Heathen, with changes of made‐up details, the root‐form being the same. Elijah is also taken up into Heaven “alive”; and the Astrologer, at the court of Isdubar, the Chaldæan Hea‐bani, is likewise raised to Heaven by the God Hea, who was _his_ patron, as Jehovah was of Elijah, whose name means in Hebrew “God‐Jah,” Jehovah (אֶלְיָה),(1239) and again of Elihu, which has the same meaning. This kind of easy death, or _euthanasia_, has an Esoteric meaning. It symbolizes the “death” of any Adept who has reached the power and degree, and also the purification, which enable him to “die” in the Physical Body, and _still live and lead a conscious life_ in his Astral Body. The variations on this theme are endless, but the secret meaning is ever the same. The Pauline expression,(1240) “that he should not see death” (_ut non videret mortem_), has thus an Esoteric meaning, but nothing _supernatural_ in it. The mangled interpretation given of some biblical hints to the effect that Enoch, “whose years will equal those of the world” (of the _solar_ year, 365 days), will share with Christ and the prophet Elijah the honours and bliss of the last Advent and of the destruction of Antichrist(1241)—signify Esoterically, that some of the Great Adepts will return in the Seventh Race, when all Error will be made away with, and the advent of Truth will be heralded by those Shishta, the holy “Sons of Light.”

The Latin Church is not always logical, nor prudent. She declares the _Book of Enoch_ an _apocryphon_, and has gone so far as to claim, through Cardinal Cajetan and other luminaries of the Church, the rejection from the Canon of even the Book of Jude, who, otherwise, as an _inspired_ apostle, would quote from and thus sanctify the _Book of Enoch_, which is alleged to be an apocryphal work. Fortunately, some of the dogmatics perceived the peril in time. Had they accepted Cajetan’s resolution, they would have been forced to reject likewise the Fourth Gospel; as St. John borrows literally from Enoch, and places _a whole sentence_ from him, in the mouth of Jesus!(1242)

Ludolph, the “father of Ethiopic literature,” commissioned to investigate the various Enochian MSS. presented by Pereisc, the traveller, to the Mazarine Library, declared that “no _Book of Enoch_ could exist among the Abyssinians”! Further researches and discoveries worsted this too dogmatic assertion, as all know. Bruce and Ruppel did find the _Book of Enoch_ in Abyssinia, and what is more, brought it to Europe some years later, and Bishop Laurence translated it. But Bruce despised it, and scoffed at its contents; as did all the rest of the Scientists. He declared it a _Gnostic_ work, concerning the Age of Giants who devour men—and bearing a strong resemblance to the _Apocalypse_.(1243) Giants! another _fairy‐ tale_!

Such, however, has not been the opinion of all the best critics. Dr. Hanneberg places the _Book of Enoch_ along with the _Third Book of the Maccabees—at the head of the list of those whose authority stands the nearest to that of the canonical works_.(1244)

Verily, “where doctors disagree...”!

As usual, however, they are all right and all wrong. To accept Enoch as a biblical character, a single living person, is like accepting Adam as the first man. Enoch was a generic title, applied to, and borne by, scores of individuals, at all times and ages, and in every race and nation. This may be easily inferred from the fact that the ancient Talmudists and the teachers of Midrashim are not agreed generally in their views about Hanokh, the Son of Yered. Some say Enoch was a great Saint, beloved by God, and “taken alive to heaven,” _i.e._, one who reached Mukti or Nirvâna, on Earth, as Buddha did and others still do; and others maintain that he was a sorcerer, a wicked magician. This shows only that “Enoch,” or its equivalent, was a term, even during the days of the later Talmudists, which meant “Seer,” “Adept in the Secret Wisdom,” etc., without any specification as to the character of the title‐bearer. Josephus, speaking of Elijah and Enoch,(1245) remarks that:

It is written in the sacred books they [Elijah and Enoch] disappeared, but so that nobody knew that they died.

It means simply that _they had died in their personalities_, as Yogîs die to this day in India, or even some Christian monks—to the world. They disappear from the sight of men and die—on the terrestrial plane—even for themselves. A seemingly figurative way of speaking, yet _literally true_.

“Hanokh transmitted the science of (astronomical) calculation and of computing the seasons to Noah,” says the Midrash _Pirkah_;(1246) R. Eliezar referring to Enoch that which others did to Hermes Trismegistus, for the two are identical in their Esoteric meaning. “Hanokh” in this case, and his “Wisdom,” belong to the cycle of the Fourth Atlantean Race,(1247) and Noah to that of the Fifth.(1248) In this case both represent the Root‐Races, the present one and the one that preceded it. In another sense, Enoch disappeared, “he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him”; the allegory referring to the disappearance of the Sacred and Secret Knowledge from among men; for “God” (or Java Aleim—the high Hierophants, the Heads of the Colleges of Initiated Priests(1249)) took him; in other words, the Enochs or the Enoïchions, the Seers and their Knowledge and Wisdom, became strictly confined to the Secret Colleges of the Prophets with the Jews, and to the Temples with the Gentiles.

Interpreted with the help of merely the symbolical key, Enoch is the type of the dual nature of man—spiritual and physical. Hence he occupies the centre of the Astronomical Cross, as given by Éliphas Lévi from a secret work, which is a Six‐pointed Star, the “Adonai.” In the upper angle of the upper Triangle is the Eagle; in the left lower angle stands the Lion; in the right, the Bull; while between the Bull and the Lion, over them and under the Eagle, is the face of Enoch or Man.(1250) Now the figures on the upper Triangle represent the Four Races, omitting the First, the Chhâyâs or Shadows, and the “Son of Man,” Enos or Enoch, is in the centre, where he stands between the Fourth and the Fifth Races, for he represents the Secret Wisdom of both. These are the four Animals of _Ezekiel_ and of the _Revelation_. This Double Triangle which, in _Isis Unveiled_, is faced by the Hindû Ardhanârî, is by far the best. For in the latter, only the three (for us) historical Races are symbolized; the Third, the Androgynous, by Ardha‐nârî; the Fourth, symbolized by the strong, powerful Lion; and the Fifth, the Âryan, by that which is its most sacred symbol to this day, the Bull (and the Cow).

A man of great erudition, a French _savant_, M. de Sacy, finds several most singular statements in the _Book of Enoch_, “worthy of the most serious examination,” he says. For instance:

The author [Enoch] makes the solar year consist of 364 days, and seems to know periods of three, of five, and of eight years, followed by _four_ supplementary days, which, in his system, appear to be those of the equinoxes and solstices.(1251)

To which he adds, later on:

I see but one means to palliate them [these “absurdities”]; it is to suppose that the author expounds some fanciful system which may have existed _before the order of Nature had been altered at the period of the Universal Deluge_.(1252)

Precisely so; and the Secret Doctrine teaches that this “order of nature” has been thus altered, and the series of the Earth’s humanities too. For, as the angel Uriel tells Enoch:

Behold, I have showed thee all things, O Enoch; and all things have I revealed to thee. Thou seest the sun, the moon, and _those which conduct the stars_ of heaven, which cause all their operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. In the days of sinners _the years shall be shortened_.... The moon shall change its laws....(1253)

In those days also, years before the Great Deluge that carried away the Atlanteans and changed the face of the whole Earth (because “the _Earth_ [or its axis] _became inclined_”), Nature, geologically, astronomically, and cosmically in general, could not have been the same, just because the Earth _had inclined_. To quote from Enoch:

And Noah cried with a bitter voice, Hear me; hear me; hear me; three times. And he said,... The earth labours and is violently shaken. Surely, I shall perish with it.(1254)

This, by the way, looks like one of those many “inconsistencies,” if the _Bible_ is read literally. For, to say the least, this is a very strange fear in one who had “found grace in the eyes of the Lord” and been told to build an Ark! But here we find the venerable Patriarch expressing as much fear as if, instead of a “friend” of God, he had been one of the Giants doomed by the wrathful Deity. The Earth had already _inclined_, and the deluge of waters had become simply a question of time, and yet Noah seems to know nothing of his intended salvation.

A decree had come indeed; the decree of Nature and the Law of Evolution, that the Earth should change its Race, and that the Fourth Race should be destroyed to make room for a better one. The Manvantara had reached its turning point of _three and a half_ Rounds, and gigantic physical Humanity had reached the acme of gross materiality. Hence the apocalyptic verse that speaks of a commandment gone forth that they may be destroyed, “that _their end may be_”—the end of the Race:

For they _knew_ [truly] every secret of the angels, every oppressive and secret power of the _Satans_, and every power of those who commit sorcery, as well as of those who make molten images in the whole earth.(1255)

And now a natural question. Who could have informed the apocryphal author of this powerful vision—no matter to what age he may be assigned before the day of Galileo—that the Earth could occasionally incline her axis? Whence did he derive such astronomical and geological knowledge if the Secret Wisdom, of which the ancient Rishis and Pythagoras had drunk, is but a fancy, an invention of later ages? Has Enoch read prophetically perchance in Fréderic Klée’s work on the Deluge the lines:

The position of the terrestrial globe with reference to the sun has evidently been, in primitive times, different from what it is now; and this difference must have been caused by a displacement of the axis of rotation of the earth.

This reminds one of that _unscientific_ statement made by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, namely, that the Sun has not always risen where it rises _now_, and that in former times the ecliptic had cut the equator at right angles.(1256)

There are many such “dark sayings” scattered throughout the _Purânas_, _Bible_ and other Mythologies, and to the Occultist they divulge two facts; (_a_) that the Ancients knew as well as, and perhaps better than, the moderns do, Astronomy, Geognosy and Cosmography in general; and (_b_) that the behaviour of the Globe has altered more than once since the primitive state of things. Thus, Xenophantes—on the _blind_ faith of _his_ “ignorant” religion, which taught that Phaeton, in his desire to learn the _hidden_ truth, made the Sun deviate from its usual course—asserts somewhere that, “the Sun turned toward another country”; which is a parallel—slightly more scientific, however, if not as bold—of Joshua stopping the course of the Sun altogether. Yet it may explain the teaching of the Northern Mythology that before the _actual order_ of things the Sun arose in the South, and its placing the Frigid Zone (Jeruskoven) in the East, whereas now it is in the North.(1257)

The _Book of Enoch_, in short, is a _résumé_, a compound of the main features of the history of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Races; a very few prophecies from the present age of the world; a long retrospective, introspective and prophetic summary of universal and quite _historical_ events—geological, ethnological, astronomical, and psychic—with a touch of Theogony out of the antediluvian records. The Book of this mysterious personage is referred to and quoted copiously in the _Pistis Sophia_, and also in the _Zohar_ and its most ancient Midrashim. Origen and Clement of Alexandria held it in the highest esteem. To say, therefore, that it is a Post‐Christian forgery is to utter an absurdity and to become guilty of an anachronism, for Origen, among others, who lived in the second century of the Christian era, mentions it as an ancient and venerable work. The secret and sacred Name and its potency are well and clearly though allegorically described in the old volume. From the eighteenth to the fiftieth chapter, the Visions of Enoch are all descriptive of the Mysteries of Initiation, one of which is the Burning Valley of the “Fallen Angels.”

Perhaps St. Augustine was quite right in saying that the Church rejected the _Book of Enoch_ out of her canon owing to its too great antiquity (_ob nimiam antiquitatem_).(1258) There was no room for the events noticed in it within the limit of the 4004 years B.C. assigned to the world from its “creation”!

Section VIII. The Symbolism of the Mystery‐Names Iao and Jehovah, with their Relation to the Cross and Circle.

When the Abbé Louis Constant, better known as Éliphas Lévi, said in his _Histoire de la Magie_ that the _Sepher Jetzirah_, the _Zohar_, and the _Apocalypse_ of St. John, are the masterpieces of the Occult Sciences, he ought, if he had wished to be correct and clear, to have added—in Europe. It is quite true that these works contain “more _significance_ than words”; and that their “expression is poetical,” while “in numbers” they are “exact.” Unfortunately, however, before any one can appreciate the _poetry_ of the expressions, or the _exactness_ of the numbers, he will have to learn the real significance and meaning of the terms and symbols employed. But man will never learn this so long as he remains ignorant of the fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether in Oriental Esotericism, or in the kabalistical Symbology—the _key, or value, in all their aspects_, of the God‐names, Angel‐names, and Patriarch‐names in the _Bible_, their mathematical or geometrical value, and their relations to manifested Nature.

Therefore, if, on the one hand, the _Zohar_ “astonishes” the mystic, by the profundity of its views and the great simplicity of its images, or the other hand, that work misleads the student by such expressions as those used with respect to Ain Suph and Jehovah, notwithstanding the assurance that:

The book is careful to explain that the human form with which it clothes God is but _an image of the Word_, and that God should not be expressed by any thought, or any form.

It is well known that Origen Clement, and the Rabbis confessed that the _Kabalah_ and the _Bible_ were _veiled and secret_ books; but few know that the Esotericism of the kabalistic books in their present _reëdited_ form is simply another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the primitive symbolism of these secret volumes.

The idea of representing the _hidden_ Deity by the circumference of a circle, and the Creative Power—male and female, or the Androgynous Word—by the diameter across it, is one of the oldest symbols. It is upon this conception that every great Cosmogony has been built. With the old Âryans, the Egyptians, and the Chaldæans, the symbol was complete, as it embraced the idea of the eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its absoluteness, separated entirely from the incipient stage of the so‐called “creation,” and comprised psychological and even spiritual evolution, and its mechanical work, or cosmogonical construction. With the Hebrews, however, though the former conception is to be distinctly found in the _Zohar_, and the _Sepher Jetzirah_, or what remains of the latter—that which has been subsequently embodied in the _Pentateuch_ proper, and especially in _Genesis_, is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical law of creation, or rather of construction; while Theogony is hardly, if at all, outlined.

It is only in the first six chapters of _Genesis_, in the rejected _Book of Enoch_, and the misunderstood and mistranslated poem of _Job_, that true echoes of the Archaic Doctrine may now be found. The key to it is lost now, even among the most learned Rabbis, whose predecessors in the early period of the Middle Ages, in their national exclusiveness and pride, and especially in their profound hatred of Christianity, preferred to cast it into the deep sea of oblivion, rather than to share their knowledge with their relentless and fierce persecutors. Jehovah was their own tribal property, inseparable from, and unfit to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn out of his original frame, which he fitted and which fitted him, the “Lord God of Abraham and Jacob” could hardly be crammed without damage and breakage into the new Christian Canon. Being the weaker, the Judeans could not help the desecration. They kept, however, the secret of the origin of their Adam Kadmon, or male‐ female Jehovah, and the new tabernacle proved a complete misfit for the old God. They were, indeed, avenged!

The statement that Jehovah was the tribal God of the Jews and no higher, will be denied like many other things. Yet the Theologians are not in a position to tell us, in that case, the meaning of the verses in _Deuteronomy_, which say quite plainly:

When the Most High [not the “Lord,” or “Jehovah” either] divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds ... according to the number of the children of Israel.... _The Lord’s_ [Jehovah’s] _portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance_.(1259)

This settles the question. So impudent have been the modern translators of Bibles and Scriptures, and so damaging are these verses, that, following in the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers, each translator has rendered these lines in his own way. While the above‐cited quotation is taken _verbatim_ from the English Authorized Version, in the French Bible,(1260) we find the “Most High” translated by “Souverain” (Sovereign!!), the “sons of Adam” rendered by “the children of men,” and the “Lord” changed into the “Eternal.” For impudent sleight‐of‐hand, the French Protestant Church seems thus to have surpassed even English ecclesiasticism.

Nevertheless, one thing is patent: the “Lord’s [Jehovah’s] portion” is his “chosen people” and none else, for, _Jacob alone is the lot of his inheritance_. What, then, have other nations, who call themselves Âryans, to do with this Semitic Deity, the tribal God of Israel? Astronomically, the “Most High” is the Sun, and the “Lord” is one of his seven planets, whether it be Iao, the Genius of the Moon, or Ildabaoth‐Jehovah, the Genius of Saturn, according to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.(1261) Let the “Angel Gabriel,” the “Lord” of Iran, watch over his people, and Michael‐Jehovah, over his Hebrews. These are not the Gods of other nations, nor were they ever those of Jesus. As each Persian Dev is chained to his planet,(1262) so each Hindû Deva (a “Lord”) has its allotted portion, a world, a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of worlds implies plurality of Gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize, but will never worship the latter.(1263)

It has been repeatedly stated in this work that every religious and philosophical symbol had seven meanings attached to it, each pertaining to its legitimate plane of thought, _i.e._, either purely metaphysical or astronomical; psychic or physiological, etc. These seven meanings and their applications are difficult enough to learn when taken by themselves; but the interpretation and the right comprehension of them become tenfold more puzzling, when, instead of being correlated, or made to flow consecutively out of, and to follow, each other, each, or any one of these meanings, is accepted as the one and sole explanation of the whole symbolical idea. An instance may be given, as it admirably illustrates the statement. Here are two interpretations, given by two learned Kabalists and scholars, of one and the same verse in _Exodus_. Moses beseeches the Lord to show him his “glory.” Evidently it is not the crude dead‐letter phraseology as found in the _Bible_ that is to be accepted. There are _seven_ meanings in the _Kabalah_, of which we may give two as interpreted by the said two scholars. One of them translates while explaining:

“Thou canst not see My face;... I will put thee in a cleft of the rock and I will cover thee with My hand while I pass by. And then I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My _a’hoor_,” _i.e._, My back.(1264)

And then the translator adds in a gloss:

That is, I will show you “My back,” _i.e._, My visible universe, My lower manifestations, but, as a man still in the flesh, thou canst not see My invisible nature. So proceeds the Qabbalah.(1265)

This is correct, and is the cosmo‐metaphysical explanation. And now speaks the other Kabalist, giving the numerical meaning. As it involves a good many suggestive ideas, and is far more fully given, we may allow it more space. This synopsis is from an unpublished MS., and explains more fully what was given in Section III, on the “Holy of Holies.”(1266)

The numbers of the name “Moses” are those of “I am that I am,” so that the names Moses and Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony. The word Moses is משה (5 + 300 + 40), and the sum of the values of its letters is 345; Jehovah—the Genius _par excellence_ of the Lunar Year—assumes the value of 543, or the reverse of 345.

In the third chapter of Exodus, in the 13th and 14th verses, it is said: And Moses said, ... Behold I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them. The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses,

I Am That I Am.

The Hebrew words for this expression are _âhiyé asher âhiyé_, and in the value of the sums of their letters stand thus:

אהיה אשר אהיה 21 501 21

... This being his [God’s] name, the sum of the values composing it, 21, 501, 21 is 543, or simply a use of the simple digit numbers in the name of Moses, ... but now so ordered that the name of 345 is reversed, and reads 543.

So that when Moses asks, “Let me see Thy face or glory,” the other rightly and truly replies, “Thou canst not see my face ... but thou _shalt see me behind_”—the true sense, though not the precise words; for the corner and the _behind_ of 543 is the _face_ of 345. This is

For check and to keep a _strict use_ of a set of numbers to develop certain _grand_ results, for the object of which they are specifically employed.

As the learned Kabalist adds:

In other uses of the numbers, they saw each other face to face. It is strange that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the Gnostic Cabbalistic value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or Joshua. And so also the division of the 24 hours of the day gives three eights as quotient.... The chief end of all this system of Number Checks was to preserve in perpetuity the exact value of the Lunar Year in the Natural measure of Days.

These are the astronomical and numerical meanings in the secret Theogony of sidereo‐cosmical Gods invented by the Chaldæo‐Hebrews,—two meanings out of seven. The other five would astonish the Christians still more.

The series of Œdipuses who have endeavoured to interpret the riddle of the Sphinx, is long indeed. For many ages she has been devouring the brightest and the noblest intellects of Christendom; but now the Sphinx is conquered. In the great intellectual struggle which has ended in the complete victory of the Œdipuses of Symbolism, it is, however, not the Sphinx, who, burning with the shame of defeat, has had to bury herself in the sea, but verily the many‐sided symbol, named Jehovah, whom Christians—the _civilized_ nations—have accepted for their God. The Jehovah symbol has collapsed under the too close analysis, and is—drowned. Symbologists have discovered with dismay that their adopted Deity was only a mask for many other Gods, a _euhemerized_ extinct planet, at best, the Genius of the Moon and Saturn with the Jews, of the Sun and Jupiter with early Christians; that the Trinity—unless they accepted the more abstract and metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles—was, in truth, only an astronomical triad, composed of the Sun (the Father), and the two planets Mercury (the Son) and Venus (the Holy Ghost), Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the “bright and morning star.”(1267) For, if the Father is the Sun (the “Elder Brother,” in the Eastern Inner Philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercury (Hermes, Budha, Thoth), the name of whose Mother on Earth was Maia. Now this planet receives seven times more light than any other; a fact which led the Gnostics to call their Christos, and the Kabalists their Hermes (in the astronomical meaning), the “Seven‐fold Light.” Finally, _this_ God was Bel—the Sun being Bel with the Gauls; Helios, with the Greeks; Baal, with the Phœnicians; El, in Chaldæan, hence El‐ohim, Emanu‐el, and El, “God,” in Hebrew. But even the kabalistic God has vanished in the rabbinical workmanship, and one has now to turn to the innermost metaphysical sense of the _Zohar_ to find in it anything like Ain Suph, the Nameless Deity and the Absolute, so authoritatively and loudly claimed by the Christians. But it is certainly not to be found in the Mosaic books, at any rate by those who try to read without a key to them. Ever since this key was lost, Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two conceptions, but in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the Universal Deity of Its majestic character and primitive meaning.

As was said in _Isis Unveiled_:

It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between the mystery‐god Ιαω, adopted from the highest antiquity by all who

## participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests, and his

phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics.(1268)

In the Ophite gems of King,(1269) we find the name of Iao repeated, and often confounded with that of Ievo, while the latter simply represents one of the Genii antagonistic to Abraxas.... But the name Iao neither originated with, nor was it the sole property of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelary “Spirit,” the alleged protector and national deity of the “chosen people of Israel,” there is yet no possible reason why other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One‐ living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides, there is the fact that Iaho or Iao was a “mystery name” from the beginning, for יהיה and יה never came into use before the time of king David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were compounded with Iah or Jah. It looks rather as though David, being a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines,(1270) brought thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high priest, from whom came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at Hebron (חברון), Habir‐on or Kabeir‐town, where the rites of the four (mystery‐gods) were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. They aspired to build a temple to יהוה, like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.

Says Fürst: “The very ancient name of God, Yâho, written in the Greek Ιαω, appears, apart _from its derivation_, to have been an old mystic name of the Supreme Deity of the Shemites. Hence it was told to Moses when he was initiated at Hor‐eb—the _Cave_—under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite (or Cainite) priest of Midian. In an old religion of the Chaldæans, whose remains are to be found among the Neo‐Platonists, the highest Divinity, enthroned above the seven Heavens, representing the Spiritual Light‐Principle, ... and also conceived of as Demiurgus,(1271) was called Ιαω (יהו), who was, like the Hebrew Yâho, mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the Initiated. The Phœnicians had a Supreme God, whose name was triliteral and _secret_, and he was Ιαω.”(1272)

The cross, say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occultists, is one of the most ancient—nay, perhaps, the _most_ ancient of symbols. This has been demonstrated at the very beginning of the Proem in Volume I. The Eastern Initiates show it coëval with the circle of Deific Infinitude and the first differentiation of the Essence, the union of Spirit and Matter. This interpretation has been rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone has been accepted and made to fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial events.

Let us demonstrate this statement. In Astronomy, as said, Mercury is the son of Cœlus and Lux—of the Sky and Light, or the Sun; in Mythology he is the progeny of Jupiter and Maia. He is the “Messenger” of his Father Jupiter, the Messiah of the Sun; in Greek, his name Hermes means, among other things, the “Interpreter”—the Word, the Logos, or Verbum. Now Mercury is born on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, and is the patron of the latter. As a psychopompic Genius, he conducted the Souls of the Dead to Hades and brought them back again, an office attributed to Jesus after his Death and Resurrection. The symbols of Hermes‐Mercury (Dii Termini) were placed along, and at the turning points of, highways, as crosses are now placed in Italy, and they were _cruciform_.(1273) Every seventh day the priests anointed these Termini with oil, and once a year hung them with garlands, hence they were the _anointed_. Mercury, when speaking through his oracles, says:

I am he whom you call the Son of the Father [Jupiter] and Maia. Leaving the King of Heaven [the Sun] I come to help you, mortals.

Mercury heals the blind and restores sight, mental and physical.(1274) He was often represented as three‐headed and called Tricephalus, Triplex, as one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cornutus(1275) shows, was sometimes figured under a cubic form, without arms, because “the power of speech and eloquence can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet.” It is this cubic form which connects the Termini directly with the cross, and it is the eloquence or the power of speech of Mercury which made the crafty Eusebius say, “Hermes is the emblem of the Word which creates and interprets all,” for it is the Creative Word; and he shows Porphyry teaching that the Speech of Hermes—now interpreted “Word of God” (!) in _Pymander_—a Creative Speech (Verbum), is the Seminal Principle scattered throughout the Universe.(1276) In Alchemy “Mercury” is the radical “Moyst” Principle, Primitive or Elementary Water, containing the Seed of the Universe, fecundated by the Solar Fires. To express this fecundating principle, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or the vertical and the horizontal united) by the Egyptians. The cruciform Termini also represented this dual idea, which was found in Egypt in the _cubic_ Hermes. The author of _Source of Measures_ tells us why.(1277)

As shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross of the Tau, or the Egyptian, form; or again, “the circle attached to the Tau gives the ansated cross” of the old Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests and their “King‐Initiates” for ages, and also what was meant by “the attachment of a man to the cross,” which idea “was made to coördinate with that of the origin of human life, and hence the _phallic form_.” Only the latter came into action æons and ages after the idea of the Carpenter and Artificer of the Gods, Vishva‐karmâ, crucifying the “Sun‐Initiate” on the cruciform lathe. As the same author writes:

_The attachment of a man to the cross_ ... was made use of in this form of display by the Hindûs.(1278)

But, it was made “to coördinate” with the idea of the new rebirth of man by _spiritual_, not physical regeneration. The Candidate for Initiation was attached to the Tau or astronomical cross with a far grander and nobler idea than that of the origin of mere _terrestrial_ life.

On the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Thus, geometrically, and according to the reading of the _Bible_ by means of the numerical method, the author of _The Source of Measures_ is quite correct.

The entire [Jewish] system seems to have been anciently regarded as one resting in nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or God, as the _basis or law_ of the exertion practically of creative power—_i.e._, it was the _creative design_, of which creation was practically the application. This seems to be established by the fact that, under the system set forth, measures of _planetary times_ serve coördinately as measures of the _size_ of planets, and of the peculiarity of their shapes—_i.e._, in the extension of their equatorial and polar diameters.... This system [that of creative design] seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure, as a foundation for its _ritualism_ and for its display of the works of the Deity in the way of _architecture_, by use of the sacred unit of measure in the Garden of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon.(1279)

Thus, on the very showing of the defenders of this system, the Jewish Deity is proved to be, at best, only the manifested Duad, never the One Absolute All. Geometrically demonstrated, he is a _number_; symbolically, a _euhemerized_ Priapus; and this can hardly satisfy a mankind thirsting after the demonstration of real spiritual truths, and the possession of a God with a divine, not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the most learned of modern Kabalists can see in the cross and circle nothing but a symbol of the manifested _creative_ and _androgyne_ Deity in its relation to, and interference with, this phenomenal world.(1280) One author believes that:

However man [read, the Jew and Rabbi] obtained knowledge of the practical measure, ... by which nature was thought to adjust the planets in size to harmonize with the notation of their movements, it seems he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the means of his realization of the Deity—that is, he approached _so nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his own_, only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize _a law of creation_ established by that Being, which must have existed prior to any creation (kabalistically called the Word).(1281)

This may have satisfied the practical _Semite_ mind, but the Eastern Occultist has to decline the offer of such a God; indeed, a Deity, a Being, “having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful,” is _no_ God that has any room _beyond_ the cycle of creation. He has nought to do with the _ideal_ conception of the Eternal Universe. He is, at best, one of the _subordinate creative_ powers, the Totality of which is called the Sephiroth, the Heavenly Man, and Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos of the Platonists.

This very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest definitions of the _Kabalah_ and its mysteries, _e.g._, by John A. Parker, as quoted in the same work:

The key of the Kabala is _thought to be the geometrical relation of the area of the circle inscribed in the square_, or of the cube to the sphere, giving rise to the relation of diameter to circumference of a circle, with the numerical value of this relation expressed in integrals. The relation of diameter to circumference, being a supreme one connected with the god‐names Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically of these relations, respectively—the first being of circumference, the latter of diameter), embraces all other subordinations under it. Two expressions of circumference to diameter in integrals are used in the Bible: (1) The perfect, and (2) The imperfect. One of the relations between these is such that (2) subtracted from (1) will leave a _unit_ of a diameter value in terms, or in the denomination of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or a unit straight line having a perfect circular value, or a factor of circular value.(1282)

Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries of the _third_ stage of Evolution, or the “Third Creation of Brahmâ.” The initiated Hindûs know how to “square the circle” far better than any European. But of this more anon. The fact is that the Western Mystics commence their speculation only at that stage when the Universe “falls into matter,” as the Occultists say. Throughout the whole series of kabalistic books we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the remotest way at the psychological and spiritual, as well as at the mechanical and _physiological_ secrets of “creation.” Shall we, then, regard the evolution of the Universe as simply a prototype, on a gigantic scale, of the act of procreation; as “divine” _phallicism_, and rhapsodize on it as the evilly‐inspired author of a late work of this name has done? The writer does not think so. And she feels justified in saying so, since the most careful reading of the _Old Testament_—esoterically, as well as exoterically—seems to have carried the most enthusiastic enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds that from the first to the last chapter of the _Pentateuch_ every scene, every character or event are shown connected, directly or indirectly, with the _origin of birth_ in its crudest and most brutal form. Thus, however interesting and ingenious the rabbinical methods, the writer, in common with other Eastern Occultists, must prefer those of the Pagans.

It is not, then, in the _Bible_ that we have to search for the origin of the cross and circle, but beyond the Flood. Therefore, returning to Éliphas Lévi and the _Zohar_, we answer for the Eastern Occultists and say that, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely with Pascal, who says that:

God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Whereas the Kabalists say the reverse, and maintain it, solely out of their desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of Deity by the circle is not Pascal’s at all, as Éliphas Lévi thought. It was _borrowed_ by the French Philosopher from either Mercury Trismegistus or Cardinal Cusa’s Latin work, _De Doctâ Ignorantiâ_, in which he makes use of it. It is, moreover, disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words “Cosmic Circle,” which stand symbolically in the original inscription, by the word Theos. With the Ancients both words were synonymous.

A. Cross And Circle.

In the minds of the ancient Philosophers something of the divine and the mysterious has ever been ascribed to the shape of the circle. The old world, consistent in its symbolism and with its Pantheistic intuitions, uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes into one, represented Deity and its outward Veil alike—by a circle. This merging of the two into a unity, and the name Theos being given indifferently to both, is explained, and becomes thereby still more _scientific_ and philosophical. Plato’s etymological definition of the word _theos_ (θεός) has, been given elsewhere. In his _Cratylus_, he derives it from the verb _the‐ein_ (θέειν), “to move,” as suggested by the motion of the heavenly bodies which he connects with Deity. According to the Esoteric Philosophy, this Deity, during its “Nights” and its “Days,” or Cycles of Rest and Activity, is the “Eternal Perpetual Motion,” the “Ever‐Becoming, as well as the ever universally Present, and the Ever‐Existing.” The latter is the root‐ abstraction; the former is the only possible conception in the human mind, if it disconnects this Deity from any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never‐ceasing evolution, circling back in its incessant progress through æons of duration into its original status—Absolute Unity.

It was only the minor Gods who were made to carry the symbolical attributes of the higher ones. Thus, the God Shoo, the personification of Ra, who appears as the “Great Cat of the Basin of Persæa in An”(1283) was often represented in the Egyptian monuments seated and holding a cross, symbol of the four Quarters, or the Elements, attached to a circle.

In that very learned work, _The Natural Genesis_, by Gerald Massey, under the heading, “Typology of the Cross,” there is more information to be had on the cross and circle than in any other work we know of. He who would fain have proofs of the antiquity of the cross is referred to these two volumes. The author says:

The circle and cross are inseparable.... The Crux Ansata unites the circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin the circle and the cross came to be interchangeable at times. For example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The name denotes the circling, wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like manner, Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four‐ footed cross [Svastika], and a type of the four quarters. Thus the cross is equivalent to the circle of the year. The wheel emblem unites the cross and circle in one, as does the hieroglyphic cake and the Ankh‐tie ☥.(1284)

Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with the Initiates. For Raoul Rochette shows that:(1285)

The sign ♀ occurs as the _reverse_ of a Phœnician coin, with a Ram as the obverse.... The same sign, sometimes called Venus’ Looking‐ Glass, because it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the hind‐quarters of valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other beautiful breeds of horses.

This proves that so far back as those early days the cross had already become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of the _divine_ origin of cross and circle had begun.

Another form of the cross is given from the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_:(1286)

At each of the four corners is placed a quarter arc of an oviform curve, and when the four are put together they form an oval; thus the figure combines the cross with the circle round it in four parts, corresponding to the four corners of the cross. The four segments answer to the four feet of the Swastica cross and the Fylfot of Thor. The four‐leaved lotus flower of Buddha, is likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being an Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter arcs, if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse is also figured on each arm of the cross. This ellipse therefore denotes the path of the earth.... Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the following specimen, [Symbol: Oval, with large letter “Z” inside, with horizontal crossbar] which is here presented, as the cross of the two equinoxes and the two solstices placed within the figure of the earth’s path. The same ovoid or boat‐shaped figure appears at times in the Hindu drawings with seven steps at each end as a form or a mode of Meru.

This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are six more aspects, however, and an attempt may be made to interpret a few of these. The subject is so vast that it would require in itself alone many volumes.

But the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of cross and circle, spoken of in the above cited work, is one which receives its full explanation and final colour from Âryan symbols of the same nature. Says the author:

The four‐armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but the cross‐sign is not always simple.(1287) This is a type that was developed from an identifiable beginning, which was adapted to the expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred cross of Egypt that was carried in the hands of the Gods, the Pharaohs, and the mummied dead, is the Ankh ☥ the sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant.... The top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru [Symbol: Horizontal oval] set upright on the Tau‐cross. The Ru is the door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet. This denotes the _birthplace_ in the northern quarter of the heavens, from which the Sun is reborn. Hence the _Ru of the Ankh‐sign is the feminine type of the birthplace, representing the north_. It was in the _northern quarter_ that the Goddess of the Seven Stars, called the “Mother of the Revolutions,” gave birth to time in the earliest cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh‐cross [Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right], a mere loop which contains both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop or noose is carried in front of the oldest genitrix, _Typhon of the Great Bear_; as her _Ark_, the ideograph of a _period_, _an ending_, _a time_, shown to mean one revolution. This, then, represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great Bear which constituted the earliest year of time, from which fact we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents that quarter, the birthplace of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh symbol. Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an _Ark_ or _Rek_ type of reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh‐cross was continued in the Cypriote R, [Symbol: Circle with horizontal line beneath], and the Coptic Ro, [Symbol: Figure like a Rho].(1288) The Ro was carried into the Greek cross [Symbol: Large Greek Rho with letter Chi beneath it], which is formed of the Ro and Chi or _R‐k_.... The Rek, or Ark, was the sign of all beginning (_Arche_) on this account, and the Ark‐tie is the cross of the North, the hind part of heaven.(1289)

Now this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Paurânic version in India gives the whole matter another colour. Without destroying the above interpretation, it is made to reveal a portion of its mysteries with the help of the astronomical key, and thus offers a more metaphysical rendering. The Ankh‐tie [Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right] does not belong to Egypt alone. It exists under the name of Pâsha, a cord which the four‐armed Shiva holds in the hand of his right back arm.(1290) The Mahâdeva is represented in the posture of an ascetic, as Mahâyogî, with his third eye [Symbol: Vertical oval with dot in the middle], which is “the Ru [Symbol: Horizontal oval with dot in the middle], set upright on the Tau‐cross” in another form. The Pâsha is held in the hand in such a way that the first finger and hand near the thumb make the cross, or loop and crossing. Our Orientalists would have it to represent a cord to bind refractory offenders with, because, forsooth, Kâlî, Shiva’s consort, has the same as an attribute!

The Pâsha has here a double significance, as also has Shiva’s Trisûla and every other divine attribute. This dual significance lies in Shiva, for Rudra has certainly the same meaning as the Egyptian Ansated Cross in its cosmic and mystic meaning. In the hand of Shiva, the Pâsha becomes lingyonic. Shiva, as said before, is a name unknown to the _Vedas_. It is in the _White Yajur Veda_ that Rudra appears for the first time as the Great God, Mahâdeva, whose symbol is the Lingam. In the _Rig Veda_ he is called Rudra, the “howler,” the beneficent and the maleficent Deity at the same time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the _Vishnu Purâna_, he is the God who springs from the forehead of Brahmâ, who separates into male and female, and he is the parent of the Rudras or Maruts, half of whom are brilliant and gentle, others, black and ferocious. In the _Vedas_, he is the Divine Ego aspiring to return to its pure, deific state, and at the same time that Divine Ego imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce passions make of him the “roarer,” the “terrible.” This is well shown in the _Brihadâranyaka Upanishad_, wherein the Rudras, the progeny of Rudra, God of Fire, are called the “ten vital breaths (_prâna_, life), with the heart (_manas_), as eleventh,”(1291) whereas as Shiva, he is the _destroyer_ of that life. Brahmâ calls him Rudra, and gives him, besides, seven other names, signifying seven forms of manifestation, and also the seven powers of nature which destroy but to recreate or regenerate.

Hence the cruciform noose, or Pâsha, in the hand of Shiva, when he is represented as an ascetic, the Mahâyogin, has no phallic signification, and, indeed, it requires an imagination strongly bent in this direction to find such a signification even in an astronomical symbol. As an emblem of “door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet” it signifies the “strait gate” that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven, far more than the “birthplace” in a physiological sense.

It is a cross in a circle and Crux Ansata, truly; but it is a cross on which all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogî passes through the “strait gate,” the narrow circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the Inner Man has passed the threshold.

As to the mysterious seven Rishis in the constellation of the Great Bear; if Egypt made them sacred to “the oldest genitrix, Typhon,” India has connected these symbols ages ago with Time or Yuga‐revolutions, and the Saptarshis are intimately connected with our present age‐the dark Kali Yuga.(1292) The great Circle of Time, on the face of which, Indian fancy has represented the Porpoise, or Shishumâra, has the cross placed on it by nature in its division and localization of stars, planets and constellations. In _Bhâgavata Purâna_,(1293) it is said:

At the _extremity of the tail of that animal, whose head is directed toward the south_, and whose body is _in the shape of a ring_ [circle], Dhruva [the ex‐pole star] is placed; _along its tail_ are Prajâpati, Agni, Indra, Dharma, etc.; _across its loins_ the seven Rishis.(1294)

This is then the first and earliest cross and circle, formed by the Deity, symbolized by Vishnu, the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time, Kâla, on whose plane lie crossways all the Gods, creatures, and creations born in Space and Time‐who, as the Philosophy has it, all die at the Mahâpralaya.

Meanwhile it is the seven Rishis who mark the time and the duration of events in our septenary Life‐cycle. They are as mysterious as their supposed wives, the Pleiades, of whom only one‐she who hides‐has proven virtuous. The Pleiades, or Krittikâs, are the nurses of Kârttikeya, the God of War (the Mars of the Western Pagans), who is called the Commander of the Celestial Armies, or rather of the Siddhas—Siddha‐sena (translated Yogîs in Heaven, and holy Sages on the Earth)—which would make Kârttikeya identical with Michael, the “Leader of the Celestial Hosts” and, like himself, a virgin Kumâra.(1295) Verily he is the Guha, the “Mysterious One,” as much so as are the Saptarshis and the Krittikâs, the seven Rishis and the Pleiades, for the interpretation of all these combined reveal to the Adept the greatest mysteries of Occult Nature. One point is worth mention in this question of cross and circle, as it bears strongly upon the elements of Fire and Water, which play such an important part in the circle and cross symbolism. Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to have been born of his mother Juno alone, without the participation of a father, or like the Avatâras (Krishna, for instance)—in the West as in the East—Kârttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner, begotten by neither father nor mother, but out of a seed of Rudra‐Shiva, which was cast into the Fire (Agni) and then received by the Water (Ganges). Thus he is born from Fire and Water—a “boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the Moon.” Hence he is called Agnibhû (son of Agni) and Gangâputra (son of Ganges). Add to this the fact that the Krittikâ, his nurses, as the _Matsya Purâna_ shows, are presided over by Agni, or, in the authentic words, “the seven Rishis are on a line with the brilliant Agni,” and hence “Krittika has Âgneya as a synonym”(1296)—and the connection is easy to follow.

It is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali Yuga, the age of sin and sorrow. As the _Bhâgavata Purâna_ tells us:

When the splendour of Vishnu, named Krishna, departed for heaven, then did the Kali age, during which men delight in sin, invade the world....

When the seven Rishis were in Maghâ, the Kali age, comprising 1,200 [divine] years [432,000 common years] began; and, when, from Maghâ, they shall reach Pûrvâshâdhâ, then will this Kali age attain its growth, under Nanda and his successors.(1297)

This is the revolution of the Rishis—

When the two first stars of the seven Rishis (the Great Bear) rise in the heavens, and some lunar asterism is seen at night, at an equal distance between them, then the seven Rishis continue stationary in that conjunction for a hundred years,

—as a hater of Nanda makes Parâshara say. According to Bentley, it was in order to show the quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this notion originated among the Astronomers.

This was by assuming an imaginary line, or great circle, passing through the poles of the ecliptic and the beginning of the fixed Maghâ, which circle was supposed to cut some of the stars in the Great Bear.... The seven stars in the Great Bear being called the Rishis, the circle so assumed was called the line of the Rishis; and, being invariably fixed to the beginning of the lunar asterism Maghâ, the precession would be noted by stating the degree, etc., of any movable lunar mansion cut by that line or circle, as an index.(1298)

There has been, and there still exists, a seemingly endless controversy about the chronology of the Hindûs. Here is, however, a point that could help to determine—approximately at least—the age when the symbolism of the seven Rishis and their connection with the Pleiades began. When Kârttikeya was delivered to the Krittikâ by the Gods to be nursed, they were only six, whence Kârttikeya is represented with _six_ heads; but when the poetical fancy of the early Âryan Symbologists made of them the consorts of the seven Rishis, they were _seven_. Their names are given, and these are Amba, Dulâ, Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghâyanti, Varshayanti, and Chupunika. There are other sets of names which differ, however. Anyhow, the seven Rishis were made to marry the seven Krittikâ before the disappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could the Hindû astronomers speak of a star which no one can see without the help of the strongest telescopes? This is why, perhaps, in every such case the majority of the events described in the Hindû allegories is fixed upon as “a very recent invention, certainly _within_ the Christian era.”

The oldest Sanskrit MSS. on Astronomy begin their series of Nakshatras, the twenty‐seven lunar asterisms, with the sign of Krittikâ, and this can hardly make them earlier than 2,780 B.C. This is according to the “Vedic Calendar,” which is accepted even by the Orientalists, though they get out of the difficulty by saying that the said Calendar does not _prove_ that the Hindûs knew anything of Astronomy at that date, and assure their readers that, Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian Pandits may have acquired their knowledge of the lunar mansions headed by Krittikâ from the Phœnicians, etc. However that may be, the Pleiades are the central group of the system of sidereal symbology. They are situated in the neck of the constellation Taurus, regarded by Mädler and others, in Astronomy, as the _central group_ of the system of the Milky Way, and in the _Kabalah_ and Eastern Esotericism, as the _sidereal septenate_ born from the first manifested side of the upper triangle, the concealed [triangle]. This manifested side is Taurus, the symbol of One (the figure 1), or of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (א) “bull” or “ox,” whose synthesis is Ten (10), or Yod (י), the perfect letter and number. The Pleiades (Alcyone, especially), are thus considered, even in Astronomy, as the central point around which _our universe of fixed stars revolves_, the focus from which, and into which, the Divine Breath, Motion, works incessantly during the Manvantara. Hence, in the sidereal symbols of the Occult Philosophy, it is this circle with the starry cross on its face which plays the most prominent part.

The Secret Doctrine teaches us that everything in the Universe, as well as the Universe itself, is formed (“created”) during its periodical manifestations—by accelerated Motion set into activity by the Breath of the Ever‐to‐be‐unknown Power—unknown to present mankind, at any rate—within the phenomenal world. The Spirit of Life and Immortality was everywhere symbolized by a circle; hence the serpent biting its tail, represents the Circle of Wisdom in Infinity; as does the astronomical cross—the cross within a circle—and the globe, with two wings added to it, which then became the sacred Scarabæus of the Egyptians, its very name being suggestive of the secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabæus is called in the Egyptian papyri, Khopirron and Khopri from the verb _khopron_, “to become,” and has thus been made a symbol and an emblem of human life and of the successive “becomings” of man, through the various peregrinations and metempsychoses, or reïncarnations, of the liberated soul. This mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in reïncarnation and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal Entity. As this, however, was an Esoteric Doctrine, revealed only during the Mysteries, by the Priest‐hierophants and the King‐initiates to the Candidates, it was kept secret. The Incorporeal Intelligences (the Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always represented under the form of circles. In the primitive Philosophy of the Hierophants these _invisible_ circles were the prototypic causes and builders of all the heavenly orbs, which were their _visible_ bodies or coverings, and of which they were the souls. It was certainly a universal teaching in antiquity.(1299) As Proclus says:

Before the mathematical numbers, there are the _self‐moving_ numbers; before the figures apparent—the vital figures, and before producing the material worlds _which move in a circle_, the Creative Power produced the _invisible_ circles.(1300)

“_Deus enim et circulus est_,” says Pherecydes, in his Hymn to Jupiter. This was a Hermetic axiom, and Pythagoras prescribed such a circular prostration and posture during the hours of contemplation. “The devotee must approach as much as possible the form of a perfect circle,” prescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried to spread the same custom among the people, Pierius tells his readers; and Pliny says:

During our worship, we roll up, so to say, our body in a ring—_totum corpus circumagimur_.(1301)

The Vision of the prophet Ezekiel reminds one forcibly of this mysticism of the circle, when he beheld a “whirlwind” from which came out “one _wheel_ upon the earth” whose work “_was_ as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel”—“for the spirit of the living creature _was_ in the wheels.”(1302)

“[_Spirit_] whirleth about continually, and ... returneth again according to his circuits”—says Solomon,(1303) who is made in the English _translation_ to speak of the “wind,” and in the original text to refer both to the _spirit_ and the _sun_. But the _Zohar_, the only true gloss of the Kabalistic Preacher—in explanation of this verse, which is, perhaps, rather hazy and difficult to comprehend—says:

It seems to say that the sun moves in circuits, whereas it refers to the Spirit _under the sun_, called the Holy Spirit, that moves circularly, toward both sides, that they [It and the sun] _should be united in the same Essence_.(1304)

The Brâhmanical “Golden Egg,” from within which emerges Brahmâ, the Creative Deity, is the “Circle with the Central Point” of Pythagoras, and its fitting symbol. In the Secret Doctrine the concealed Unity—whether representing Parabrahman, or the “Great Extreme” of Confucius, or the Deity concealed by Phtah, the Eternal Light, or again the Jewish Ain Suph, is always found to be symbolized by a circle or the “nought” (absolute No‐ Thing and Nothing, because it is Infinite and the All); while the God‐ manifested (by its works) is referred to as the Diameter of that Circle. The symbolism of the underlying idea is thus made evident: the right line passing through the centre of a circle has, in the geometrical sense, length, but neither breadth nor thickness; it is an imaginary and feminine symbol, crossing eternity, and made to rest on the plane of existence _of the phenomenal world_. It is _dimensional_, whereas its circle is dimensionless, or, to use an algebraical term, it is the dimension of an equation. Another way of symbolizing the idea is found in the Pythagorean sacred Decad which synthesizes, in the dual numeral Ten (the one and a circle or cipher), the Absolute All manifesting itself in the Word or Generative Power of Creation.

B. The Fall Of The Cross Into Matter.

Those who would feel inclined to argue upon this Pythagorean symbol by objecting that it is not yet ascertained, so far, at what period of antiquity the nought or cipher occurs for the first time—especially in India—are referred to _Isis Unveiled_.(1305)

Admitting for argument’s sake that the ancient world was not acquainted with our modes of calculation or Arabic figures—though in reality we know it was—yet the circle and diameter idea is there to show that it was the first symbol in Cosmogony. Before the Trigrams of Fo‐hi, Yang, the unity, and Yin, the binary, explained cunningly enough by Éliphas Lévi,(1306) China had her Confucius, and her Tao‐ists. The former circumscribes the “Great Extreme” within a circle with a horizontal line across; the latter place three concentric circles beneath the great circle, while the Sung Sages showed the “Great Extreme” in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth in two lower and smaller circles. The Yangs and the Yins are a far later invention. Plato and his school never understood the Deity otherwise, notwithstanding the many epithets applied by him to the “God over all” (ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεός). Plato, having been initiated, could not believe in a personal God—a gigantic shadow of man. His epithets of “Monarch” and “Law‐ giver of the Universe” bear an abstract meaning well understood by every Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law that governs the Universe, and recognizes it at the same time as immutable. As Plato says:

Beyond all _finite_ existences and _secondary_ causes, all laws, ideas and principles, there is an Intelligence or Mind (νοῦς), the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded, ... the _ultimate_ substance _from which all things derive their being and essence_, the First and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty and excellency, and goodness, which pervade the Universe.

This Mind is called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme Good,(1307) “The God” (ὁ θεός), and the “God over all.” These words apply, as Plato himself shows, neither to the “Creator” nor to the “Father” of our modern Monotheist, but to the _Ideal_ and Abstract Cause. For, as he says: “This θεός, the God over all, _is not the truth or the intelligence_, but the Father of it,” and its Primal Cause. Is it Plato, the greatest pupil of the archaic Sages, a Sage himself, for whom there was but a single object of attainment in this life—Real Knowledge—who would have ever believed in a Deity that curses and damns men for ever, on the slightest provocation?(1308) Surely not he who considered only those to be genuine Philosophers and students of truth who possessed the knowledge of the _really‐existing_ in opposition to mere seeming; of the _always‐existing_ in opposition to the transitory: and of that which exists _permanently_ in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately.(1309) Speusippus and Xenocrates followed in his footsteps. The One, the original, had no _existence_, in the sense applied to it by mortal men. The τίμιον (the honoured) dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it is only _the reflection_ of the Deity—the World Soul(1310)—the plane of the surface of the circle. The cross and circle are a universal conception—as old as the human mind itself. They stand foremost on the list of the long series of, so to say, international symbols, which expressed very often great scientific truths, besides their direct bearing upon psychological, and even physiological mysteries.

It is no explanation to say, as does Éliphas Lévi, that God, the universal Love, having caused the male Unit to dig an abyss in the female Binary, or Chaos, thereby produced the world. In addition to the grossness of the conception, it does not remove the difficulty of conceiving it without losing one’s veneration for the rather too human‐like ways of the Deity. It is to avoid such anthropomorphic conceptions that the Initiates never used the epithet “God” to designate the One and Secondless Principle in the Universe; and that—faithful in this to the oldest traditions of the Secret Doctrine the world over—they deny that such imperfect and often not very clean work could ever be produced by Absolute Perfection. There is no need to mention here other still greater metaphysical difficulties. Between speculative Atheism and idiotic Anthropomorphism there must be a philosophical mean, and a reconciliation. The Presence of the Unseen Principle throughout all Nature, and the highest manifestation of it on Earth—Man, can alone help to solve the problem, which is that of the mathematician whose _x_ must ever elude the grasp of our terrestrial algebra. The Hindûs have tried to solve it by their Avatâras, the Christians _think_ they have done so—by their one divine Incarnation. Exoterically—both are wrong; Esoterically both of them are very near the truth. Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion, Paul seems to have fathomed—if not actually revealed—the archaic mystery of the cross. As for the rest of those who, by unifying and individualizing the Universal Presence, have synthesized it into one symbol—the central point in the crucifix—they show thereby that they have never seized the true spirit of the teaching of Christ, but rather that they have degraded it in more than one way by their erroneous interpretations. They have forgotten the spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it—as though the Boundless and the Infinite could ever be limited and conditioned to one manifestation individualized in one man, or even in a nation!

The four arms of the [Symbol: cross like the letter “X”], or decussated cross, and of the Hermetic cross, pointing to the four cardinal points—were well understood by the mystical minds of the Hindûs, Brâhmans and Buddhists, hundreds of years before it was heard of in Europe, for that symbol was and is found all over the world. They bent the ends of the cross and made of it their Svastika, 卐 now the Wan of the Mongolian Buddhist.(1311) It implies that the “central point” is not limited to one individual, however perfect; that The Principle (God) is in Humanity, and Humanity, as all the rest, is in It, like drops of water are in the ocean, the four ends being toward the four cardinal points, hence losing themselves in infinity.

Isarim, an Initiate, is said to have found at Hebron, on the _dead body_ of Hermes, the well known Smaragdine Tablet, which, it is said, contained the essence of Hermetic Wisdom. Upon it were traced, among others, the sentences:

Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross....

Ascend ... from the earth to heaven and then descend again to earth.

The _riddle_ of the cross is contained in these words, and its double mystery is solved—to the Occultist.

The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions, the horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and breadth, which the geometrizing Deity divides at the intersecting point, and which forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary, when it is inscribed within the perfect square, is the basis of the Occultist. Within its mystical precinct lies the master‐key which opens the door of every science, physical as well as spiritual. It symbolizes our human existence, for the circle of life circumscribes the four points of the cross, which represent in succession, birth, life, death, and _immortality_.(1312)

“Attach thyself,” says the Alchemist, “to the four letters of the tetragram disposed in the following manner. The letters of the ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained therein, and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the masters.”(1313)

Again:

The Tau, Τ, and the astronomical cross of Egypt, [Symbol: Circle with cross within] are conspicuous in several apertures of the remains of Palenque. In one of the _basso‐relievos_ of the Palace of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured as a hieroglyphic right under the seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure, which leans over the first one, is in the act of covering its head with the left hand with the veil of initiation; while it extends its right with the index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The position is precisely that of a Christian bishop giving his blessing, or the one in which Jesus is often represented while at the Last Supper.(1314)

The Egyptian Hierophant had a square head‐dress which he had to wear always during his functions. These square hats are worn unto this day by the Armenian priests. The perfect Tau—formed of the perpendicular (descending male ray) and the horizontal line (Matter, female principle)—and the mundane circle were attributes of Isis, and it was only at death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of the mummy. The claim that the cross is purely a Christian symbol introduced after our era, is strange indeed, when we find Ezekiel stamping the foreheads of the men of Judah who feared the Lord,(1315) with the _signum Thau_, as it is translated in the Vulgate. In the ancient Hebrew this sign was formed thus [Symbol: Cross, tilted towards the northeast], but in the original Egyptian hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross ☦ (Tat, the emblem of stability). In the _Revelation_, also, the “Alpha and Omega”—Spirit and Matter—the first and the last, stamps the name of his Father on the foreheads of the _elect_. Moses(1316) orders his people to mark their _door‐posts_ and _lintels_ with blood, lest the “Lord God” should make a mistake and smite some of his chosen people, instead of the doomed Egyptians. And this mark is a Tau!—the identical Egyptian handled cross, with the half of which talisman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruin at Philæ.

Enough has been said in the text about the Svastika and the Tau. Verily may the cross be traced back into the very depths of the unfathomable archaic ages! Its mystery deepens rather than clears, as we find it on the statues of Easter Island, in old Egypt, in Central Asia, engraved on rocks as the Tau and Svastika, in Pre‐Christian Scandinavia, everywhere! The author of the _Source of Measures_ stands perplexed before the endless shadow it throws back into antiquity, and is unable to trace it to any

## particular nation or man. He shows the Targums handed down by the Hebrews,

obscured by translation. In _Joshua_(1317) read in Arabic, and in the _Targum of Jonathan_, it is said: “The king of Ai he _crucified_ upon a tree.”

The Septuagint rendering is of suspension from a _double word_ or _cross_. (Wordsworth on Joshua.) ... The strangest expression of this kind is in _Numbers_ (xxv. 4) where, by Onkelos (?) it is read: “_Crucify them before the Lord (Jehovah) against the sun_.” The word here is יקע, _to nail to_, rendered properly (Fuerst) by the Vulgate, _to crucify_. The very construction of this sentence is mystic.(1318)

So it is, but the spirit of it has been ever misunderstood. “To crucify before (not against) the Sun” is a phrase used of Initiation. It comes from Egypt, and primarily from India. The enigma can be unriddled only by searching for its key in the Mysteries of Initiation. The Initiated Adept, who had successfully passed through all the trials, was _attached_, not _nailed_, but simply tied on a couch in the form of a Tau, Τ, in Egypt, of a Svastika without the four additional prolongations (☩ not 卐) in India, plunged in a deep sleep—the “Sleep of Siloam,” as it is called to this day among the Initiates in Asia Minor, in Syria, and even higher Egypt. He was allowed to remain in this state for three days and three nights, during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to “confabulate” with the “Gods,” descend into Hades, Amenti, or Pâtâla—according to the country—and do works of charity to the invisible Beings, whether Souls of men or Elemental Spirits; his body remaining all the time in a temple crypt or subterranean cave. In Egypt it was placed in the Sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber of the Pyramid of Cheops, and carried during the night of the approaching third day to the entrance of a gallery, where at a certain hour the beams of the rising Sun struck full on the face of the entranced Candidate, who awoke to be initiated by Osiris and Thoth, the God of Wisdom.

Let the reader who doubts the statement consult the Hebrew originals before he denies. Let him turn to some most suggestive Egyptian _bas reliefs_. One especially from the temple of Philæ, represents a _scene of initiation_. Two God‐Hierophants, one with the head of a hawk (the Sun), the other ibis‐headed (Mercury, Thoth, the God of Wisdom and Secret Learning, the assessor of Osiris‐Sun), are standing over the body of a Candidate just initiated. They are in the act of pouring on his head a double stream of “water” (the Water of Life and of New‐birth), the streams being interlaced in the shape of a cross and full of small ansated crosses. This is allegorical of the awakening of the Candidate who is now an Initiate, when the beams of the morning Sun, Osiris, strike the crown of his head; his entranced body being placed on its wooden Tau so as to receive the rays. Then appeared the Hierophant‐Initiators, and the sacramental words were pronounced, ostensibly to the Sun‐Osiris, in reality to the Spirit‐Sun within, enlightening the newly‐born man.

Let the reader meditate on the connection of the Sun with the cross from the highest antiquity, in both its generative and spiritually regenerative capacities. Let him examine the tomb of Bait‐Oxly, in the reign of Ramses II, where he will find the crosses in every shape and position; as also on the throne of that sovereign, and finally on a fragment representing the adoration of Bakhan‐Alearé, from the Hall of the ancestors of Totmes III, now preserved in the National Library of Paris. In this extraordinary sculpture and painting one sees the disk of the Sun beaming upon an ansated cross placed upon a cross of which those of the Calvary are perfect copies. The ancient MSS. mention these as the “hard couches of those who were in [spiritual] travail, the _act of giving birth to themselves_.” A quantity of such cruciform “couches,” on which the Candidate, thrown into a dead trance at the end of his supreme Initiation, was placed and secured, were found in the underground halls of the Egyptian Temples after their destruction. The worthy and holy Fathers of the Cyril and Theophilus types used them freely, believing they had been brought and concealed there by some new converts. Alone Origen, and after him Clemens Alexandrinus and other ex‐initiates, knew better. But they preferred to keep silent.

Again, let the reader read the Hindû “fables,” as the Orientalists call them, and remember the allegory of Vishvakarmâ, the Creative Power, the Great Architect of the World, called in the _Rig Veda_ the “All‐seeing God,” who “sacrifices himself to himself.” The Spiritual Egos of mortals are his own essence, _one with him_, therefore. Remember that he is called Deva‐vardhika, the “Builder of the Gods,” and that it is he who ties the Sun, Sûrya, his son‐in‐law, on his lathe—in the exoteric allegory, but on the Svastika, in Esoteric tradition, for on Earth he is the Hierophant‐ Initiator—and cuts away a portion of his brightness. Vishvakarmâ, remember again, is the son of Yoga‐siddhâ, _i.e._, the holy power of Yoga, and the fabricator of the “fiery weapon,” the magic Agneyastra.(1319) The narrative is given more fully elsewhere.

The author of the kabalistic work so often quoted from, asks:

The theoretical use of crucifixion then, must have been somehow connected with the personification of this symbol [the structure of the Garden of Paradise symbolized by a crucified man]. But how? And as showing what? The symbol was of the origin of measures, shadowing forth _creative law_ or _design_. What, practically, as regards humanity, could actual crucifixion betoken? Yet, that it was held as the effigy of some mysterious working of the same system, is shown from the very fact of the use. There seems to be deep below deep as to the mysterious workings of these number values—[the symbolization of the connection of 113: 355, with 20612: 6561, by a _crucified man_]. Not only are they shown to work in the cosmos but, ... by sympathy, they seem to work out conditions relating to an unseen and spiritual world, and the prophets seem to have held knowledge of the connecting links. Reflection becomes more involved when it is considered that, the power of expression of the law, _exactly_, by numbers clearly defining a system, was not the _accident_ of the language, but was its very _essence_, and of its _primary organic construction_; therefore, neither the language, nor the mathematical system attaching to it, could be of man’s invention, unless both were _founded upon a prior language which afterwards became obsolete_.(1320)

The author proves these points by further elucidation, and reveals the secret meaning of more than one dead‐letter narrative, by showing that probably, איש, _man_, was the _primordial_ word:

The very first word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were, to carry the idea, by sound, of _a man_. The _essential_ of this word was 113 [the numerical value of that word] from the beginning, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system displayed.(1321)

This is demonstrated by the Hindû Vittoba, a form of Vishnu, as has already been stated. The figure of Vittoba, even to the nail‐marks on the feet,(1322) is that of _Jesus crucified_, in all its details save the cross. That _man_ was meant is proved to us further by the fact of the Initiate being _reborn_ after his _crucifixion_ on the _Tree of Life_. This “Tree” has now become exoterically—through its use by the Romans as an instrument of torture and the ignorance of the early Christian schemers—the _tree of death_!

Thus, one of the seven Esoteric meanings intended by this mystery of crucifixion by the mystic inventors of the system—the original elaboration and adoption of which dates back to the very establishment of the Mysteries—is discovered in the geometrical symbols containing the history of the evolution of man. The Hebrews—whose prophet Moses was so learned in the Esoteric Wisdom of Egypt, and who adopted their numerical system from the Phœnicians, and later from the Gentiles, from whom also they borrowed most of their Kabalistic Mysticism—most ingeniously adapted the cosmic and anthropological symbols of the “Heathen” nations to their peculiar _secret_ records. If Christian sacerdotalism has lost the key of this to‐ day, the early compilers of the Christian Mysteries were well versed in Esoteric Philosophy and the Hebrew Occult Metrology, and used it dexterously. Thus they took the word Aish, one of the Hebrew word‐forms for _man_, and used it in conjunction with that of Shânâh or _lunar year_, so mystically connected with the name of Jehovah, the supposed “Father” of Jesus, and embosomed the mystic idea in an astronomical value and formula.

The original idea of the “man crucified” in space certainly belongs to the ancient Hindûs. Moor shows this in his _Hindû Pantheon_ in the engraving that represents Vittoba. Plato adopted it in his decussated cross in space, the [Symbol: cross like the letter “X”], the “second God who impressed himself on the universe in the form of the cross”; Krishna is likewise shown “crucified.”(1323) Again it is repeated in the _Old Testament_ in the queer injunction to crucify men before the Lord, the Sun—which is no prophecy at all, but has a direct phallic significance. In that same most suggestive work on the kabalistic meanings, we read again:

In symbol, the nails of the cross have for the shape of the heads thereof a solid pyramid, and a tapering square obeliscal shaft, or phallic emblem, for the nail. Taking the position of the _three_ nails in the man’s extremities and on the cross, they form or mark a _triangle_ in shape, one nail being at each corner of the triangle. The wounds, or _stigmata_, in the extremities are necessarily _four_, designative of the _square_.... The three nails with the three wounds are in number 6, which denotes the 6 faces of the cube _unfolded_ [which make the cross or man‐form, or 7, counting three horizontal and four vertical squares], on which the man is placed; and this in turn points to the circular measure transferred on to the edges of the cube. The _one_ wound of the feet separates into _two_ when the feet are separated, making _three_ together _for all_, and _four when separated_, or 7 in all—another and _most holy_ [_with the Jews_] feminine base number.(1324)

Thus, while the phallic or sexual meaning of the “crucifixion nails” is proven by the geometrical and numerical reading, its mystical meaning is indicated by the short remarks upon it, as given above, in its connection with, and bearing upon, Prometheus. He is another victim, for he is crucified on the Cross of Love, on the rock of human passions, a sacrifice to his devotion to the cause of the spiritual element in Humanity.

Now, the primordial system, the double glyph that underlies the idea of the cross, is not of “human invention,” for Cosmic Ideation and the spiritual representation of the Divine Ego‐man are at its basis. Later, it expanded into the beautiful idea adopted by, and represented in, the Mysteries, that of regenerated man, the mortal, who, by crucifying the man of flesh and his passions on the Procrustean bed of torture, became reborn as an Immortal. Leaving the body, the animal‐man, behind him, tied on the Cross of Initiation like an empty chrysalis, the Ego‐Soul became as free as a butterfly. Still later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the cross became in Cosmogony and Anthropology no higher than a _phallic symbol_.

With the Esotericists from the remotest times, the Universal Soul or Anima Mundi, the material reflection of the Immaterial Ideal, was the Source of Life of all beings and of the Life‐Principle of the three kingdoms. This was _septenary_ with the Hermetic Philosophers, as with all Ancients. For it is represented as a sevenfold cross, whose branches are respectively, _light_, _heat_, _electricity_, _terrestrial magnetism_, _astral radiation_, _motion_, and _intelligence_, or what some call self‐ consciousness.

As we have said elsewhere, long before the cross or its sign were adopted as symbols of Christianity, the sign of the cross was used as a mark of recognition among Adepts and Neophytes, the latter being called Chrests—from Chrestos, the man of tribulation and sorrow. Says Éliphas Lévi:

The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong to them exclusively. It is also kabalistic, and represents the opposition and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the _Paternoster_ ... that there were originally two ways of doing it, or, at least _two_ very different formulas to express its meaning: one reserved for the priests and initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said, _To thee_; then he added, _belong_; and continued, carrying his hand to the breast, _the kingdom_; then to the left shoulder, _justice_; to the right shoulder, _and mercy_. Then he joined the two hands, adding, _throughout the generating cycles—Tibi sunt Malchut et Geburah et Chesed per Æonas_—an absolutely and magnificently kabalistic sign of the cross, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely _lose_.(1325)

The “militant and official Church” did more: having helped herself to what had never belonged to her, she took only that which the “Profane” had—the kabalistic meaning of the _male_ and _female_ Sephiroth. She never lost the _inner_ and higher meaning since she never had it—Éliphas Lévi’s pandering to Rome notwithstanding. The sign of the cross adopted by the Latin Church was _phallic_ from the beginning, while that of the Greeks was the cross of the Neophytes, the Chrestoi.

Section IX. The Upanishads in Gnostic Literature.

We are reminded in King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_ that the Greek language had but one word for _vowel_ and _voice_. This has led the uninitiated to many erroneous interpretations. On the simple knowledge, however, of this well‐known fact a comparison may be attempted, and a flood of light thrown upon several mystic meanings. Thus the words, so often used in the _Upanishads_ and the _Purânas_, “Sound” and “Speech,” may be collated with the Gnostic “Vowels” and the “Voices” of the Thunders and Angels in _Revelation_. The same will be found in _Pistis Sophia_, and other ancient Fragments and MSS. This was remarked even by the matter‐of‐ fact author of the above mentioned work.

Through Hippolytus, an early Church Father, we learn what Marcus—a Pythagorean rather than a Christian Gnostic, and a Kabalist most certainly—had received in mystic revelation. It is said that Marcus had it revealed unto him that:

The _seven heavens_(1326) ... sounded each one vowel, which, all combined together, formed a single doxology, “the _sound_ whereof being carried down [from these seven heavens] to earth, becomes the creator and parent of all things that be on earth.”(1327)

Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer language this would read: The Sevenfold Logos having differentiated into seven Logoi, or Creative Potencies (Vowels), these (the Second Logos, or “Sound”) created all on Earth.

Assuredly one who is acquainted with Gnostic literature can hardly help seeing in St. John’s _Apocalypse_, a work of the same school of thought. For we find John saying:

Seven thunders uttered their voices ... [and] I was about to write ... [but] I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.(1328)

The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same to all other _semi_ and _full_ Initiates. The very sameness of the expressions used, and of the underlying ideas, always betrays a portion of the Mysteries. We must always seek for more than one meaning in every mystery allegorically revealed, especially in those in which the number seven and its multiplication seven by seven, or forty‐nine, appear. Now when, in _Pistis Sophia_, the Rabbi Jesus is requested by his disciples to reveal to them the “Mysteries of the Light of his Father”—_i.e._, of the Higher Self enlightened by Initiation and Divine Knowledge—Jesus answers:

Do ye seek after these mysteries? No mystery is more excellent than they; which shall bring your souls unto the Light of Lights, unto the place of Truth and Goodness, unto the place where there is neither male nor female, neither form in that place but Light, everlasting, not to be uttered. Nothing therefore is more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, _saving only the mystery of the seven Vowels and their forty and nine Powers_, and their numbers thereof. And no name is more excellent than all these (Vowels).(1329)

As says the Commentary, speaking of the “Fires”:

_The Seven Fathers and the Forty‐nine Sons blaze in Darkness, but they are the Life and Light and the continuation thereof through the Great Age._

Now it becomes evident that, in every Esoteric interpretation of exoteric beliefs expressed in allegorical forms, there is the same underlying idea—the basic number _seven_, the compound of _three_ and _four_, preceded by the divine _three_ ([triangle]) making the perfect number _ten_.

Also, these numbers apply equally to divisions of time, to cosmography, metaphysical and physical, as well as to man and everything else in visible Nature. Thus these seven Vowels with their forty‐nine Powers are identical with the three and the seven Fires of the Hindûs and their forty‐nine Fires; identical with the numerical mysteries of the Persian Simorgh; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, dwarfing the numbers (their mode of “blinds”), made the duration of each successive Renewal, or what we call in Esoteric parlance Round, 1,000 years only or of the seven Renewals of the Globe 7,000 years, instead of, as is more likely, 7,000,000,000, and assigned to the total duration of the Universe 49,000 years only.(1330)

Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on the Indisputable grounds of comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical and monstrous half‐man and half‐bird—the Vâhana or vehicle on which Vishnu, as Kâla or “Time,” is shown to ride—is the origin of all such allegories. He is the Indian Phœnix, the emblem of cyclic and periodical time, the “Man‐lion” (Sinha), of whose representations the so‐called Gnostic gems are so full.(1331)

Over the seven rays of the lion’s crown, and corresponding to their points, stand often the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet, ΑΕΗΙΟΥΩ, testifying to the Seven Heavens.(1332)

This is the Solar Lion and the emblem of the Solar Cycle, as Garuda(1333) is that of the Great Cycle, the Mahâ Kalpa, coëternal with Vishnu, and also, of course, the emblem of the Sun and Solar Cycle. This is shown by the details of the allegory. At his birth, Garuda, on account of his “dazzling splendour,” is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, and was thence called Gaganeshvara, “Lord of the Sky.” Its representation as Osiris, on the Abraxas (Gnostic) gems, and by many heads of allegorical monsters, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk—both solar birds—denotes Garuda’s solar and cyclic character. His son is Jatâyu, the cycle of 60,000 years. As well remarked by C. W. King:

Whatever its primary meaning [of the gem with the solar lion and vowels] it was probably imported in its present shape from India (that true fountain head of Gnostic iconography).(1334)

The mysteries of the seven Gnostic Vowels, uttered by the Thunders of St. John, can be unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of Âryâvarta, brought into India by the primeval Brâhmans, who had been _initiated in Central Asia_. And this is the Occultism we study and try to explain, as much as is possible, in these pages. Our doctrine of seven Races, and seven Rounds of life and evolution around our Terrestrial Chain of Spheres, may be found even in _Revelation_.(1335) When the seven “Thunders,” or “Sounds,” or “Vowels”—one meaning out of the seven for each such vowel relates directly to our own Earth and its seven Root‐Races in each Round—“had uttered their voices,” but had forbidden the Seer to write them, and made him “seal up those things,” what did the Angel, “standing upon the sea and upon the earth,” do?

He lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, ... that there _should be time no longer_: but in the days of the voice of the _seventh_ angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God [of the Cycle] should be finished.(1336)

This means, in Theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is completed, then Time will cease. “There shall be time no longer”—very naturally, since Pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on Earth to keep a division of time, during that periodical dissolution and arrest of conscious life.

Dr. Kenealy and others believed that the calculations of the cyclic seven and forty‐nine were brought by the Rabbins from Chaldæa. This is more than likely. But the Babylonians, who had all those cycles and taught them only at their great initiatory mysteries of astrological Magic, got their wisdom and learning from India. It is not difficult, therefore, to recognize in them our own Esoteric Doctrine. In their secret computations, the Japanese have the same figures in their cycles. As to the Brâhmans, their _Purânas_ and _Upanishads_ are good proof of it. The latter have passed entirely into Gnostic literature; and a Brâhman needs only to read _Pistis Sophia_(1337) to recognize his forefathers’ property, even to the phraseology and similes used. Let us compare. In _Pistis Sophia_ the disciples say to Jesus:

Rabbi, reveal unto us the mysteries of the Light [_i.e._, the “Fire of Knowledge or Enlightenment”], ... forasmuch as we have heard thee saying that there is another baptism of _smoke_, and another baptism of the Spirit of Holy Light [_i.e._ the Spirit of Fire].(1338)

As John says of Jesus:

I indeed baptize you with water; ... but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

The real significance of this statement is very profound. It means that John, a non‐initiated ascetic, can impart to his disciples no greater wisdom than the Mysteries connected with the plane of Matter, of which Water is the symbol. His Gnosis was that of exoteric and ritualistic dogma, of dead‐letter orthodoxy;(1339) while the wisdom which Jesus, an Initiate of the Higher Mysteries, would reveal to them, was of a higher character, for it was the “Fire” Wisdom of the true Gnosis or _real_ Spiritual Enlightenment. One was Fire, the other the Smoke. For Moses, the Fire on Mount Sinai and the Spiritual Wisdom; for the multitudes of the “people” below, for the profane, Mount Sinai in (through) Smoke, _i.e._, the exoteric husks of orthodox or sectarian ritualism.

Now, having the above in view, read the dialogue between the sages Nârada and Devamata in the _Anugîtâ_,(1340) an episode from the _Mahâbhârata_, the antiquity and importance of which one can learn in the “Sacred Books of the East,” edited by Prof. Max Müller.(1341) Nârada is discoursing upon the “breaths” or the “life‐winds,” as they are called in the clumsy translations of such words as Prâna, Apâna, etc., whose full Esoteric meaning and application to individual functions can hardly be rendered in English. He says of this science that:

It is the teaching of the Veda, that the _fire_ verily is all the deities, and knowledge (of it) arises among Brâhmanas, being accompanied by intelligence.(1342)

By “fire,” says the Commentator, he means the Self. By “intelligence,” the Occultist says, Nârada meant neither “discussion” nor “argumentation,” as Arjuna Mishra believes, but “intelligence” truly, or the adaptation of the _Fire of Wisdom_ to _exoteric ritualism_ for the profane. This is the chief concern of the Brâhmans, who were the first to set the example to other nations who thus anthropomorphized and carnalized the grandest metaphysical truths. Nârada shows this plainly and is made to say:

The _smoke_ of that (fire) which is of excellent glory (appears) in the shape of ... darkness [verily so!]; (its) ashes, ... [are] passion; and ... goodness is that in connection with it, in which the offering is thrown.(1343)

That is to say, that faculty in the disciple which apprehends the subtle truth (the flame) which escapes heavenward, while the objective sacrifice remains as a proof and _evidence of piety_ only to the profane. For what else can Nârada mean by the following?

Those who understand the sacrifice understand the Samâna and the Vyâna as the _principal_ (offering). The Prâna and Apâna are portions of the offering, ... and between them is the _fire_. That is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by Brâhmanas. As to that which is distinct from these pairs, hear me speak about that. Day and night are a pair, between them is the fire.... That _which exists_ and _that which does not exist_ are a pair, between them is the fire....(1344)

And after every such contrast Nârada adds:

That is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by Brâhmanas.

Now many people do not know the full meaning of the statement that Samâna and Vyâna, Prâna and Apâna—which are explained to be “life‐winds,” but which we say are principles and their respective faculties and senses—are offered up to Udâna, the _soi‐disant_ principal “life‐wind,” which is said to act at all the joints. And so the reader who is ignorant that the word “Fire” in these allegories means both the “Self” and the higher Divine Knowledge, will understand nothing in this, and will entirely miss the point of our argument, as the translator and even the editor, the great Oxford Sanskritist, F. Max Müller, have missed the true meaning of Nârada’s words. Exoterically, this enumeration of “life‐winds” has, of course, the meaning, _approximately_, which is surmised in the foot‐notes, namely:

The sense _appears_ to be this: The course of worldly life is due to the operations of the life‐winds which are attached to the self and lead to its manifestations as individual souls [?]. Of these, the Samâna and Vyâna are controlled and held under check by the Prâna and Apâna.... The latter two are held in check and controlled by the Udâna, which thus controls all. And the control of this, which is the control of all five, ... leads to the supreme self.(1345)

The above is given as an explanation of the text, which records the words of the Brâhmana, who narrates how he reached the ultimate Wisdom of Yogism, and in this wise reached All‐knowledge. Saying that he had “perceived by means of the self the seat abiding in the self,”(1346) where dwells the Brahma free from all; and explaining that that indestructible principle was entirely _beyond the perception of senses_—_i.e._, of the five “life‐winds”—he adds that:

In the midst of all these (life‐winds) which move about in the body and swallow up one another, blazes the Vaishvânara fire _sevenfold_.(1347)

This “Fire,” according to Nîlakantha’s commentary, is identical with the “I,” the Self, which is the goal of the ascetic; Vaishvânara being a word often used for the Self. Then the Brâhmana goes on to enumerate that which is meant by the word “sevenfold,” and says:

The nose [or smell], and the tongue [taste], and the eye, and the skin, and the ear as the fifth, the mind, and the understanding, these are the seven tongues of the blaze of Vaishvânara.(1348)... Those are the seven (kinds of) fuel for me.(1349)... These are the _seven great officiating priests_.(1350)

These seven priests are accepted by Arjuna Mishra in the sense of meaning “the soul distinguished as so many [souls, or principles] with reference to these several powers”; and, finally, the translator seems to accept the explanation, and reluctantly admits that “they may mean” this; though he himself takes the sense to mean:

The powers of hearing etc. [the physical senses, in short], which are presided over by the several deities.

But whatever it may mean, whether in scientific or orthodox interpretations, this passage on page 259 explains Nârada’s statements on page 276, and shows them referring to exoteric and esoteric methods and contrasting them. Thus the Samâna and the Vyâna, though subject to the Prâna and the Apâna, and all the four to Udâna in the matter of acquiring the Prânâyâma (of the Hatha Yogî, chiefly, or the lower form of Yoga), are yet referred to as the principal offering, for, as rightly argued by K. Trimbak Telang, their “operations are more practically important for vitality”; _i.e._, they are the grossest, and are offered in the sacrifice, in order that they may disappear, so to speak, in the quality of darkness of that fire or its _smoke_—mere exoteric ritualistic form. But Prâna and Apâna, though shown as subordinate (because less gross or more purified), have the Fire between them; the Self and the Secret Knowledge possessed by that Self. So for the good and evil, and for “that which exists and that which does not exist”; all these “pairs”(1351) have Fire between them, _i.e._, Esoteric Knowledge, the Wisdom of the Divine Self. Let those who are satisfied with the _smoke_ of the Fire remain wherein they are, that is to say within the Egyptian darkness of theological fictions and dead‐letter interpretations.

The above is written only for the Western students of Occultism and Theosophy. The writer presumes to explain these things neither to the Hindûs, who have their own Gurus; nor to the Orientalists, who think they know more than all the Gurus and Rishis, past and present, put together. These rather lengthy quotations and examples are necessary, if only to point out to the student the works he has to study so as to derive benefit and learning from comparison. Let him read _Pistis Sophia_ in the light of the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, the _Anugîtâ_ and others; and then the statement made by Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel will become clear, and the dead‐letter “blinds” disappear at once. Read the following and compare it with the explanation from the Hindû scriptures just given.

And no Name is more excellent than all these, a Name wherein be contained all Names, and all Lights, and all the [forty‐nine] Powers. Knowing that Name, if a man quits this body of matter,(1352) no _smoke_ [_i.e._, no theological delusion],(1353) no darkness, nor Power, nor Ruler of the Sphere [no _Personal_ Genius or Planetary Spirit called God] of Fate [Karma] ... shall be able to hold back the Soul that knoweth that Name.... If he shall utter that Name unto the fire, ... the darkness shall flee away.... And if he shall utter that name unto ... all their Powers, nay, even unto Barbelo,(1354) and the Invisible God, and the three triple‐powered Gods, so soon as he shall have uttered that name in those places, they shall all be thrown one upon the other, so that they shall be ready to melt and perish, and shall cry aloud, O Light of every light that is in the boundless lights, remember us also and purify us!(1355)

It is easy to see what this Light and Name are: the Light of Initiation and the name of the “Fire‐Self,” which is no name, no action, but a Spiritual, Ever‐living Power, higher even than the real “Invisible God,” as this Power is Itself.

But if the able and learned author of the _Gnostics and their Remains_ has not sufficiently allowed for the spirit of allegory and mysticism in the fragments translated and quoted by him, in the above named work, from _Pistis Sophia_—other Orientalists have done far worse. Having neither his intuitional perception of the Indian origin of the Gnostic Wisdom still less of the meaning of their “gems,” most of them, beginning with Wilson and ending with the dogmatic Weber, have made most extraordinary blunders with regard to almost every symbol. Sir M. Monier Williams and others show a very decided contempt for the “Esoteric Buddhists” as Theosophists are now called; yet no student of Occult Philosophy has ever mistaken a cycle for a living personage and _vice versâ_, as is very often the case with our learned Orientalists. An instance or two may illustrate the statement more graphically. Let us choose the best known.

In the _Râmâyana_, Garuda is called “the maternal uncle of Sagara’s 60,000 sons”; and Amshumat, Sagara’s grandson, “the nephew of the 60,000 uncles” who were reduced to ashes by the look of Kapila—the Purushottama, or Infinite Spirit, who caused the horse which Sagara was keeping for the Ashvamedha sacrifice to disappear. Again, Garuda’s son(1356);—Garuda being himself the Mahâ Kalpa or Great Cycle—Jatâyu, the king of the feathered tribe (when on the point of being slain by Râvana who carries off Sîtâ) says, speaking of himself: “It is 60,000 years O king, that I am born”; after which, _turning his back_ on the Sun—he dies.

Jatâyu is, of course, the cycle of 60,000 years within the Great Cycle of Garuda; hence he is represented as his son, or nephew, _ad libitum_, since the whole meaning rests on his being placed in the line of Garuda’s descendants. Then, again, there is Diti, the mother of the Maruts, whose descendants and progeny belonged to the posterity of Hiranyâksha, “whose number was 77 crores (or 770 millions) of men,” according to the _Padma Purâna_. All such narratives are pronounced “meaningless fictions” and absurdities. But—truth is the daughter of time, verily; and time _will_ show.

Meanwhile, what could be easier than an attempt, at least, to verify Paurânic chronology? There are many Kapilas; but the Kapila who slew king Sagara’s progeny—60,000 men strong—was undeniably Kapila, the founder of the Sânkhya philosophy, since it is so stated in the _Purânas_; although one of them flatly denies the imputation without explaining its Esoteric meaning. It is the _Bhâgavata Purâna_(1357) which says that:

The report is not true that the sons of the king were scorched by the wrath of the sage. For how can the quality of darkness, the product of anger, exist in a Sage whose body was goodness and who purified the world—the earth’s dust, as it were, attributed to heavens! How should mental perturbation distract that sage, identified with the Supreme Spirit, who has steered here (on earth) that solid vessel of the Sânkhya (philosophy), with the help of which he who desires to obtain liberation crosses the dreaded ocean of existence, that path to death?(1358)

The _Purâna_ is in duty bound to speak as it does. It has a dogma to promulgate and a policy to carry out—that of great secrecy with regard to mystical _divine_ truths divulged for countless ages only at Initiation. It is not in the _Purânas_, therefore, that we have to look for an explanation of the mystery connected with various transcendental states of being. That the story is an allegory is seen upon its very face: the 60,000 “sons,” brutal, vicious, and impious, are the personification of the _human passions_ that a “mere glance of the Sage”—the Self who represents the highest state of purity that can be reached on Earth—reduces to ashes. But it has also other significations, cyclic and chronological meanings, a method of marking the periods when certain Sages flourished, found also in other _Purânas_.

Now it is as well ascertained as any tradition can be, that it was at Hardwar, or Gangâdvâra, the “door or gate of the Ganges,” at the foot of the Himâlayas, that Kapila sat in meditation for a number of years. Not far from the Sewalik range, the pass of Hardwar is called to this day “Kapila’s Pass,” and the place also is named “Kapilasthen” by the ascetics. It is there that the Ganges, Gangâ, emerging from its mountainous gorge, begins its course over the sultry plains of India. And it is clearly ascertained by geological survey that the tradition which claims that the ocean washed the base of the Himâlayas ages ago, is not entirely without foundation, for distinct traces of this still remain.

The Sânkhya Philosophy may have been _brought down_ and taught by the first, and written out by the _last_ Kapila.

Now Sâgara is the name of the ocean, and especially of the Bay of Bengal, at the mouth of the Ganges, to this day in India.(1359) Have Geologists ever calculated the number of millenniums it must have taken the sea to recede the distance it is now from Hardwar, which is at present 1,024 feet above its level? If they had, those Orientalists who show Kapila flourishing from the first to the ninth century A.D., might change their opinions, if only for one of two very good reasons. Firstly, the true number of years which have elapsed since Kapila’s day is unmistakably in the _Purânas_, though the translators may fail to see it; and secondly, the Kapila of the Satya, and the Kapila of the Kali Yugas, may be one and the same _individuality_, without being the same _personality_.

Kapila, besides being the name of a personage, of the once living Sage and the author of the Sânkhya Philosophy, is also the generic name of the Kumâras, the celestial Ascetics and Virgins; therefore the very fact of the _Bhâgavata Purâna_ calling _that_ Kapila—whom it had showed just before as a portion of Vishnu—the author of the Sânkhya Philosophy, ought to have warned the reader of a “blind” containing an Esoteric meaning. Whether he was the son of Vitatha, as the _Harivamsha_ shows him to be, or of any one else, the author of the Sânkhya cannot be the same as the Sage of the Satya Yuga—at the very beginning of the Manvantara, when Vishnu is shown _in the form of Kapila_, “imparting to all creatures true Wisdom”; for this relates to that primordial period when the “Sons of God” taught to the newly created men those arts and sciences, which have since been cultivated and preserved in the sanctuaries by the Initiates. There are several well‐known Kapilas in the _Purânas_. First the primeval Sage, then Kapila one of the three “secret” Kumâras, and Kapila son of Kashyapa and Kadrû—the “many‐headed serpent”(1360)—besides Kapila the great Sage and Philosopher of the Kali Yuga. The latter, being an Initiate, a “Serpent of Wisdom,” a Nâga, was purposely blended with the Kapilas of the former ages.

Section X. The Cross and the Pythagorean Decad.

The early Gnostics claimed that their Science, the Gnosis, rested on a square, the angles of which represented respectively Sigê (Silence), Bythos (Depth), Nous (Spiritual Soul or Mind), and Aletheia (Truth).

It is they who were the first to reveal to the world that which had remained concealed for ages; namely, the Tau, in the shape of a Procrustean bed, and Christos as incarnating in Chrestos, he who became for certain purposes a willing candidate for a series of tortures, mental and physical.

For them the whole of the Universe, metaphysical and material, was contained within, and could be expressed and described by the digits contained in the number 10, the Pythagorean Decad.

This Decad, representing the Universe and its evolution out of Silence and the Unknown Depths of the Spiritual Soul, or Anima Mundi, presented two sides or aspects to the student. It could be, and was at first, applied to the Macrocosm, after which it descended to the Microcosm, or man. There was, then, the purely intellectual and metaphysical, or the “Inner Science,” and the as purely materialistic or “surface science,” both of which could be expounded by and contained in the Decad. It could be studied, in short, both by the deductive method of Plato, and the inductive method of Aristotle. The former started from a divine comprehension, when the plurality proceeded from unity, or the digits of the Decad appeared, only to be finally reäbsorbed, lost in the infinite Circle. The latter depended on sensuous perception alone, when the Decad could be regarded either as the unity that multiplies, or matter which differentiates; its study being limited to the plane surface, to the cross, or the _seven_ which proceeds from the _ten_, or the perfect number, on Earth as in Heaven.

This dual system was brought, together with the Decad, by Pythagoras from India. That it was that of the Brachmans and Iranians, as they are called by the ancient Greek Philosophers, is warranted to us by the whole range of Sanskrit literature, such as the _Purânas_ and the _Laws of Manu_. In these Laws or Ordinances of Manu, it is said that Brahmâ first creates the “_ten_ Lords of Being,” the ten Prajâpati or Creative Forces; which ten produce _seven_ other Manus, or, rather, as some MSS. have it, Munîn (instead of Manûn) “devotees,” or holy beings, which are the seven Angels of the Presence in the Western religion. This mysterious number seven, born from the upper Triangle △, the latter itself born from the apex thereof, or the Silent Depths of the Unknown Universal Soul (Sigê and Bythos), is the sevenfold Saptaparna plant, born and manifested on the surface of the soil of mystery, from the threefold root buried deep under that impenetrable soil. This idea is fully elaborated in one of the Sections of Volume I, Part II, Section III, “Primordial Substance and Divine Thought,” which the reader should notice carefully, if he would grasp the metaphysical idea involved in the above symbol. In man as in nature, according to the Cis‐Himâlayan Esoteric Philosophy, which is that of the Cosmogony of the _original_ Manu, it is the septenary division that is intended by Nature herself. The seventh principle (Purusha) alone is the Divine Self, strictly speaking; for, as said in Manu, “he [Brahmâ] having pervaded the subtile parts of those six, of unmeasured brightness,”(1361) created or called them forth to “Self”‐consciousness or the consciousness of that One Self. Of these six, five elements (or principles, or Tattvas, as Medhâtithi, the commentator thinks) “are called the atomic destructible elements”;(1362) these are described in the above‐ named Section.(1363)

We have now to speak of the mystery language, that of the prehistoric races. It is not a phonetic, but a purely pictorial and symbolical tongue. It is known at present in its fulness to the very few, having become with the masses for more than 5,000 years an absolutely dead language. Yet most of the learned Gnostics, Greeks and Jews, knew it, and used it, though very differently. A few instances may be given.

On the plane above, the number is no number but a _nought_—a _circle_. On the plane below, it becomes _one_—which is an odd number. Each letter of the ancient alphabets had its philosophical meaning and _raison d’être_. The number _one_ (1) signified with the Alexandrian Initiates a _body erect_, a living standing man, he being the only animal that has this privilege. And, by adding to the “I” a head, it was transformed into a “P,” a symbol of _paternity_, of the creative potency; while “R” signified a “moving man,” one on his way. Hence Pater Zeus had nothing sexual or phallic either in its sound or the form of its letters; nor had Πατὴρ Δεὺς (according to Ragon).(1364) If we turn now to the Hebrew alphabet, we shall find that while _one_ or Aleph (א) has a bull or an ox for its symbol, _ten_, the perfect number, or _one_ of the _Kabalah_, is a Yod (י, _y_, _i_, or _j_), and means, as the first letter of Jehovah, the procreative organ, and the rest.

The _odd_ numbers are divine, the _even_ numbers are terrestrial, devilish, and unlucky. The Pythagoreans hated the Binary. With them it was the origin of differentiation, hence of contrasts, discord, or matter, the beginning of evil. In the Valentinian Theogony, Bythos and Sigê (Depth, Chaos, Matter born in Silence) are the primordial Binary. With the early Pythagoreans, however, the Duad was that imperfect state into which the first manifested being fell when it got detached from the Monad. It was the point from which the two roads—the good and the evil—bifurcated. All that which was double‐faced or false was called by them “binary.” One was alone good and harmony, because no disharmony can proceed from One alone. Hence the Latin word Solus in relation to the One and Only God, the Unknown of Paul. Solus, however, very soon became Sol—the Sun.

The Ternary is the first of the odd numbers, as the triangle is the first of the geometrical figures.(1365) This number is truly the number of mystery _par excellence_. To study it on the exoteric lines one has to read Ragon’s _Cours Philosophique et Interprétatif des Initiations_, on the Esoteric—the Hindû symbolism of numerals; for the combinations which were applied to it are numberless. It is on the Occult properties of the three equal sides of the triangle that Ragon based his studies and founded the famous Masonic Society of the Trinosophists—those who study _three_ sciences; an improvement upon the ordinary three Masonic degrees, given to those who study nothing except eating and drinking at the meetings of their Lodges. As the founder writes:

The first line of the triangle offered to the apprentice for study is the _mineral kingdom_, symbolized by Tubalc [Symbol: Three dots in a triangle] [Tubal‐Cain].

The second side on which the companion has to meditate, is the _vegetable kingdom_, symbolized by Schibb [Symbol: Three dots in a triangle] [Schibboleth]. In this kingdom begins the _generation of the bodies_. This is why the letter G is presented radiant before the eyes of the adept [?!].

The third side is left to the master mason, who has to complete his education by the study of the _animal kingdom_. It is symbolized by Maoben [Symbol: Three dots in a triangle] (son of putrefaction).(1366)

The first solid figure is the Quaternary, the symbol of immortality. It is the Pyramid, for the Pyramid stands on a triangular base, and terminates with a point at the top, thus yielding the Triad and the Quaternary or the 3 and 4.

The Pythagoreans taught the connection and relation between the Gods and the numbers, in a science called Arithmomancy. The Soul is a number, they said, which moves of itself and contains the number 4; and spiritual and physical man is number 3, as the Ternary represented for them not only the surface but also the principle of the formation of the physical body. Thus animals were Ternaries only, man alone being a Septenary, _when virtuous_; a Quinary when bad, for:

Number Five was composed of a Binary and a Ternary, and of these the Binary threw everything in the perfect form into disorder and confusion. The _perfect man_, they said, was a Quaternary and a Ternary, or _four_ material and _three_ immaterial elements; and these three Spirits or Elements we likewise find in Five when it represents the microcosm. The latter is a compound of a Binary directly relating to gross Matter and of three Spirits. Since, as Ragon says:

This ingenious figure is the union of two Greek breathings placed over vowels which have or have not to be aspirated. The first sign (῾) is called the “strong” or superior “spiritus,” the Spirit of God aspired (_spiratus_) and breathed by man. The second sign (᾿) the lower, is the soft “spiritus” representing the secondary spirit; ... the whole embraces the whole man. It is the _universal quintessence_, the vital fluid or life.(1367)

The more mystic meaning of the number Five is given in an excellent article by Mr. T. Subba Row, in _Five Years of Theosophy_, in an article entitled “The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,” in which he gives some rules that may help the enquirer to ferret out “the deep significance of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature in the old Âryan myths and allegories.” Meanwhile, let us see what has been hitherto stated about the constellation Capricornus in Theosophical publications, and what is known of it generally. Every one knows that ♑ is the tenth sign of the Zodiac, into which the Sun enters at the winter solstice, about December 21st. But very few are those who know—even in India, unless they are initiated—the real mystic connection which seems to exist, as we are told, between the names Makara and Kumâra. The first means some amphibious animal, flippantly called the “crocodile,” as some Orientalists think, and the second is the title of the great patrons of Yogins, according to the Shaiva _Purânas_, the sons of, and even one with, Rudra (Shiva), who is a Kumâra himself. It is through their connection with Man that the Kumâras are likewise connected with the Zodiac. Let us try to find out what the word Makara means.

Says the author of “The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac”:

Makara ... contains within itself the clue to its correct interpretation. The letter _ma_ is equivalent to number 5, and _kara_ means hand. Now in Sanskrit Tribhujam means a triangle, _bhujam_ or _karam_ (both synonymous) being understood to mean a side. So, Makaram or Panchakaram means a Pentagon.(1368)

Now the five‐pointed star or pentagon represents the five limbs of man.(1369) Under the old system, we are told, Makara was the _eighth_ instead of the tenth sign.(1370)

The sign in question is intended to represent the faces of the universe, and indicates that the figure of the universe is bounded by Pentagons.(1371)

The Sanskrit writers “speak also of Ashtadisha or eight faces bounding Space,” referring thus to the Loka‐pâlas, the eight points of the compass, the four cardinal and the four intermediate points.

From an objective point of view the “microcosm” is represented by the human body. Makaram may be taken to represent simultaneously both the microcosm and the macrocosm, as external objects of perception.(1372)

But the true Esoteric sense of the word Makara is not, in truth, “crocodile” at all, even when it is compared with the animal depicted on the Hindû Zodiac. For it has the head and the fore‐legs of an antelope and the body and tail of a fish. Hence the tenth sign of the Zodiac has been taken variously to mean a shark, a dolphin, etc.; as it is the Vâhana of Varuna, the Ocean God, and is often called, for this reason, Jala‐rûpa or “water‐form.” The dolphin was the vehicle of Poseidon‐Neptune with the Greeks, and one with him, Esoterically; and this “dolphin” is the “sea‐ dragon” as much as the crocodile of the Sacred Nile is the Vehicle of Horus, and Horus himself. Says the mummy‐form God with the crocodile’s head:

I am the fish [and seat] of the great Horus of Kem‐oor.(1373)

With the Peratæ Gnostics it is Chozzar (Neptune) who converts the dodecagonal pyramid into a sphere, “and paints its gate with many colours.”(1374) He has _five androgyne_ ministers—he is Makara, the Leviathan.

As the rising Sun was considered the Soul of the Gods sent to manifest itself to men every day, and as the crocodile rose out of the water at the first sunbeam, that animal came finally to personify a solar‐fire devotee in India, as it personified that Fire, or the highest Soul with the Egyptians.

In the _Purânas_, the number of the Kumâras changes according to the exigencies of the allegory. For Occult purposes their number is given in one place as seven, then as four, then as five. In the _Kûrma Purâna_ it is said of them:

These _five_ [Kumâras], O Brâhman, were Yogins who acquired entire exemption from passion.

Their very name shows their connection with the said constellation Makara, and with some other Paurânic characters connected with the zodiacal signs. This is done in order to veil what was one of the most suggestive glyphs of the primitive Temples. The Kumâras are mixed up, astronomically, physiologically, and mystically in general, with a number of Paurânic personages and events. Hardly hinted at in the _Vishnu_, they figure in various dramas and events throughout all the other _Purânas_ and sacred literature; so that the Orientalists, having to pick up the threads of connection hither and thither, have ended by proclaiming the Kumâras “due chiefly to the fancy of the Purânic writers.” But—

_Ma_—we are told by the author of the “Twelve Signs of the Zodiac”—is “five”; _kara_, a “hand” with its five fingers, as also a five‐sided sign or a Pentagon. The Kumâra (in this case an anagram for Occult purposes), as Yogîs, are _five_ in Esotericism, because the last two names have ever been kept secret; they are the fifth order of Brahma‐devas, and the five‐ fold Chohans, having the Soul of the five Elements in them, Water and Ether predominating, and therefore their symbols were both _aquatic_ and _fiery_.

Wisdom lies concealed under the couch of him who rests on the Golden Lotus (Padma) floating on the Water.

In India this is Vishnu, one of whose Avatâras was Buddha, as claimed in days of old. The Prachetasas, the worshippers of Nârâyana—who, like Poseidon, moved or dwelt _over_ not under the Waters—plunged into the depths of the Ocean for their devotions and remained therein 10,000 years; and the Prachetasas are _ten_ exoterically, but _five_, Esoterically. Prachetâs is, in Sanskrit, the name of Varuna, the Water God, Nereus, an aspect of Neptune, the Prachetasas being thus identical with the “five ministers” of the male‐female Chozzar (Χωζζάρ or Χορζάρ), or Poseidon, of the Peratæ Gnostics. These are respectively called Ou, Aoai, Ouô, Ouôab and ... (Οὔ, Ἀοαὶ, Οὐώ, Οὐωάβ ...),(1375) the _fifth_, a _triple_ name (making seven in all) being lost(1376)—_i.e._, kept secret. Thus much for the “aquatic” symbol; the “fiery” connecting them with the fiery symbol—spiritually. For purposes of identity, let us remember that as the mother of the Prachetasas was Savarnâ, the daughter of the Ocean, so was Amphitrite the mother of Neptune’s mystic “ministers.”

Now the reader is reminded that these “five ministers” are symbolized both in the Dolphin, who had overcome the chaste Amphitrite’s unwillingness to wed Poseidon, and in Triton their son. The latter, whose body above the waist is that of a man and below a dolphin, a fish, is, again, most mysteriously connected with Oannes, the Babylonian Dag, and further also with the Matsya (Fish) Avatâra of Vishnu, both teaching mortals Wisdom. The Dolphin, as every Mythologist knows, was placed, for his service, by Poseidon, among the constellations, and became with the Greeks, Capricornus, the Goat, whose hind part is that of a dolphin, and is thus identical with Makara, whose head is also that of an antelope and the body and tail those of a fish. This is why the sign of the Makara was borne on the banner of Kâmadeva, the Hindû God of Love, identified, in the _Atharva Veda_, with Agni, the Fire‐god, the son of Lakshmî, as correctly given by the _Harivamsha_. For Lakshmî and Venus are one, and Amphitrite is the early form of Venus. Now Kâma, the Makara‐ketu, is Aja, the “unborn,” and Âtmâ‐bhû, the “self‐existent,” and Aja is the Logos in the _Rig Veda_, as he is shown therein to be the first manifestation of the One; for “Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind,” that “which connects entity with non‐entity”—or Manas, the _fifth_, with Âtmâ, the _seventh_, Esoterically—say the Sages. This is the _first_ stage. The second, on the following plane of manifestation, shows Brahmâ—whom we select as a representative for all the other First Gods of the nations—causing to issue from his body his Mind‐born Sons, “Sanandana and others,” who, in the _fifth_ “creation,” and again in the ninth (for purposes of a “blind”) become the Kumâra. Let us close by reminding the reader that goats were sacrificed to Amphitrite and the Nereids on the sea‐shore—as goats are sacrificed to this day to Durgâ Kâlî, who is only the _black_ side of Lakshmî (Venus), the _white_ side of Shakti—and by suggesting what connection these animals may have with Capricornus, in which appear twenty‐eight stars in the form of a goat, which goat was transformed by the Greeks into Amalthæa, Jupiter’s foster‐mother. Pan, the God of Nature, had goat’s feet, and changed himself into a goat at the approach of Typhon. But this is a mystery which the writer dares not dwell upon at length, not being sure of being understood. Thus the mystical side of the interpretation must be left to the intuition of the student. Let us note one more thing in relation to the mysterious number Five. It symbolizes at one and the same time the Spirit of Life Eternal and the spirit of life and love terrestrial—in the human compound; and, it includes divine and infernal magic, and the universal and the individual quintessence of being. Thus, the five mystic words or vowels uttered by Brahmâ at “creation,” which forthwith became the Panchadasha (certain Vedic Hymns, attributed to that God), are in their creative and magical potentiality, the _white_ side of the _black_ Tântric _five_ Ma‐kâras, or the five _m’s_. Makara, the constellation, is a seemingly meaningless and absurd name; yet, even besides its anagrammatical significance in conjunction with the term Kumâra, the numerical value of its first syllable and its Esoteric resolution into _five_ has a very great and Occult meaning in the mysteries of Nature.

Suffice it to say that, as the sign of Makara is connected with the birth of the spiritual Microcosm, and the death or dissolution of the physical Universe—its passage into the realm of the Spiritual,(1377) so the Dhyân Chohans, called in India Kumâras, are connected with both. Moreover, in the exoteric religions, they have become the synonyms of the Angels of Darkness. Mâra is the God of Darkness, the Fallen One, and Death;(1378) and yet it is one of the names of Kâma, the First God in the Vedas, the Logos, from whom have sprung the Kumâras, and this connects them still more with our “fabulous” Indian Makara, and the crocodile‐headed God in Egypt.(1379) The Crocodiles in the Celestial Nile are _five_, and the God Toom, the Primordial Deity, creating the heavenly bodies and living beings, calls forth these Crocodiles in his _fifth_ “creation.” When Osiris, the “Defunct Sun,” is buried and enters into Amenti, the sacred Crocodiles plunge into the abyss of primordial Waters—the “Great Green One.” When the Sun of Life rises, they reëmerge out of the sacred river. All this is highly symbolical, and shows how primeval Esoteric truths found their expression in identical symbols. But, as Mr. T. Subba Row truly declares:

The veil that was dexterously thrown over certain portions of the mystery connected with these [Zodiacal] signs by the ancient philosophers, _will never be lifted up for the amusement or edification of the uninitiated public_.(1380)

Nor was number Five less sacred with the Greeks. The “Five Words” of Brahmâ have become with the Gnostics the “Five Words” written upon the Âkâshic (Shining) Garment of Jesus at his glorification—the words “Zama Zama Ôzza Rachama Ôzai” (ΖΑΜΑ ΖΑΜΑ ΩΖΖΑ ΡΑΧΑΜΑ ΩΖΑΙ), translated by the Orientalists “the robe, the glorious robe of my strength.” These words were, in their turn, the anagrammatic “blind” of the five mystic Powers represented on the robe of the “resurrected” Initiate after his last trial of three days’ trance; the five becoming _seven_ only after his “death,” when the Adept became the full Christos, the full Krishna‐Vishnu, _i.e._, merged in Nirvâna. The E Delphicum, a sacred symbol, was the numeral _five_, again; and how sacred it was is shown by the fact that the Corinthians, according to Plutarch, replaced the wooden numeral in the Delphic Temple by a bronze one, and this one was transmuted by Livia Augusta into a facsimile in gold.(1381)

It is easy to recognize in the two “Spiritus”—the Greek signs (!) spoken of by Ragon—Âtmâ and Buddhi, or Divine Spirit and its Vehicle, the Spiritual Soul.

The Six or the Senary is dealt with later in this Section, while the Septenary will be fully treated in the course of this Volume in the Section on “The Mysteries of the Hebdomad.”

The Ogdoad or Eight symbolizes the eternal and spiral motion of cycles, the 8, ∞, and is symbolized in its turn by the Caduceus. It shows the regular breathing of the Kosmos presided over by the Eight Great Gods—the Seven from the primeval Mother, the One and the Triad.

Then comes the number Nine, or the triple Ternary. It is the number which reproduces itself incessantly under all shapes and figures in every multiplication. It is the sign of every circumference, since its value in degrees is equal to 9, _i.e._, to 3 + 6 + 0. It is a _bad_ number under certain conditions, and very unlucky. If number 6 was the symbol of our Globe ready to be animated by a _divine_ Spirit, 9 symbolized our Earth informed by a _bad_ or evil Spirit.

Ten, or the Decad, brings all these digits back to unity, and ends the Pythagorean table. Hence this figure, [Symbol: Circle with line through the middle]—_unity_ within _zero_—was the symbol of Deity, of the Universe, and of Man. Such is the secret meaning of “the strong grip of the lion’s paw, of the tribe of Judah” (the “master mason’s grip”) between two hands, the joint number of whose fingers is _ten_.

If we now give our attention to the Egyptian cross, or the Tau, we may discover this letter, which was so exalted by Egyptians, Greeks, and Jews, to be mysteriously connected with the Decad. The Tau is the Alpha and the Omega of Secret Divine Wisdom, which is symbolized by the initial and the final letters of Thot (Hermes). Thot was the inventor of the Egyptian alphabet, and the letter Tau closed the alphabets of the Jews and the Samaritans, who called this character the “end” or “perfection,” “culmination” and “security.” Hence, Ragon tells us, the words Terminus, “end,” and Tectum, “roof,” are symbols of shelter and security—which is rather a prosaic definition. But such is the usual destiny of ideas and things in this world of spiritual decadence, though at the same time of physical progress. Pan was at one time Absolute Nature, the One and Great All; but when history catches a first glimpse of him, Pan has already tumbled down into a _godling_ of the fields, a rural God; history will not recognize him, while theology makes of him the Devil! Yet his seven‐piped flute, the emblem of the seven forces of Nature, of the seven planets, the seven musical notes, of all the septenary harmony in short, shows well his primordial character. So with the cross. Far earlier than the Jews had devised their golden candlestick of the Temple with _three_ sockets on one side and _four_ on the other, and made of number _seven_ a feminine number of generation(1382)—thus introducing the phallic element into religion—the more spiritually‐minded nations had made of the cross (as 3 + 4 = 7) their most sacred divine symbol. In fact, circle, cross, and seven—the latter being made a base of _circular_ measurement—are the first primordial symbols. Pythagoras, who brought his wisdom from India, left to posterity a glimpse into this truth. His School regarded number 7 as a compound of numbers 3 and 4, which they explained in a dual manner. On the plane of the noumenal world, the Triangle was, as the first conception of the manifested Deity, its image, “Father‐Mother‐Son”; and the Quaternary, the perfect number, was the noumenal, ideal root of all numbers and things on the physical plane. Some students, in view of the sacredness of the Tetraktys and the Tetragrammaton, mistake the mystic meaning of the Quaternary. The latter was with the Ancients only a _secondary_ “perfection,” so to speak, because it related only to the manifested planes. Whereas it is the Triangle, the Greek Delta (Δ), which was the “vehicle of the unknown Deity.” A good proof of it lies in the name of the Deity beginning with Delta. Zeus was written Δεύς (Deus) by the Bœotians, thence the Deus of the Latins. This, in relation to the metaphysical conception, with regard to the meaning of the septenary _in the phenomenal world_; but for purposes of profane or exoteric interpretation, the symbolism changed. _Three_ became the ideograph of the three _material_ Elements—Air, Water, Earth; and _four_ became the principle of all that which is neither corporeal nor perceptible. But this has never been accepted by the real Pythagoreans. Viewed as a compound of 6 and 1, the Senary and the Unity, number 7 was the invisible centre, the Spirit of everything, as there exists no hexagonal body without a _seventh_ property being found as the central point in it, as, for instance, crystals and snow‐flakes in so‐called “inanimate” nature. Moreover, number _seven_, they said, has all the perfection of the _unit_—the number of numbers. For as absolute _unity_ is uncreated, and impartite, hence number‐less, and no number can produce it, so is the _seven_; no digit contained within the Decad can beget or produce it. And it is _four_ which affords an arithmetical division between _unity_ and _seven_, for it surpasses the former by the same number (_three_), as it is itself surpassed by the _seven_, since _four_ is by as many numbers above _one_, as _seven_ is above _four_.(1383)

“With the Egyptians number 7 was the symbol of _life_ eternal,” says Ragon, and adds that this is why the Greek letter Z, which is but a double 7, is the initial letter of Zaô, “I live,” and of Zeus, the “father of all living.”

Moreover, figure 6 was the symbol of the Earth during the autumn and winter “sleeping” months, and figure 7 during spring and summer, as the Spirit of Life animated her at that time—the seventh or central informing Force. We find the same in the Egyptian mythos and symbol of Osiris and Isis, personifying Fire and Water metaphysically, and the Sun and the Nile physically. The number of the solar year, 365 in days, is the numerical value of the word Neilos (Nile). This, together with the Bull, with the crescent and the ansated cross between its horns, and the Earth under its astronomical symbol (♁), are the most phallic symbols of later antiquity.

The Nile was the river of time with the number of a year, or year and a day (364 + 1 = 365). It represented the parturient water of Isis, or Mother Earth, the moon, the woman, and the cow, also the _workshop_ of Osiris, representing the T’sod Olaum of the Hebrews. The ancient name of this river was Eridanus, or the Hebrew Iardan, with the Coptic or old Greek suffix. This was the door of the Hebrew word Jared, or _source_, or _descent_ ... of the river Jordan, which had the same mythical use with the Hebrews that the Nile had with the Egyptians,(1384) it was the source of descent, and held the waters of life.(1385)

It was, to put it plainly, the symbol of the personified Earth, or Isis regarded as the womb of that Earth. This is shown clearly enough; and Jordan—the river so sacred now to Christians—held no more sublime or poetical meaning in it than the parturient waters of the Moon—Isis, or Jehovah in his female aspect. Now, as shown by the same scholar, Osiris was the Sun, and the river Nile, and the year of 365 days; while Isis was the Moon, the bed of that river, or Mother Earth “for the parturient energies of which water was a necessity,” as also the lunar year of 354 days, “the time‐maker of the periods of gestation.” All this then is sexual and phallic, our modern scholars seeming to find in these symbols nothing beyond a physiological or phallic meaning. Nevertheless, the three figures 365, or the number of days in a solar year, have but to be read with the Pythagorean key to find in them a highly philosophical and moral meaning. One instance will be sufficient. It can read:

The Earth (3)—animated by (6)—the Spirit of Life (5).

Simply because 3 is equivalent to the Greek Gamma (Γ) which is the symbol of Gaia, the Earth, while the figure 6 is the symbol of the animating or informing principle, and the 5 is the universal quintessence which spreads in every direction and forms all matter.(1386)

The few instances and examples brought forward reveal only one small portion of the methods used to read the symbolical ideographs and numerals of antiquity. The system being of an extreme and complex difficulty, very few, even among the Initiates, could master _all_ the seven keys. Is it to be wondered, then, that the metaphysical gradually dwindled down into the physical Nature; that the Sun, once upon a time the symbol of Deity, became, as æons glided by, that of its creative ardour only; and that thence it fell into a glyph of phallic significance? But surely, it is not those whose method, like Plato’s, was to proceed from universals down to

## particulars, who could ever have begun by symbolizing their religions by

sexual emblems! It is quite true, though uttered by that incarnated paradox Éliphas Lévi, that “man is God on Earth, and God is man in Heaven.” But this could not, and never did apply to the One Deity, only to the Hosts of Its incarnated beams, called by us Dhyân Chohans, by the Ancients Gods, and now transformed by the Church into Devils on the _left_, and into the Saviour on the _right_ side!

But all such dogmas grew out of the one root, the root of Wisdom, which grows and thrives on the Indian soil. There is not an Archangel that could not be traced back to its prototype in the sacred land of Âryâvarta. These prototypes are all connected with the Kumâras who appear on the scene of

## action by “refusing”—as Sanatkumâra and Sananda—to “create progeny.” Yet

they are called the “creators” of (thinking) man. More than once they are brought into connection with Nârada—another bundle of _apparent_ incongruities, yet a wealth of philosophical tenets. Nârada is the leader of the Gandharvas, the celestial singers and musicians; Esoterically, the reason for this is explained by the fact that the Gandharvas are “the instructors of men in the Secret Sciences.” It is they, who “loving the women of the Earth” disclosed to them the mysteries of creation; or, as in the _Veda_, the “heavenly” Gandharva is a deity who knew and revealed the secrets of heaven and divine truths, in general. If we remember what is said of this class of Angels in _Enoch_ and in the _Bible_, then the allegory is plain; their leader, Nârada, while refusing to procreate, leads men to become Gods. Moreover, all of these, as stated in the _Vedas_, are Chhandajas, “will‐born,” or incarnated, in different Manvantaras, _of their own will_. They are shown in exoteric literature as existing age after age; some being “cursed to be reborn,” others incarnating as a duty. Finally, as the Sanakadikas, the seven Kumâras who went to visit Vishnu on the “White Island” (Shveta‐dvîpa), the Island inhabited by the Mahâ Yogins—they are connected with Shâka‐dvîpa and the Lemurians and Atlanteans of the Third and Fourth Races.

In the Esoteric Philosophy, the Rudras (Kumâras, Âdityas, Gandharvas, Asuras, etc.) are the highest Dhyân Chohans or Devas as regards intellectuality. They are those who, owing to their having acquired by self‐development the _five‐fold_ nature—hence the sacredness of number _five_—became independent of the pure Arûpa Devas. This is a mystery very difficult to realize and understand correctly. For we see that those who were “obedient to law” are, equally with the “rebels,” _doomed to be reborn in every age_. Nârada, the Rishi, is cursed by Brahmâ to incessant peripateticism on Earth, _i.e._, to be constantly reborn. He is a rebel against Brahmâ, and yet has no worse fate than the Jayas—the twelve great Creative Gods produced by Brahmâ as his assistants in the functions of creation. For the latter, lost in meditation, only _forgot to create_; and for this, they were equally cursed by Brahmâ to be born in every Manvantara. And still they are termed—together with the rebels—Chhandajas, or those born of their own will in human form.

All this is very puzzling to one who is unable to read and understand the _Purânas_ except in their dead‐letter sense.(1387) Hence we find the Orientalists refusing to be puzzled, and cutting the Gordian knot of perplexity by declaring the whole scheme “figments ... of Brâhmanical fancy and love of exaggeration.” But to the student of Occultism, the whole is pregnant with deep philosophical meaning. We willingly leave the rind to the Western Sanskritist, but claim the essence of the fruit for ourselves. We do more: we concede that in one sense much in these so‐ called “fables” refers to astronomical allegories about constellations, asterisms, stars, and planets. Yet, while the Gandharva of the _Rig Veda_ may there be made to personify the fire of the Sun, the Gandharva Devas are entities both of a physical and psychic character, while the Apsarasas (with other Rudras) are both _qualities_ and _quantities_. In short, if ever unravelled, the Theogony of the Vedic Gods will reveal fathomless mysteries of Creation and Being. Truly says Parâshara:

These classes of thirty‐three divinities ... exist age after age, and their appearance and disappearance is in the same manner as the sun sets and rises again.(1388)

There was a time, when the Eastern symbol of the cross and circle, the Svastika, was universally adopted. With the Esoteric, and for the matter of that exoteric, Buddhist, the Chinaman and the Mongolian, it means the “ten thousand truths.” These truths, they say, belong to the mysteries of the Unseen Universe and Primordial Cosmogony and Theogony.

_Since Fohat crossed the Circle like two lines of flame [horizontally and vertically], the Hosts of the Blessed Ones have never failed to send their representatives upon the Planets they are made to watch over from the beginning._

This is why the Svastika is always placed—as the ansated cross was in Egypt—on the breast of the defunct Mystics. It is found on the heart of the images and statues of Buddha, in Tibet and Mongolia. It is the _seal_ placed also on the hearts of the living Initiates, burnt into the flesh for ever with some. This, because they have to keep these truths inviolate and intact, in eternal silence and secrecy to the day they are perceived and read by their chosen successors—new Initiates—“worthy of being entrusted with the ten thousand perfections.” So degraded, however, has it now become, that it is often placed on the headgear of the “Gods,” the hideous idols of the sacrilegious Bhons—the Dugpas or Sorcerers, of the Tibetan borderlands—until found out by a Galukpa, and torn off together with the head of the “God,” though it would be better were it that of the worshipper which was severed from his sinful body. Still, it can never lose its mysterious properties. Throw a retrospective glance, and see it used alike by the Initiates and Seers, as by the Priests of Troy, for many specimens of it have been found by Schliemann on the site of that old city. One finds it with the old Peruvians, the Assyrians, Chaldæans, as well as on the walls of the old‐world Cyclopean buildings; in the catacombs of the _New_ World, and in those of the _Old_ (?), at Rome, where—because the first Christians are supposed to have concealed themselves and their religion—it is called Crux Dissimulata.

According to De Rossi the Swastika from an early period was a favourite form of the cross _employed with an occult signification_ which shows the secret was not that of the Christian cross. One Swastika cross in the catacombs is the sign of an inscription which reads “ΖΩΤΙΚΩ ΖΟΤΙΚΗ [? ΖΩΤΙΚΗ], _Vitalis Vitalia_,” or life of life.(1389)

But the best evidence to the antiquity of the cross is that which is brought forward by the author of _The Natural Genesis_ himself:

The value of the cross as a Christian symbol is supposed to date from the time when Jesus Christ was crucified. And yet in the “Christian” _iconography of the catacombs no figure of a man appears upon the Cross during the first six or seven centuries_. There are all forms of the cross except that—the alleged starting‐ point of the new religion. That was not the initial but the final form of the Crucifix.(1390) During some six centuries after the Christian era the foundation of the Christian religion in a crucified Redeemer is entirely absent from Christian art! The earliest known form of the human figure on the cross is the crucifix presented by Pope Gregory the Great to Queen Theodolinde of Lombardy, now in the Church of St. John at Monza, whilst no image of the Crucified is found in the catacombs at Rome earlier than that of San Giulio, belonging to the seventh or eighth century.... There is no Christ and no Crucified; the Cross is the Christ even as the Stauros (Cross) was a type and a name of Horus the Gnostic Christ. The Cross, not the Crucified, is the primary symbol of the Christian Church. The Cross, not the Crucified, is the essential object of representation in its art, and of adoration in its religion. The germ of the whole growth and development can be traced to the cross. And that cross is pre‐ Christian, is pagan and heathen, in half a dozen different shapes. The Cult began with the cross, and Julian was right in saying he waged a “Warfare with the X”; which he obviously considered had been adopted by the A‐Gnostics and Mytholators to convey an impossible significance.(1391) During centuries the cross stood for the Christ, and was addressed as if it were a living being. It was divinized at first and humanized at last.(1392)

Few world‐symbols are more pregnant with real Occult meaning than the Svastika. It is symbolized by the figure 6. Like that figure, it points, in its concrete imagery, as does the ideograph of the number, to the Zenith and the Nadir, to North, South, West, and East; one finds the unit everywhere, and that unit reflected in all and every unit. It is the emblem of the activity of Fohat, of the continual revolution of the “Wheels,” and of the Four Elements, the “Sacred Four,” in their mystical, and not alone in their cosmical meaning; further, its four arms, bent at right angles, are intimately related, as shown elsewhere, to the Pythagorean and Hermetic scales. One initiated into the mysteries of the meaning of the Svastika, say the Commentaries, “can trace on it, with mathematical precision, the evolution of Kosmos and the whole period of Sandhyâ.” Also “the relation of the Seen to the Unseen,” and “the first procreation of man and species.”

To the Eastern Occultist the Tree of Knowledge, in the Paradise of man’s own heart, becomes the Tree of Life Eternal, and has nought to do with man’s animal senses. It is an absolute mystery that reveals itself only through the efforts of the imprisoned Manas, the Ego, to liberate itself from the thraldom of sensuous perception, and see in the light of the one eternal present Reality. To the Western Kabalist, and far more now to the superficial Symbologist, nursed in the lethal atmosphere of Materialistic Science, the chief explanation of the mysteries of the cross is—its sexual element. Even the otherwise spiritualistic modern commentator discerns this feature in the cross and Svastika before all others.

The cross was used in Egypt as a protecting talisman and a symbol of saving power. Typhon, or Satan, is actually found chained to and bound by the cross. In the _Ritual_, the Osirian cries, “_The Apophis is overthrown, their cords bind the South, North, East, and West, their cords are on him. Har‐ru‐bah has knotted him._”(1393) These were the Cords of the four quarters, or the cross. Thor is said to smite the head of the serpent with his hammer, ... a form of Swastika or four‐footed cross.... In the primitive sepulchres of Egypt the model of the Chamber had the form of a cross.(1394) The pagoda of Mathura ... the birth‐place of Krishna, was built in the form of a cross.(1395)

This is perfect, and no one can discern in it that “sexual worship,” with which the Orientalists love to break the head of Paganism. But how about the Jews, and the exoteric religions of some Hindû sects, especially the rites of the Vallabâchâryas? For, as said, Shiva‐worship, with its Lingam and Yoni, stands too high philosophically, its modern degeneration notwithstanding, to be called a simple phallic worship. But the Tree‐ or Cross‐worship(1396) of the Jews, as denounced by their own Prophets, can hardly escape the charge. The “sons of the sorcerers, the seed of the adulterer,”(1397) as Isaiah calls them, never lost an opportunity of “enflaming themselves with idols under every green tree”(1398)—which denotes no metaphysical recreation. It is from these _monotheistic_ Jews that the Christian nations have derived their religion, their “God of Gods, the One living God,” while despising and deriding the worship of the Deity of the ancient Philosophers. Let such believe in and worship the physical form of the cross, by all means.

But to the follower of the true Eastern Archaic Wisdom, to him who worships in spirit nought outside the Absolute Unity, that ever‐pulsating great Heart that beats throughout, as in, every atom of Nature, each such atom contains the germ from which he may raise the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits give Life Eternal and not physical life alone. For him, the cross and circle, the Tree or the Tau—even after every symbol relating thereto has been referred to and read, one after another—still remain a profound mystery in their Past, and it is to that Past alone that he directs his eager gaze. He cares little whether it be the Seed from which grows the genealogical Tree of Being, called the Universe. Nor is it the Three in One, the triple aspect of the Seed—its form, colour, and substance—that interest him, but rather the Force which directs its growth, the ever mysterious, as the ever unknown. For this vital Force, that makes the Seed germinate, burst open and throw out shoots, then form the trunk and branches, which, in their turn, bend down like the boughs of the Ashvattha, the holy Tree of Bodhi, throw their seed out, take root and procreate other trees—this is the only Force that has reality for him, as it is the never‐dying Breath of Life. The Pagan philosopher sought for the cause, the modern is content with only the effects and seeks the former in the latter. What is beyond, he does not know, nor does the modern A‐ gnostic care; thus rejecting the only knowledge upon which he can with full security base his Science. Yet this manifested Force has an answer for him who seeks to fathom it. He who sees in the cross, the decussated circle of Plato, the Pagan, not the antitype of circumcision, as Christian (St.) Augustine did,(1399) is forthwith regarded by the Church as a heathen; by Science, as a lunatic. This, because, while refusing to worship the God of physical generation, he confesses that he can know nothing of the Cause which underlies the so‐called _First_ Cause, the Causeless Cause of this Vital Cause. Tacitly admitting the All‐Presence of the Boundless Circle and making of it the Universal Postulate upon which the whole of the Manifested Universe is based, the Sage keeps a reverential silence concerning that upon which no mortal man should dare to speculate. “The Logos of God is the revealer of man, and the Logos (the Verb) of man is the revealer of God,” says Éliphas Lévi in one of his paradoxes. To this, the Eastern Occultist would reply: On this condition, however, that man should be dumb on the Cause that produced both God and its Logos. Otherwise, he becomes invariably the _reviler_, not the _revealer_, of the Incognizable Deity.

We have now to approach a mystery—the Hebdomad in Nature. Perchance, all that we may say, will be attributed to coincidence. We may be told that this number in Nature is quite _natural_—as indeed we say it is—and has no more significance than the illusion of motion which forms the so‐called “strobic circles.” No great importance was given to these “singular illusions” when Professor Sylvanus Thompson exhibited them at the meeting of the British Association in 1877. Nevertheless we should like to learn the scientific explanation why seven should ever form itself as a preeminent number—six concentric circles around a seventh, and seven rings within one another round a central point, etc.—in this _illusion_, produced by a swaying saucer, or any other vessel. We give the solution refused by Science in the Section which follows.

Section XI. The Mysteries of the Hebdomad.

We must not close this Part on the Symbolism of Archaic History, without an attempt to explain the perpetual recurrence of this truly mystic number, the Hebdomad, in every scripture known to the Orientalists. As every religion, from the oldest to the latest, reveals its presence, and explains it on its own grounds agreeably with its own special dogmas, this is no easy task. We can, therefore, do no better or more explanatory work than to give a bird’s‐eye view of all. The numbers, 3, 4, 7, are the sacred numbers of Light, Life, and Union—especially in this present Manvantara, our Life‐Cycle; of which number _seven_ is the special representative, or the _factor_ number. This has now to be demonstrated.

If one should ask a Brâhman learned in the _Upanishads_, which are so full of the Secret Wisdom of old, why “he, of whom seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the Moon‐plant,” is Trisuparna, as Bopaveda is credited with saying;(1400) and why the Somapa Pitris should be worshipped by the Brâhman Trisuparna—very few could answer the question; or, if they knew, they would still less satisfy one’s curiosity. Let us, then, hold to what the old Esoteric Doctrine teaches. As says the Commentary:

_When the first Seven appeared on Earth, they threw the seed of everything that grows on the land into the soil. First came Three, and Four were added to these as soon as stone was transformed into plant. Then came the second Seven, who, guiding the Jîvas of the plants, produced the middle [intermediate] natures between plant and moving living animal. The third Seven evolved their Chhâyâs.... The fifth Seven imprisoned their Essence.... Thus man became a Saptaparna._

A. Saptaparna.

Such is the name given in Occult phraseology to man. It means, as shown elsewhere, a seven‐leaved plant, and the name has a great significance in the Buddhist legends. So it had, also, under disguise, in the Greek myths. The T, or τ (Tau), formed from the figure 7, and the Greek letter Γ (Gamma), was, as stated in the last Section, the symbol of life, and of Life Eternal: of earthly life, because Γ (Gamma) is the symbol of the Earth (Gaia)(1401); and of Life Eternal, because the figure 7 is the symbol of the same life _linked_ with Divine Life, the double glyph expressed in geometrical figures being:

[Symbol: a triangle over a square]

—a Triangle and a Quaternary, the symbol of Septenary Man.

Now, the number _six_ has been regarded in the Ancient Mysteries as an emblem of _physical_ Nature. For six is the representation of the six dimensions of all bodies—the _six_ directions which compose their form, namely, the four directions extending to the four cardinal points, North, South, East, and West, and the two directions of height and thickness that answer to the Zenith and the Nadir. Therefore, while the Senary was applied by the Sages to _physical_ man, the Septenary was for them the symbol of that man _plus_ his immortal Soul.(1402)

J. M. Ragon gives a very good illustration of the “hieroglyphical senary,” as he calls our double equilateral triangle.

The hieroglyphical senary is the symbol of the commingling of the _philosophical three_ fires and _three_ waters, whence results the procreation of the elements of all things.(1403)

The same idea is found in the Indian double equilateral triangle. For, though it is called in that country the sign of Vishnu, yet in truth it is the symbol of the Triad, or Tri‐mûrti. For, even in the exoteric rendering, the lower triangle, [Symbol: triangle], with the apex downward, is the symbol of Vishnu, the God of the Moist Principle and Water, Nârâyana being the Moving Principle in the Nârâ, or Waters;(1404) while the triangle, with its apex upward, [Symbol: triangle], is Shiva, the Principle of Fire, symbolized by the triple flame in his hand.(1405) It is these two interlaced triangles, wrongly called “Solomon’s Seal”—which also form the emblem of our Society—that produce the Septenary and the Triad at one and the same time, and are the Decad. Whatever way this [Symbol: 6‐point star] is examined, all the ten numbers are contained therein. For with a point in the middle or centre, [Symbol: 6‐point star with middle dot], it is a _sevenfold_ sign or Septenary; its triangles denote number three, or the Triad; the two triangles show the presence of the Binary; the triangles with the central point common to both yield the Quaternary; the six points are the Senary; and the central point, the Unit; the Quinary being traced by combination, as a compound of _two_ triangles, the even number, and of _three_ sides in each triangle, the first odd number. This is the reason why Pythagoras and the ancients made the number _six_ sacred to Venus, since:

The union of the two sexes, and the spagyrization of matter by triads, are necessary to develop the generative force, that prolific virtue and tendency to reproduction which is inherent in all bodies.(1406)

Belief in “Creators,” or the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no polytheism, but a philosophical necessity. Like all the other Planets of our system, the Earth has seven Logoi—the emanating Rays of the one “Father‐Ray”—the Protogonos, or the Manifested Logos, he who sacrifices his Esse (or “Flesh,” the Universe) that the World may live and every creature therein have conscious being.

Numbers 3 and 4 are respectively male and female, Spirit and Matter, and their union is the emblem of Life Eternal in Spirit on its ascending arc, and in Matter as the ever resurrecting Element—by procreation and reproduction. The spiritual male line is vertical [Symbol: bar]; the differentiated matter‐line is horizontal; the two forming the cross or ☩. The 3 is invisible; the 4 is on the plane of objective perception. This is why all the Matter of the Universe, when analyzed to its ultimates by Science, can be reduced to four Elements only—Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen; and why the three primaries, the noumena of the four, or graduated Spirit or Force, have remained a _terra incognita_, and mere speculations, mere names, to exact Science. Her servants must believe in and study first the primary causes, before they can hope to fathom the nature, and acquaint themselves with the potentialities, of the effects. Thus, while the men of Western learning had, and still have, the four, or Matter, to toy with, the Eastern Occultists and their disciples, the great Alchemists the world over, have the whole septenate to study from.(1407) As those Alchemists have it:

_When the Three and the Four kiss each other, the Quaternary joins its middle nature with that of the Triangle [or Triad, i.e., the face of one of its plane surfaces becoming the middle face of the other], and becomes a Cube; then only does it [the Cube unfolded] become the vehicle and the number of Life, the Father‐Mother Seven._

Now we are taught that all these earliest forms of organic life also appear in septenary groups of numbers. From minerals or “soft stones that hardened,” to use the phraseology of the Stanzas, followed by the “hard plants that softened,” which are the product of the mineral, for “it is from the bosom of the stone that vegetation is born”;(1408) and then to man—all the primitive models in every kingdom of Nature begin by being ethereal, transparent, films. This, of course, takes place only in the first beginning of life. With the next period they consolidate, and at the _seventh_ begin to branch off into species, _all except men_, the first of the mammalian animals(1409) in the Fourth Round.

Virgil, versed as every ancient poet was, more or less, in Esoteric Philosophy, sang of evolution in the following strains:

_Principio cælum ac terras camposque liquentes_ Lucentemque globum Lunæ, Titaniaque astra _Spiritus_ intus alit, totamque infusa per artus _Mens_ agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet. Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitæque volantum Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore pontus.(1410)

“First came three, or the Triangle.” This expression has a profound meaning in Occultism, and the fact is corroborated, in Mineralogy, Botany, and even in Geology—as has been demonstrated in the Section on “The Chronology of the Brâhmans”—by the compound number seven, the three and the four, being contained in it. Salt in solution proves this. For when its molecules, clustering together, begin to deposit themselves as a solid, the first shape they assume is that of triangles, of small pyramids and cones. It is the figure of Fire, whence the word “Pyramis”; while the second geometrical figure in _manifested_ Nature is a Square or a Cube, 4 and 6; for, as Enfield says, “the particles of earth being cubical, those of fire are pyramidal”—truly. The pyramidal shape is that assumed by the pines—the most primitive tree after the fern period. Thus the two opposites in cosmic Nature—fire and water, heat and cold—begin their metrographical manifestations, one by a trimetric, the other by a hexagonal system. For the stellate crystals of snow, viewed under a microscope, are all and each of them a double or a treble six‐pointed star, with a central nucleus, like a miniature star within the larger one. Says Mr. Darwin—showing that the inhabitants of the sea‐shore are greatly affected by the tides:

The most ancient progenitors in the kingdom of the Vertebrata ... apparently consisted of a group of marine animals.... Animals living either about the _mean_ high‐water mark, or about the _mean_ low‐water mark, pass through a complete cycle of tidal changes in a fortnight.... Now it is a mysterious fact that in the higher and now terrestrial Vertebrata ... many normal and abnormal processes have one or more weeks [septenates] as their periods ... such as gestation of mammals, the duration of fevers.(1411)

The eggs of the pigeon are hatched in two weeks [or 14 days]; those of the fowl in three; those of the duck in four; those of the goose in five; and those of the ostrich in seven.(1412)

This number is closely connected with the Moon, whose Occult influence is ever manifesting itself in septenary periods. It is the Moon which is the guide of the Occult side of terrestrial Nature, while the Sun is the regulator and factor of manifested life. This truth has ever been evident to the Seers and the Adepts. Jakob Böhme, by insisting on the fundamental doctrine of the seven properties of everlasting Mother Nature, proved himself thereby a great Occultist.

But to return to the consideration of the septenary in ancient religious symbolism. To the metrological key of the symbolism of the Hebrews, which reveals numerically the geometrical relations of the Circle (All‐Deity) to the Square, Cube, Triangle, and all the integral emanations of the divine area, may be added the theogonic key. This key explains that Noah, the Deluge‐Patriarch, is in one aspect the permutation of the Deity (the Universal Creative Law), for the purpose of the formation of our Earth, its population, and the propagation of life on it, in general.

Now bearing in mind the septenary division in divine Hierarchies, as in cosmic and human constitutions, the student will readily understand that Jah‐Noah is at the head of, and is the synthesis of the lower cosmic Quaternary. The upper Sephirothal Triad, △—of which Jehovah‐Binah (Intelligence) is the left, female, angle—emanates the Quaternary, □. The latter, symbolizing by itself the Heavenly Man, the sexless Adam Kadmon, viewed as Nature in the abstract, becomes a septenate again by emanating from itself the additional three principles, the lower terrestrial or manifested physical Nature, Matter and our Earth—the seventh being Malkuth, the “Bride of the Heavenly Man”—thus forming, with the higher Triad, or Kether, the Crown, the full number of the Sephirothal Tree—the 10, the Total in Unity, or the Universe. Apart from the higher Triad, the lower creative Sephiroth are seven.

The above is not directly to our point, though it is a necessary reminder to facilitate the comprehension of what follows. The question at issue is to show that Jah‐Noah, or the Jehovah of the Hebrew _Bible_, the alleged Creator of our Earth, of man and all upon it, is:

(_a_) The lowest Septenary, the Creative Elohim—in his cosmic aspect.

(_b_) The Tetragrammaton or the Adam Kadmon, the “Heavenly Man” of the four letters—in his theogonic and kabalistic aspects.

(_c_) The Noah—identical with the Hindû Shishta, the human Seed, left for the peopling of the Earth from a previous creation, or Manvantara, as expressed in the _Purânas_, or the pre‐diluvian period as rendered allegorically in the _Bible_—in his cosmic character.

But whether a Quaternary (Tetragrammaton) or a Triad, the biblical Creative God is not the Universal 10, unless blended with Ain Suph (as Brahmâ with Parabrahman), but a septenary, one of the many septenaries of the Universal Septenate. In the explanation of the question now in hand, his position and status as Noah may best be shown by placing the 3, △, and 4, □, on parallel lines with the cosmic and human principles. For the latter, the old familiar classification is made use of.

As an additional demonstration of the statement, let the reader turn to kabalistic works.

“_Ararat_ = _the mount of descent_ = הר‐י‐רד, _Hor‐Jared_. Hatho mentions it out of composition by _Arath_ = ארת. Editor of Moses Cherenensis says: ‘By this, they say, is signified _the first place of descent_ (of the ark).’ ” (Bryant’s _Anal._, vol. iv. pp. 5, 6, 15.) Under “_Berge_,” _mountain_, Nork says of _Ararat_: “אררט, for ארת (_i.e._, _Ararat_ for _Arath_) _earth, Aramaic_ reduplication.” Here it is seen that Nork and Hatho make use of the same equivalent, in Arath, ארש, with the meaning of _earth_.(1413)

Noah thus symbolizing both the Root‐Manu and the Seed‐Manu, or the Power which developed the Planetary Chain, and our Earth, and the Seed‐Race, the Fifth, which was saved while the last sub‐races of the Fourth, Vaivasvata Manu, perished, the number _seven_ will be seen to recur at every step. It is Noah who, as Jehovah’s permutation, represents the septenary Host of the Elohim, and is thus the Father or Creator (the Preserver) of all animal life. Hence the verses of _Genesis_: “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male [3], and the female [4]; of fowls also of the air by sevens,”(1414) etc., followed by all the _sevening_ of days and the rest.

B. The Tetraktys In Relation To The Heptagon.

Thus number _seven_, as a compound of 3 and 4, is the factor element in every ancient religion, because it is _the factor element in Nature_. Its adoption must be justified, and it must be shown to be _the_ number _par excellence_, for, since the appearance of _Esoteric Buddhism_, frequent objections have been made, and doubts expressed as to the correctness of these assertions.

And here let the student be told at once, that in all such numerical divisions the One universal Principle—although referred to as (the) one, because the Only One—never enters into the calculations. It stands, in its character of the Absolute, the Infinite, and the Universal Abstraction, entirely by Itself and independent of every other Power whether noumenal or phenomenal. Says the author of the article “Personal and Impersonal God”:

This entity is neither matter nor spirit; it is neither Ego nor non‐Ego; and it is neither object nor subject.

In the language of Hindû philosophers it is the original and eternal combination of Purusha [Spirit] and Prakriti [Matter]. As the Advaitîs hold that an external object is merely the product of our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and Purusha is the only reality; it is the _one_ existence which remains in the universe of Ideas. This ... then, is the Parabrahman of the Advaitîs. Even if there were to be a personal God with anything like a material Upâdhi (physical basis of whatever form), from the standpoint of an Advaitî there will be as much reason to doubt his noumenal existence, as there would be in the case of any other object. In their opinion, a conscious God cannot be the origin of the universe, as his Ego would be the effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious conveys but its ordinary meaning. They cannot admit that _the grand total of all the states of consciousness in the universe_ is their deity, as these states are constantly changing, and as cosmic idealism ceases during Pralaya. There is only one permanent condition in the Universe, which is the state of perfect unconsciousness, bare Chidâkâsham (the field of consciousness) in fact.

When my readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is in reality but a huge aggregation of various states of consciousness, they will not be surprised to find that the ultimate state of unconsciousness is considered as Parabrahman by the Advaitîs.(1415)

Although itself entirely out of human reckoning or calculation, yet this “huge aggregation of various states of consciousness” is a septenate, in _its_ totality entirely composed of septenary groups—simply because “the capacity of perception _exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter_,”(1416) or the seven properties, or states of matter. And, therefore, the series from one to seven, begins in the Esoteric calculations with the first manifested principle, which is number one if we commence from above, and number seven when reckoning from below, or from the lowest principle.

The Tetrad is esteemed in the _Kabalah_, as it was by Pythagoras, the most perfect, or rather _sacred_ number, because it emanated from the One, the first manifested Unit, or rather the Three in One. And the latter has ever been impersonal, sexless, incomprehensible, though within the possibility of the higher mental perceptions.

The first manifestation of the eternal Monad was never meant to stand as the symbol of another symbol, the Unborn for the Element‐born, or the one Logos for the Heavenly Man. Tetragrammaton, or the Tetraktys of the Greeks, is the Second Logos, the Demiurgos.

The Tetrad, as Thomas Taylor thinks, is, however, the _animal itself_ of Plato who, as Syrianus justly observes, was the best of the Pythagoreans; subsists at the extremity of the intelligible triad, as is most satisfactorily shown by Proclus in the third book of his treatise on the theology of Plato. And between these two triads [the double triangle], the one intelligible, and the other intellectual, another order of gods exists, which partakes of both extremes.(1417)...

The Pythagorean world, according to Plutarch,(1418) _consisted of a double quaternary_.

This statement corroborates what is said about the choice, by the exoteric theologies, of the _lower_ Tetraktys. For:

The quaternary of the intellectual world [the world of Mahat] is T’Agathon, Nous, Psyche, Hyle; while that of the sensible world [of Matter], which is properly what Pythagoras meant by the word Kosmos, is Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. The four elements are called by the name of _rhizômata_, the roots or principles of all _mixed bodies_.(1419)

That is to say, the lower Tetraktys is the root of _illusion_, of the World of Matter; and this is the Tetragrammaton of the Jews, and the “mysterious deity,” over which the modern Kabalists make such a fuss!

This number [_four_] forms the arithmetical mean between the monad and the heptad; and this comprehends all powers, both of the productive and produced numbers; for this, of all numbers under ten, is made of a certain number; the duad doubled makes a tetrad, and the tetrad doubled [or unfolded] makes the hebdomad [the septenary]. Two multiplied into itself produces four; and retorted into itself makes the first cube. This first cube is a _fertile number_, the ground of multitude and variety, constituted of two and four [depending on the monad, the _seventh_]. Thus the two principles of temporal things, the pyramis and cube, form and matter, flow from one fountain, the tetragon [on earth, the monad, in heaven].(1420)

Here Reuchlin, the great authority on the _Kabalah_, shows the cube to be “matter,” whereas the pyramid or the triad is “form.” With the Hermesians the number four becomes the symbol of truth only when _amplified into a cube_, which, unfolded, makes seven, as symbolizing the male and female elements and the element of Life.(1421)

Some students have been puzzled to account for the vertical line,(1422) which is male, becoming, in the cross, a four‐partitioned line (_four_ being a female number), while the horizontal (the line of matter) becomes three‐divisioned. But this is easy of explanation. Since the middle face of the “cube unfolded” is _common_ to both the vertical and the horizontal bar, or double‐line, it becomes _neutral_ ground so to say, and belongs to neither. The spirit line remains triadic, and the matter line two‐fold—two being an even and therefore a female number also. Moreover, according to Theon in his _Mathematica_, the Pythagoreans, who gave the name of Harmony to the Tetraktys, “because it is a diatessaron in sesquitertia,” were of opinion that:

The division of the canon of the monochord was made by the tetraktys in the duad, triad, and tetrad; for it comprehends a sesquitertia, a sesquialtera, a duple, a triple, and a quadruple proportion, the section of which is 27. In the ancient musical notation, the tetrachord consisted of _three_ degrees or intervals, and _four_ terms of sounds called by the Greeks diatessaron, and by us a fourth.(1423)

Moreover, the quaternary though an even, therefore a female (“infernal”) number, varied according to its form. This is shown by Stanley.(1424) The four was called by the Pythagoreans the Key‐Keeper of Nature; but in union with the three, which made it seven, it became the most perfect and harmonious number—_nature herself_. The four was “the masculine of feminine form,” when forming the cross; and seven is the “Master of the Moon,” for this Planet is forced to alter her appearance every seven days. It is on number seven that Pythagoras composed his doctrine on the Harmony and Music of the Spheres, calling a “tone” the distance of the Moon from the Earth; from the Moon to Mercury half a tone, from thence to Venus the same; from Venus to the Sun one and a half tones; from the Sun to Mars a tone; from thence to Jupiter half a tone; from Jupiter to Saturn half a tone; and thence to the Zodiac a tone; thus making seven tones—the diapason harmony.(1425) All the melody of Nature is in those seven tones, and therefore is called the “Voice of Nature.”

Plutarch explains(1426) that the most ancient Greeks regarded the Tetrad as the root and principle of all things, since it was the number of the elements which gave birth to all visible and invisible _created_ things.(1427) With the brothers of the Rosy Cross, the figure of the cross, or _cube unfolded_, formed the subject of a disquisition in one of the Theosophic degrees of Peuvret, and was treated according to the fundamental principles of light and darkness, _or good and evil_.(1428)

The intelligible world proceeds out of the divine mind [or unit] after this manner. The Tetraktys, reflecting upon its own essence, _the first unit, productrix of all things_, and on its own beginning, saith thus: Once one, twice two, immediately ariseth a tetrad, having on its top the highest unit, and _becomes a Pyramis_, whose base is a plain tetrad, answerable to a superficies, upon which the radiant light of the divine unity produceth the form of incorporeal fire, by reason of the descent of Juno (matter) to inferior things. Hence ariseth essential light, not burning but illuminating. This is _the creation of the middle world_, which the Hebrews call the _Supreme_, the world of the [_their_] deity. It is termed Olympus, entirely light, and replete with separate forms, where is the seat of the immortal gods, _deûm domus alta_, whose top is _unity_, its wall _trinity_, and its superficies _quaternity_.(1429)

The “superficies” has thus to remain a _meaningless surface_, if left by itself. _Unity_ only “illuminating” _quaternity_, the famous lower four has to build for itself also a wall from _trinity_, if it would be manifested. Moreover, the Tetragrammaton, or Microprosopus, is “Jehovah” arrogating to himself very improperly the “Was, Is, Will Be,” now translated into the “I am that I am,” and interpreted as referring to the highest abstract Deity; while Esoterically and in plain truth, it means only periodically chaotic, turbulent, and eternal Matter, with all its potentialities. For the Tetragrammaton is one with Nature, or Isis, and is the exoteric series of androgyne Gods such as Osiris‐Isis, Jove‐Juno, Brahmâ‐Vâch, or the Kabalistic Jah‐Hovah; all male‐females. Every anthropomorphic God, in old nations, as Marcellus Ficin well observed, has his name written with four letters. Thus with the Egyptians, he was Teut; the Arabs, Alla; the Persians, Sire; the Magi, Orsi; the Mahometans, Abdi; the Greeks, Teos; the ancient Turks, Esar; the Latins, Deus; to which John Lorenzo Anania adds the German Gott; the Sarmatian Bouh; etc.(1430)

The Monad being one, and an _odd_ number, the Ancients therefore said that the odd were the only perfect numbers; and—selfishly, perhaps, yet as a fact—considered them all as masculine and perfect, being applicable to the _celestial_ Gods, while even numbers, such as two, four, six, and especially eight, as being female, were regarded as imperfect, and given only to the _terrestrial and infernal_ Deities. Virgil records the fact by saying, “_Numero deus impare gaudet_.” “The God is pleased with an odd number.”(1431)

But number _seven_, or the Heptagon, the Pythagoreans considered to be a _religious and perfect number_. It was called Telesphoros, because by it all in the Universe and mankind is led _to its end_, _i.e._, its culmination.(1432) The doctrine of the Spheres ruled by the seven Sacred Planets(1433) shows, from Lemuria to Pythagoras, the seven Powers of terrestrial and sublunary Nature, as well as the seven great Forces of the Universe, proceeding and evolving in seven tones, which are the seven notes of the musical scale.

The Heptad [our Septenary] was considered to be _the number of a virgin, because it is unborn_ [like the Logos or the Aja of the Vedântins]:

Without a father ... or a mother, ... _but proceeding directly from the monad_, which is the origin and crown of all things.(1434)

And if the Heptad is made to proceed from the Monad directly, then it is, as taught in the Secret Doctrine of the oldest schools, the perfect and sacred number of this Mahâmanvantara of ours.

The Septenary, or Heptad, was sacred indeed to several Gods and Goddesses; to Mars, with his seven attendants, to Osiris, whose body was divided into seven and twice seven parts; to Apollo, the Sun, amid his seven planets, and playing the hymn to the seven‐rayed on his seven‐stringed harp; to Minerva, the fatherless and the motherless, and others.(1435)

Cis‐Himâlayan Occultism with its sevening, and because of such sevening, must be regarded as the most ancient, the original of all. It is opposed by _some_ fragments left by Neo‐Platonists; and the admirers of the latter, who hardly understand what they defend, say to us: See, your forerunners believed only in _triple_ man, composed of Spirit, Soul, and Body. Behold, the Târaka Râja Yoga of India limits that division to 3, we, to 4, and the Vedântins to 5 (Koshas). To this, we of the Archaic school ask:

Why then does the Greek poet say that it is not four but _seven_ who sing the praise of the Spiritual Sun?

Ἑπτά με κ.τ.λ. Seven sounding letters sing the praise of me, The immortal God, the almighty Deity.

Why again is the _triune_ Iao, the Mystery God, called the “fourfold,” and yet the triadic and tetradic symbols come under one unified name with the Christians—the Jehovah of the seven letters? Why again in the Hebrew Shebâ is the Oath (the Pythagorean Tetraktys) identical with number 7? Or, as Mr. Gerald Massey has it:

Taking an oath was synonymous with “to seven,” and the 10 expressed by the letter Jod, was the full number of Iao‐Sabaoth [—the ten‐lettered God].(1436)

In Lucian’s _Auction_:

Pythagoras asks, “How do you reckon?” The reply is, “One, Two, Three, Four.” Then Pythagoras says, “Do you see? In _what you conceive_ Four there are Ten, _a perfect Triangle and our Oath_ [Tetraktys, Four!—or Seven in all].”(1437)

Why again does Proclus say:

The Father of the golden verses celebrates the Tetraktys as the fountain of perennial nature?(1438)

Simply because those Western Kabalists who quote the _exoteric_ proofs against us have no idea of the real _Esoteric_ meaning. All the ancient Cosmologies—the oldest Cosmographies of the two most ancient people of the Fifth Root‐Race, the Hindû Âryans and the Egyptians, together with the early Chinese races, the remnants of the Fourth or Atlantean Race—based the whole of their Mysteries on number 10; the higher Triangle standing for the invisible and metaphysical World, the lower three and four, or the Septenate, for the physical Realm. It is not the Jewish _Bible_ that brought number seven into prominence. Hesiod used the words, “the seventh is the sacred day,” before the Sabbath of “Moses” was ever heard of. The use of number seven was never confined to any one nation. This is well testified by the seven vases in the Temple of the Sun, near the ruins of Babian in Upper Egypt; the seven fires burning continually for ages before the altars of Mithra; the seven holy fanes of the Arabians; the seven peninsulas, the seven islands, seven seas, mountains, and rivers of India; and of the _Zohar_; the Jewish Sephiroth of the seven splendours; the seven Gothic deities; the seven worlds of the Chaldæans and their seven Spirits; the seven constellations mentioned by Hesiod and Homer; and all the interminable sevens which the Orientalists find in every MS. they discover.(1439)

What we have to say finally is this: Enough has been brought forward to show why the human principles were and are divided in the Esoteric Schools into seven. Make it four and it will either leave man _minus_ his lower terrestrial elements, or, if viewed from a physical standpoint, make of him a soulless animal. The Quaternary must be the higher or the lower—the celestial or terrestrial Tetraktys; to become comprehensible, according to the teachings of the _ancient_ Esoteric School, man must be regarded as a septenary. This was so well understood, that even the so‐called Christian Gnostics adopted this time‐honoured system.(1440) This remained for a long time a secret, for though it was suspected, no MSS. of that time spoke of it clearly enough to satisfy the sceptic. But there comes to our rescue the literary curiosity of our age—the oldest and best preserved Gospel of the Gnostics, _Pistis Sophia_. To make the proof absolutely complete, we shall quote from an authority, C. W. King, the only Archæologist who has had a faint glimmer of this elaborate doctrine, and the best writer of the day on the Gnostics and their gems.

According to this extraordinary piece of religious literature—a true Gnostic fossil—the human Entity is the Septenary Ray from the One,(1441) just as our School teaches. It is composed of seven elements, four of which are borrowed from the four kabalistical manifested worlds. Thus:

From Asiah it gets the Nephesh, or seat of the physical appetites [vital breath, also]; from Jezirah, the Ruach, or seat of the passions [? !]; from Briah, the Neshamah or reason; and from Aziluth it obtains the Chaiah, or principle of spiritual life. This looks like an adaptation of the Platonic theory of the Soul’s obtaining its respective faculties from the Planets in its downward progress through their spheres. But the Pistis‐Sophia, with its accustomed boldness, puts this theory into a much more poetical shape (§ 282). The _Inner Man_ is similarly made up of _four_ constituents, _but these are supplied by the rebellious Æons of the Spheres_, being the _Power_—a particle of the Divine light (“Divinæ particula auræ”) yet left in themselves; the _Soul_ [the fifth] “formed out of the tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their torments”; the Ἀντιμῖμον Πνεύματος, _Counterfeit of the Spirit_ (seemingly answering to our _Conscience_) [_the sixth_]; and lastly the Μοῖρα, _Fate_(1442) [Karmic Ego], whose business it is to lead the man to the end appointed for him: if he hath to die by the fire, to lead him into the fire; if he hath to die by a wild beast, to lead him unto the wild beast—[the _seventh_]!(1443)

C. The Septenary Element In The Vedas.

_It Corroborates the Occult Teaching Concerning the Seven Globes and the Seven Races._

We have to go to the very source of historical information, if we would bring our best evidence to testify to the facts enunciated. For, though entirely allegorical, the Rig Vedic hymns are none the less suggestive. The seven Rays of Sûrya, the Sun, are therein made parallel to the seven Worlds, of every Planetary Chain, to the seven Rivers of Heaven and Earth, the former being the seven creative Hosts, and the latter the seven Men, or primitive human groups. The seven ancient Rishis—the progenitors of all that lives and breathes on Earth—are the seven friends of Agni, his seven “Horses,” or seven “Heads.” The human race has sprung from Fire and Water, it is allegorically stated; fashioned by the Fathers, or the Ancestor‐ sacrificers, from Agni; for Agni, the Ashvins, the Âdityas,(1444) are all synonymous with those “Sacrificers,” or the Fathers, variously called Pitaras (or Pitris), Angirasas,(1445) and Sâdhyas, “Divine Sacrificers,” the most Occult of all. They are all called Deva‐putra Rishayah or the “Sons of God.”(1446) The “Sacrificers,” moreover, are collectively the One Sacrificer, the Father of the Gods, Vishvakarman, who performed the great Sarva‐medha ceremony, and ended by sacrificing himself.

In these Hymns the “Heavenly Man” is called Purusha, the “Man,”(1447) from whom Virâj was born(1448); and from Virâj, the (mortal) man. It is Varuna—lowered from his sublime position to be the chief of the Lords—Dhyânîs or Devas—who regulates all natural phenomena, who “makes a path for the Sun, for him to follow.” The seven Rivers of the Sky (the descending Creative Gods), and the seven Rivers of the Earth (the seven primitive Mankinds), are under his control, as will be seen. For he who breaks Varuna’s laws (Vratâni, or “courses of natural action,” active laws), is punished by Indra(1449) the Vedic powerful God, whose Vrata, or law or power, is greater than the Vratâni of any other God.

Thus, the _Rig Veda_, the oldest of _all the known_ ancient records, may be shown to corroborate the Occult Teachings in almost every respect. Its Hymns, which are the records written by the earliest Initiates of the Fifth (our) Race concerning the Primordial Teachings, speak of the Seven Races (two still to come), allegorizing them by the seven “Streams”(1450) and of the Five Races (Panchakrishtayah) which have already inhabited this world(1451) on the five Regions (Panchapradishah)(1452) as also of the three Continents that were.(1453)

It is only those scholars who will master the secret meaning of the Purusha Sukta—in which the intuition of the modern Orientalists has chosen to see “one of the very latest hymns of the _Rig Veda_”—who may hope to understand how harmonious are its teachings and how corroborative of the Esoteric Doctrines. He must study, in all the abstruseness of their metaphysical meaning, the relations therein between the (Heavenly) Man (Purusha), _sacrificed_ for the production of the Universe and all in it,(1454) and the terrestrial mortal man(1455) before he realizes the hidden philosophy of the verse:

15. He [“Man,” Purusha, or Vishvakarman] had seven enclosing logs of fuel, and _thrice seven_ layers of fuel; when the Gods performed the sacrifice, they bound the Man as victim.

This relates to the three septenary primeval Races, and shows the antiquity of the _Vedas_, which knew of no other sacrifice, probably, in these earliest _oral_ teachings; and also to the seven primeval groups of Mankind, as Vishvakarman represents divine Humanity collectively.(1456)

The same doctrine is found reflected in the other old religions. It may, it must, have come down to us disfigured and misinterpreted, as in the case of the Parsîs who read it in their _Vendîdâd_ and elsewhere, though without understanding the allusions therein contained any better than do the Orientalists; yet the doctrine is plainly mentioned in their old works.(1457)

Comparing the Esoteric Teaching with the interpretations by Prof. James Darmesteter, one may see at a glance where the mistake is made, and the cause that produced it. The passage runs thus:

The Indo‐Iranian Asura [Ahura] was often conceived as _sevenfold_; by the play of certain mythical [?] formulæ and the strength of certain mythical [?] numbers, the ancestors of the Indo‐Iranians had been led to speak of seven worlds,(1458) and the supreme god was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds over which he ruled. The seven worlds became in Persia the seven Karshvare of the earth: the earth is divided into seven Karshvare, _only one of which is known and accessible to man_, the one on which we live, namely, Hvaniratha; which amounts to saying that there are _seven earths_.(1459) Parsi mythology knows also of seven heavens. Hvaniratha itself is divided into seven climes. (Orm. Ahr. § 72.)(1460)

The same division and doctrine is to be found in the oldest and most revered of the Hindû scriptures—the _Rig Veda_. Mention is made therein of six Worlds, _besides_ our Earth: the six Rajamsi above Prithivî, the Earth, or “this” (Idam) as opposed to “that which is _yonder_” (_i.e._, the six Globes on the _three_ other planes or Worlds).(1461)

The italics are ours to point out the identity of the tenets with those of the Esoteric Doctrine, and to accentuate the mistake that is made. The Magi or Mazdeans only believed in what other people believed in: namely, in seven “Worlds” or Globes of our Planetary Chain, of which _only one_ is accessible to man, at the present time, our Earth; and in the successive appearance and destruction of seven Continents or Earths on this our Globe, each Continent being divided, in commemoration of the seven Globes (one visible, six invisible), into seven islands or continents, seven “climes,” etc. This was a common belief in those days when the now Secret Doctrine was open to all. It is this multiplicity of localities in septenary divisions, which has made the Orientalists—who have, moreover, been further led astray by the oblivion of their primitive doctrines of both the uninitiated Hindûs and Parsîs—feel so puzzled by this ever‐ recurring seven‐fold number as to regard it as “mythical.” It is this oblivion of first principles which has led the Orientalists off the right track and made them commit the greatest blunders. The same failure is found in the definition of the Gods. Those who are ignorant of the Esoteric Doctrine of the earliest Âryans, can never assimilate or even understand correctly the metaphysical meaning contained in these Beings.

Ahura Mazda (Ormazd) was the head and synthesis of the seven Amesha Spentas, or Amshaspands, and, therefore, an Amesha Spenta himself. Just as Jehovah‐Binah‐Elohim was the head and synthesis of the Elohim, and no more; so Agni‐Vishnu‐Sûrya was the synthesis and head, or the focus whence emanated in physics and also in metaphysics, from the spiritual as well as from the physical Sun, the seven Rays, the seven Fiery Tongues, the seven Planets or Gods. All these became supreme Gods and _the_ One God, but only after the loss of the primeval secrets; _i.e._, the sinking of Atlantis, or the “Flood,” and the occupation of India by the Brâhmans, who sought safety on the summits of the Himâlayas, for even the high table‐lands of what is now Tibet became submerged for a time. Ahura Mazda is addressed only as the “Most Blissful Spirit, Creator of the _Corporeal_ World” in the _Vendîdâd_. Ahura Mazda in its literal translation means the “Wise Lord” (Ahura “lord” and Mazda “wise”). Moreover, this name of Ahura, in Sanskrit Asura, connects him with the Mânasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom who informed the mindless man, and endowed him with his mind (Manas). Ahura (Asura) may be derived from the root _ah_ “to be,” but in its primal signification it is what the Secret Teaching shows it to be.

When Geology shall have found out how many thousands of years ago the disturbed waters of the Indian Ocean reached the highest plateaux of Central Asia, when the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf made one with it, then only will they know the age of the existing Âryan Brâhmanical nation, and also the time of its descent into the plains of Hindûstan, which did not take place till millenniums later.

Yima, the so‐called “first man” in the _Vendîdâd_, as much as his twin‐ brother Yama, the son of Vaivasvata Manu, belongs to two epochs of Universal History. He is the Progenitor of the Second human Race, hence the personification of the Shadows of the Pitris, and the Father of the Postdiluvian Humanity. The Magi said, “Yima,” as we say “man” when speaking of mankind. The “fair Yima,” the first mortal who converses with Ahura Mazda, is the _first _“man”_ who dies_ or disappears, not the first who is born. The “son of Vîvanghat”(1462) was, like the son of Vaivasvata, the symbolical man, who stood in Esotericism as the representative of the _first three_ Races and the collective Progenitor thereof. Of these Races the first two never died(1463) but only vanished, absorbed in their progeny, and the Third knew death only towards its close, after the separation of the sexes and its “Fall” into generation. This is plainly alluded to in Fargard ii of the _Vendîdâd_. Yima refuses to become the bearer of the law of Ahura Mazda, saying:

“I was not born, I was not taught to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law.”(1464)

And then Ahura Mazda asks him to make his men increase and “watch over” his world.

He refuses to become the priest of Ahura Mazda, because he is _his own priest and sacrificer_, but he accepts the second proposal. He is made to answer:

“Yes!... Yes, I will nourish, and rule, and watch over thy world. There shall be, while I am king, neither cold wind nor hot wind, _neither disease nor death_.”

Then Ahura Mazda brings him a golden ring and a poniard, the emblems of sovereignty.

Thus, under the sway of Yima, three hundred _winters_ passed away, and the earth was _replenished_ with flocks and herds, with men and dogs and birds and with red blazing fires.

Three hundred winters mean three hundred periods or cycles. “Replenished,” mark well; that is to say, all this had been on it before; and thus is proven the knowledge of the doctrine about the successive Destructions of the World and its Life‐Cycles. Once the “three hundred winters” were over, Ahura Mazda warns Yima that the Earth is becoming too full, and men have nowhere to live. Then Yima steps forward, and with the help of Spenta Ârmaita, the female Genius, or Spirit of the Earth, makes that Earth stretch out and become larger by one‐third, after which “new flocks and herds and men” appear upon it. Ahura Mazda warns him again, and Yima makes the Earth by the same magic power to become larger by two‐thirds. “Nine hundred winters” _pass_ away, and Yima has to perform the ceremony for the _third_ time. The whole of this is allegorical. The three processes of stretching the Earth, refer to the three successive Continents and Races issuing one after and from the other, as explained more fully elsewhere. After the _third_ time, Ahura Mazda warns Yima in an assembly of “celestial gods” and “excellent mortals” that upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, and all _life_ will perish. This is the old Mazdean symbolism for the “Flood,” and the coming cataclysm to Atlantis, which sweeps away every Race in its turn. Like Vaivasvata Manu and Noah, Yima makes a Vara—an Enclosure, an Ark—under the God’s direction, and brings thither the seed of every living creature, animals and “Fires.”

It is of this “Earth” or new Continent that Zarathushtra became the law‐ giver and ruler. This was the Fourth Race in its beginning, after the men of the Third began to die out. Till then, as said above, there had been no regular death, but only a transformation, for _men had no personality_ as yet. They had Monads—“Breaths” of the One Breath, as impersonal as the source from which they proceeded. They had bodies, or rather shadows of bodies, which were sinless, hence Karma‐less. Therefore, as there was no Kâma Loka—least of all Nirvâna or even Devachan—for the “Souls” of men who had no personal Egos, there could be no intermediate periods between the incarnations. Like the Phœnix, primordial man resurrected out of his old into a new body. Each time, and with each new generation, he became more solid, more physically perfect, agreeably with the evolutionary law, which is the Law of Nature. Death came with the complete physical organism, and with it—moral decay.

This explanation shows one more old religion agreeing in its symbology with the Universal Doctrine.

Elsewhere the oldest Persian traditions, the relics of Mazdeism of the still older Magians, are given, and some of them explained. Mankind did not issue from one solitary couple. Nor was there ever a first man—whether Adam or Yima—but a first mankind.

It may, or may not, be “mitigated polygenism.” Once that both Creation _ex nihilo_ (an absurdity) and a superhuman Creator or Creators (a fact) are made away with by Science, polygenism presents no more difficulties or inconveniences—rather fewer from a scientific point of view—than monogenism does.

In fact, it is as scientific as any other claim. For in his Introduction to Nott and Gliddon’s _Types of Mankind_, Agassiz declares his belief in an indefinite number of “primordial races of men created _separately_”; and remarks that, “whilst in every zoological province animals are of _different_ species, _man_, in spite of the diversity of his races, always forms _one and the same_ human being.”

Occultism defines and limits the number of primordial races to seven, because of the seven “Progenitors,” or Prajâpatis, the evolvers of beings. These are neither Gods, nor supernatural Beings, but advanced Spirits from another and lower Planet, reborn on this Planet, and giving birth in their turn in the present Round to present Humanity. This doctrine is again corroborated by one of its echoes—among the Gnostics. In their anthropology and genesis of man they taught that “a certain company of _seven_ Angels,” formed the first men, who were no better than senseless, gigantic, shadowy forms—“a mere wriggling worm” (!) writes Irenæus,(1465) who takes, as usual, the metaphor for reality.

D. The Septenary In The Exoteric Works.

We may now examine other ancient scriptures and see whether they contain the septenary classification, and, if so, to what degree.

Scattered about in thousands of other Sanskrit texts, some still unopened, others yet unknown, as well as in all the _Purânas_, as much as, if not much more than, even in the Jewish _Bible_, the numbers seven and forty‐ nine (7 × 7) play a most prominent part. In the _Purânas_ they are found from the seven Creations, in the first chapters, down to the seven Rays of the Sun at the final Pralaya, which expand into seven Suns and absorb the material of the whole Universe. Thus the _Matsya Purâna_ has:

For the sake of promulgating the Vedas, Vishnu, in the beginning of a Kalpa, related to Manu the story of Narasimha and the events of _seven_ Kalpas.(1466)

Then again the same _Purâna_ shows that:

In all the Manvantaras, classes of Rishis(1467) appear by seven and _seven_, and having established a code of law and morality depart to felicity.(1468)

The Rishis, however, represent many other things besides living sages.

In Dr. Muir’s translation of the _Atharva Veda_, we read:

1. Time carries (us) forward, a steed, with _seven_ rays, a thousand eyes, undecaying, full of fecundity. On him intelligent sages mount; his wheels are all the worlds.

2. Thus Time moves on _seven_ wheels; he has _seven_ naves; immortality is his axle. He is at present _all these worlds_. Time hastens onward the first God.

3. A full jar is contained in Time. We behold him existing in many forms. He is all these worlds in the future. They call him “Time in the highest Heaven.”(1469)

Now add to this the following verse from the Esoteric Volumes:

_Space and Time are one. Space and Time are nameless, for they are the incognizable That, which can be sensed only through its seven Rays—which are the seven Creations, the seven Worlds, the seven Laws, etc._

Remembering that the _Purânas_ insist on the identity of Vishnu with Time and Space,(1470) and that even the Rabbinical symbol for God is Maqom, “Space,” it becomes clear why, for purposes of a manifesting Deity—Space, Matter, and Spirit—the one central Point became the Triangle and Quaternary—the perfect Cube—hence _seven_. Even the Pravaha Wind—the mystic and occult force that gives the impulse to, and regulates the course of the stars and planets—is septenary. The _Kûrma_ and _Linga Purânas_ enumerate seven principal winds of that name, which winds are the principles of Cosmic Space.(1471) They are intimately connected with Dhruva(1472) (now Alpha), the Pole‐Star, which is connected in its turn with the production of various phenomena through cosmic forces.

Thus, from the seven Creations, seven Rishis, Zones, Continents, Principles, etc., in the Âryan Scriptures, the number has passed through Indian, Egyptian, Chaldæan, Greek, Jewish, Roman, and finally Christian mystic thought, until it landed in, and remained indelibly impressed on, every exoteric theology. The seven old books stolen out of Noah’s Ark by Ham, and given to Cush, his son, and the seven Brazen Columns of Ham and Cheiron, are a reflection and a remembrance of the seven primordial Mysteries instituted according to the “seven secret Emanations,” the seven Sounds, and seven Rays—the spiritual and sidereal models of the seven thousand times seven copies of them in later æons.

The mysterious number is once more prominent in the no less mysterious Maruts. The _Vâyu Purâna_ shows, and the _Harivamsha_ corroborates, concerning the Maruts—the oldest as the most incomprehensible of all the secondary or lower Gods in the _Rig Veda_:

That they are _born in every Manvantara [Round], seven times seven_ (or forty‐nine); that, in each Manvantara, _four times seven_ (or twenty‐eight) obtain emancipation, but their places are _filled up by persons reborn in that character_.(1473)

What are the Maruts in their Esoteric meaning, and who _those persons_ “reborn in that character”? In the _Rik_ and other _Vedas_, the Maruts are represented as the Storm Gods and the _friends and allies_ of Indra; they are the “Sons of Heaven and of Earth.” This led to an allegory that makes them the children of Shiva, the great patron of the Yogîs:

The Mahâ Yogî, the great _ascetic_, in whom is centred the highest perfection of austere penance and abstract meditation, _by which the most unlimited powers are attained, marvels and miracles are worked, the highest spiritual knowledge is acquired, and union with the great spirit of the universe is eventually gained_.(1474)

In the _Rig Veda_ the name Shiva is unknown, but the corresponding God is called Rudra, a name used for Agni, the Fire‐God, the Maruts being called therein his sons. In the _Râmâyana_ and the _Purânas_, their mother, Diti—the sister, or complement, and a form of Aditi—anxious to obtain a son who would destroy Indra, is told by Kashyapa, the Sage, that if, “with thoughts wholly pious and person entirely pure,” she carries the babe in her womb “for a hundred years,”(1475) she will have such a son. But Indra foils her in the design. With his thunderbolt he _divides the embryo in her womb into seven portions_, and then divides every such portion _into seven pieces again_, which become the swift‐moving deities, the Maruts.(1476) These Deities are only another _aspect_, or a development, of the Kumâras, who are patronymically Rudras, like many others.(1477)

Diti, being Aditi—unless the contrary is proven to us—Aditi, we say, or Âkâsha in her highest form, is the Egyptian _seven‐fold_ Heaven. Every true Occultist will understand what this means. Diti, we repeat, is the sixth principle of _metaphysical_ Nature, the Buddhi of Âkâsha. Diti, the Mother of the Maruts, is one of her terrestrial forms, made to represent, at one and the same time, the Divine Soul in the ascetic, and the divine aspirations of mystic Humanity toward deliverance from the webs of Mâyâ, and consequent final bliss. Indra is now degraded, because of the Kali Yuga, when such aspirations are no more general but have become abnormal through a general spread of Ahamkâra, the feeling of Egotism, or “I‐am‐ ness” and ignorance; but in the beginning Indra was one of the greatest Gods of the Hindû Pantheon, as the _Rig Veda_ shows. Surâdhipa the “chief of the gods,” has fallen down from Jishnu, the “Leader of the Celestial Host”—the Hindû St. Michael—to an opponent of asceticism, the enemy of every holy aspiration. He is shown married to Aindrî (Indrânî), the personification of Aindriyaka, the evolution of the element of senses, whom he married “because of her _voluptuous attractions_”; after which he began sending celestial female demons to excite the passions of holy men, Yogîs, and “to beguile them from the potent penances which he dreaded.” Therefore, Indra, now characterized as “the god of the firmament, the personified atmosphere”—is in reality the cosmic principle Mahat, and the fifth human principle, Manas in its dual aspect—as connected with Buddhi, and as allowing itself to be dragged down by the Kâma principle, the body of passions and desires. This is demonstrated by Brahmâ telling the conquered God that his frequent defeats were due to Karma, and were a punishment for his licentiousness, and the seduction of various nymphs. It is in this latter character that he seeks, to save himself from destruction, to destroy the coming “babe,” destined to conquer him—the babe, of course, allegorizing the divine and steady will of the Yogî, determined to resist all such temptations, and thus destroy the passions within his earthly personality. Indra succeeds again, because flesh conquers spirit.(1478) He divides the “embryo” (of new _divine_ Adeptship, begotten once more by the Ascetics of the Âryan Fifth Race) into _seven_ portions (a reference not alone to the seven sub‐races of the new Root‐ Race, in each of which there will be a Manu,(1479) but also to the seven degrees of Adeptship), and then each portion into seven pieces—alluding to the Manu‐Rishis of each Root‐Race, and even sub‐race.

It does not seem difficult to perceive what is meant by the Maruts obtaining “four times seven” emancipations in every Manvantara, and by those persons who are _re‐born_ in that character, viz., of the Maruts in their Esoteric meaning, and who “fill up their places.” The Maruts represent (_a_) the passions that storm and rage within every Candidate’s breast, when preparing for an ascetic life—this mystically; (_b_) the Occult potencies concealed in the manifold aspects of Âkâsha’s lower principles—her body, or Sthûla Sharîra, representing the terrestrial, lower atmosphere of every inhabited Globe—this mystically and sidereally; (_c_) actual conscious existences, beings of a cosmic and psychic nature.

At the same time, Marut in Occult parlance is one of the names given to those Egos of great Adepts who have passed away, and are known also as Nirmânakâyas; of those Egos for whom—_since they are beyond illusion_—there is no Devachan, who, having either voluntarily renounced Nirvâna for the good of mankind, or who not yet having reached it, remain invisible on Earth. Therefore are the Maruts(1480) shown, firstly, as the sons of Shiva‐Rudra, the Patron Yogî, whose Third Eye (mystically) must be acquired by the Ascetic before he becomes an Adept; then, in their cosmic character, as the subordinates of Indra and his opponents, under various characters. The “four times seven” emancipations have a reference to the four Rounds, and the four Races that preceded ours, in each of which Maruta‐Jîvas (Monads) have been re‐born, and would have obtained final liberation, if only they had chosen to avail themselves of it. But instead of this, out of love for the good of mankind, which would struggle still more hopelessly in the meshes of ignorance and misery _were it not for this extraneous help_, they are re‐born over and over again “in that character,” and thus “fill up their own places.” _Who_ they are, “on Earth”—every student of Occult Science knows. And he also knows that the Maruts are Rudras, among whom also the family of Tvashtri, a synonym of Vishvakarman, the great Patron of the Initiates, is included. This gives us an ample knowledge of their true nature.

The same for the septenary division of cosmos and the human principles. The _Purânas_, along with other sacred texts, teem with allusions to this. First of all, the Mundane Egg which contained Brahmâ, or the Universe, was externally invested with _seven_ natural elements, at first loosely enumerated as Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and _three secret_ elements; then the “World” is said to be “encompassed on every side” by seven elements, also _within_ the Egg—as explained:

The world is encompassed on every side, and above, and below, by the shell of the egg (of Brahmâ) [Andakatâha].(1481)

Around the shell flows Water, which is surrounded with Fire; Fire by Air; Air by Ether; Ether by the Origin of the Elements (Ahamkâra); the latter by Universal Mind, or “Intellect,” as Wilson translates. It relates to Spheres of Being as much as to Principles. Prithivî is not our Earth but the World, the Solar System, and means the “broad,” the “wide.” In the _Vedas_—the greatest of all authorities, though needing a key to be read correctly—three terrestrial and three celestial Earths are mentioned as having been called into existence simultaneously with Bhûmi, our Earth. We have often been told that six, not _seven_, appears to be the number of spheres, principles, etc. We answer that there are, in fact, only six principles in man; since his body is _no_ principle, but the covering, the shell of a principle. So with the Planetary Chain; therein, speaking Esoterically, the Earth—as well as the seventh, or rather fourth plane, one that stands as the seventh, if we count from the first triple kingdom of the Elementals that begin its formation—may be left out of consideration, being (to us) the only distinct body of the seven. The language of Occultism is varied. But supposing that _three_ Earths only, instead of seven, are meant in the _Vedas_, what are those three, since we still know of but one? Evidently there _must be_ an Occult meaning in the statement under consideration. Let us see. The “Earth that floats” on the Universal Ocean of Space, which Brahmâ divides in the _Purânas_ into seven Zones, is Prithivî, the World divided into seven principles—a cosmic division, looking metaphysical enough, but, in reality, _physical_ in its Occult effects. Many Kalpas later, our Earth is mentioned, and again, in its turn, is divided into seven Zones according to the law of analogy which guided ancient Philosophers. After which we find on it seven Continents, seven Isles, seven Oceans, seven Seas and Rivers, seven Mountains, seven Climates, etc.(1482)

Furthermore, it is not only in the Hindû scriptures and philosophy that one finds references to the seven Earths, but in the Persian, Phœnician, Chaldæan, and Egyptian cosmogonies, and even in Rabbinical literature. The Phœnix(1483)—called by the Hebrews Onech ענק, from Phenoch, Enoch, the symbol of a secret cycle and initiation, and by the Turks, Kerkes—lives a thousand years, after which, kindling a flame, it is self‐consumed; and then, reborn from itself, it lives another thousand years, up to _seven times seven_,(1484) when comes the Day of Judgment. The “seven times seven,” or forty‐nine, are a transparent allegory, and an allusion to the forty‐nine Manus, the seven Rounds, and the seven times seven human Cycles in each Round on each Globe. The Kerkes and the Onech stand for a Race Cycle, and the mystical Tree Ababel, the “Father Tree” in the _Kurân_, shoots out new branches and vegetation at every resurrection of the Kerkes or Phœnix; the “Day of Judgment” meaning a minor Pralaya. The author of the _Book of God_ and the _Apocalypse_ believes that:

The Phœnix is ... very plainly the same as the Simorgh of Persian romance; and the account which is given us of this last bird yet more decisively establishes the opinion that the death and revival of the Phœnix exhibit the successive destruction and reproduction of the world, which many believed to be effected by the agency of a fiery deluge [and also a watery one in its turn]. When the Simorgh was asked her age, she informed Caherman that this world is very ancient, for it has been already _seven times replenished_, with beings different from men, and _seven times depopulated_:(1485) that the age of the human race in which we now are, is to endure seven thousand years, and that she herself had seen _twelve_ of these revolutions, and knew not how many more she had to see.(1486)

The above, however, is no new statement. From Bailly, in the last century, down to Dr. Kenealy, in the present, these facts have been noticed by a number of writers; but now a connection can be established between the Persian oracle and the Nazarene prophet. Says the author of the _Book of God_:

The Simorgh is in reality the same as the winged Singh of the Hindûs, and the Sphinx of the Egyptians. It is said that the former will appear at the end of the world ... [as a] monstrous lion‐bird.... From these the Rabbins have borrowed their mythos of an enormous Bird, sometimes standing on the earth, sometimes walking in the ocean ... while its head props the sky; and with the symbol, they have also adopted the doctrine to which it relates. They teach that there are to be _seven successive renewals_ of the globe; that each reproduced system will last _seven_ thousand years [?]; and that the _total duration of the Universe_ will be 49,000 years. This opinion, which involves the doctrine of the preëxistence of each renewed creature, they may either have learned during their Babylonian captivity, or _it may have been part of the primeval religion_ which their priests had preserved from remote times.(1487)

It shows rather that the initiated Jews _borrowed_, and their non‐ initiated successors, the Talmudists, lost, the sense, and applied the seven Rounds, and the forty‐nine Races, etc., wrongly.

Not only _their_ priests, but those of every other country. The Gnostics, whose various teachings are the many echoes of the one primitive and universal doctrine, put the same numbers, under another form, in the mouth of Jesus in the very occult _Pistis Sophia_. We say more: even the Christian editor or author of _Revelation_ has preserved this tradition and speaks of the _seven_ Races, four of which, with part of the fifth, are gone, and two have to come. It is stated as plainly as can be. Thus saith the angel:

And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are _seven_ kings; _five_ are fallen, and one _is_, and the other is not yet come.(1488)

Who, in the least acquainted with the symbolical language of old, will fail to discern in the _five_ Kings that have fallen, the four Root‐Races that were, and part of the Fifth, the one that _is_; and in the _other_, that “is not yet come,” the Sixth and Seventh coming Root‐Races, as also the sub‐races of this, our present Race? Another still more forcible allusion to the seven Rounds and the forty‐nine Root‐Races in _Leviticus_, will be found elsewhere, Part III.(1489)

E. Seven In Astronomy, Science, And Magic.

Again, number _seven_ is closely connected with the Occult significance of the Pleiades, those seven daughters of Atlas, “the six present, the seventh _hidden_.” In India they are connected with their nursling, the war God, Kârttikeya. It was the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittikâs) who gave this name to the God, Kârttikeya being the planet Mars, _astronomically_. As a God he is the son of Rudra, born without the intervention of a woman. He is a Kumâra, a “virgin youth” again, generated in the fire from the Seed of Shiva—the Holy Spirit—hence called Agni‐bhû. The late Dr. Kenealy believed that, in India, Kârttikeya is the secret symbol of the Cycle of the Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years, according to whether solar or lunar, divine or mortal, years are counted; and that the six visible, or the seven actual sisters, the Pleiades, are needed for the completion of this most secret and mysterious of all the astronomical and religious symbols. Therefore, when intended to commemorate one particular event, Kârttikeya was shown, of old, as a Kumâra, an Ascetic, with _six_ heads—one for each century of the Naros. When the symbolism was needed for another event, then, in conjunction with the seven sidereal sisters, Kârttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumârî, or Senâ, his female aspect. He is then riding on a peacock, the bird of Wisdom and Occult Knowledge, and the Hindû Phœnix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years of the Naros is well known. A six‐rayed star (double triangle), a Svastika, a six and occasionally seven‐pointed crown, is on his brow; the peacock’s tail represents the sidereal heavens; and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are _hidden on his body_; for which he is also called Dvâdasha‐kara, the “twelve‐handed,” and Dvâdashâksha, “twelve‐eyed.” It is as Shakti‐dhara, however, the “spear‐holder,” and the conqueror of Târaka, Târaka‐jit, that he is shown to be most famous.

As the years of the Naros are, in India, counted in two ways, either by one hundred “years of the gods” (divine years), or one hundred “mortal years,” we can see the tremendous difficulty the non‐initiated have in arriving at a correct comprehension of this cycle, which plays such an important part in St. John’s _Revelation_. It is the truly apocalyptic cycle, because of its being of various lengths and relating to various pre‐historic events, and in none of the numerous speculations about it have we found any but a few _approximate_ truths.

Against the duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine ages, it has been urged that Suidas shows the Ancients counting days for years, in their chronological computations. It is to Suidas and his authority that Dr. Sepp appeals in his ingenious plagiarism—which we have already exposed—of the Hindû figures 432. These they give in thousands and millions of years, the duration of their Yugas, but Sepp dwarfed them to 4,320 _lunar_ years,(1490) “before the birth of Christ,” as “foreordained” in the sidereal, in addition to the invisible, heavens, and proved “by the apparition of the Star of Bethlehem.” But Suidas had no other warrant for this assertion than his own speculations, and he was not an Initiate. He cites, as a proof, Vulcan, and shows him reigning 4,477 years, or 4,477 _days_, as he thinks, or again rendered in years, 12 years, 3 months, and 7 days; he has, however, 5 days in his original—thus committing an error even in such an easy calculation.(1491) True, there are other ancient writers guilty of like fallacious speculations; Calisthenes, for instance, who assigns to the astronomical observations of the Chaldæans only 1,903 years, whereas Epigenes recognizes 720,000 years.(1492) The whole of these hypotheses made by profane writers are due to a misunderstanding. The chronology of the Western peoples, ancient Greeks and Romans, was borrowed from India. Now, it is said in the Tamil edition of _Bagavadam_ that 15 solar days make a Paccham; two Pacchams, or 30 days, make a month of mortals, which is only one _day_ of the Pitara Devatâ or Pitris. Again, 2 of these months constitute a Rûdû, 3 Rûdûs make an Ayanam, and 2 Ayanams a year of mortals, which is only a _day_ of the Gods. It is from such misunderstood teachings that some Greeks have imagined that all the initiated priests had transformed days into years!

This mistake of the ancient Greek and Latin writers became pregnant with results in Europe. At the close of the past and the beginning of the present century, Bailly, Dupuis, and others, relying upon the purposely mutilated accounts of Hindû chronology, brought from India by certain unscrupulous and too zealous missionaries, built quite a fantastic theory on the subject. Because the Hindûs had made of half a revolution of the moon a measure of time; and because a month composed of only fifteen days, of which Quintus Curtius speaks,(1493) is found mentioned in Hindû literature, therefore, it becomes a verified fact that their _year_ was only half a year, when it was not called a _day_! The Chinese, also, divided their Zodiac into twenty‐four parts, and hence their year into twenty‐four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it, prevent them having an astronomical year just the same as ours. They also have a period of 60 days—the Southern Indian Rûdû—to this day in some provinces. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus(1494) calls “_thirty days_ an Egyptian year,” or that period during which the moon performs a complete revolution. Pliny and Plutarch(1495) both speak of it; but does it stand to reason that the Egyptians, who knew Astronomy as well as any other nation, made the _lunar_ month consist of 30 days, when it is only 28 days with fractions? This lunar period had an Occult meaning surely as well as had also the Ayanam and the Rûdû of the Hindûs. The year of 2 months’ duration, and the period of 60 days also, was a universal measure of time in antiquity, as Bailly himself shows in his _Traité de l’ Astronomie Indienne et Orientale_. The Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year into two parts, from one equinox to the other;(1496) the Arabs anciently divided the year into six seasons, each composed of two months; in the Chinese astronomical work called _Kioo‐tche_, it is said that two moons make a measure of time, and six measures a year; and to this day the aborigines of Kamschatka have their years of six months, as they had when visited by Abbé Chappe.(1497) But is all this any reason for claiming that when the Hindû _Purânas_ say a solar _year_, they mean one solar _day_!

It was the knowledge of the natural laws which make of seven the root nature‐number, so to say, in the manifested world, or at any rate in our present terrestrial life‐cycle, and the wonderful comprehension of its workings, that unveiled to the Ancients so many of the mysteries of Nature. It is these laws, again, and their processes on the sidereal, terrestrial, and moral planes, which enabled the old Astronomers to calculate correctly the duration of the cycles and their respective effects on the march of events; to record beforehand—to prophesy, it is called—the influence which they would have on the course and development of the human races. The Sun, Moon, and Planets being the never‐erring time‐measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well known, became thus respectively the great ruler and rulers of our little system in all its seven domains, or “spheres of action.”(1498)

This has been so evident and remarkable, that even many of the modern men of Science, Materialists as well as Mystics, have had their attention called to this law. Physicians and Theologians, Mathematicians and Psychologists, have repeatedly drawn the attention of the world to this fact of periodicity in the behaviour of “Nature.” These numbers are explained in the Commentaries in the following words:

_The Circle is not the __“__One__”__ but the __“__All.__”_

_In the higher [Heaven], the impenetrable Rajah,_(_1499_)_ it [the Circle] becomes One, because [it is] the indivisible, and there can be no Tau in it._

_In the second [of the three Rajamsi, or the three __“__Worlds__”__], the One becomes Two [male and female], and Three [with the Son or Logos], and the Sacred Four [the Tetraktys, or Tetragrammaton]._

_In the third [the lower World or our Earth], the number becomes Four, and Three, and Two. Take the first two, and thou wilt obtain Seven, the sacred number of life; blend [the latter] with the middle Rajah, and thou wilt have Nine, the sacred number of Being and Becoming._(1500)

When the Western Orientalists have mastered the real meaning of the Rig Vedic divisions of the World—the two‐fold, three‐fold, six‐ and seven‐ fold, and especially the nine‐fold division—the mystery of the cyclic divisions applied to Heaven and Earth, Gods and Men, will become clearer to them than it is now. For:

_There is a harmony of numbers in all nature; in the force of gravity, in the planetary movements, in the laws of heat, light, electricity, and chemical affinity, in the forms of animals and plants, in the perceptions of the mind._ The direction, indeed, of modern natural and physical science is towards a generalization which shall express the fundamental laws of all, by one simple numerical ratio. We would refer to Professor Whewell’s _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_, and to Mr. Hay’s researches into the laws of harmonious colouring and form. _From these it appears that the number seven is distinguished in the laws regulating the harmonious perception of forms, colours, and sounds_, and probably of taste also, if we could analyze our sensations of this kind with mathematical accuracy.(1501)

So much so, indeed, that more than one Physician has stood aghast at the _septenary_ periodical return of the cycles in the rise and fall of various complaints, and Naturalists have felt themselves at an utter loss to explain this law.

The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions, healthy revolutions of change, diseases, decay and death, of insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals, and even of man, are more or less controlled by a law of _completion in weeks_ [or seven days].(1502)

Dr. Laycock, writing on the “Periodicity of Vital Phenomena,”(1503) records a “most remarkable illustration and confirmation of the law in insects.”(1504)

To all of which Mr. Grattan Guinness remarks very pertinently, as he defends biblical chronology:

And man’s life ... is a _week_, a _week of decades_. “The days of our years are three‐score years and ten.” Combining the testimony of all these facts, we are bound to admit that _there prevails in organic nature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion in weeks_.(1505)

Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the premises of the learned founder of “The East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions,” the writer accepts and welcomes his researches in the Occult chronology of the _Bible_; just as, while rejecting the theories, hypotheses, and generalizations of Modern Science, we bow before its great achievements in the world of the Physical, or in all the minor details of material Nature.

There is most assuredly an Occult “chronological system in Hebrew scripture,” the _Kabalah_ being its warrant; moreover there is in it “a system of weeks,” based on the archaic Indian system, which may still be found in the old Jyotisha.(1506) And there are in it cycles of the “_week_ of days,” of the “_week_ of months,” of years, of centuries, and even of millenniums, and more, of the “week of years of years.”(1507) But all this can be found in the Archaic Doctrine. And if the common source of the chronology in every scripture, however _veiled_, is denied in the case of the _Bible_; then it will have to be shown how, in face of the six days and the seventh (a Sabbath), we can escape connecting the Genetic with the Paurânic Cosmogonies. For the first “week of creation” shows the septiformity of its chronology and thus connects it with Brahmâ’s “seven creations.” The able volume from the pen of Mr. Grattan Guinness, in which he has collected in some 760 pages every proof of this septiform calculation, is good evidence. For if the biblical chronology is, as he says, “regulated by the law of weeks,” and if it is septenary, whatever the measures of the creation week and the length of its days may be, and if, finally, “the Bible system includes weeks on a great variety of scales,” then this system is shown to be identical with all the Pagan systems. Moreover, the attempt to show that 4,320 years, in lunar months, elapsed between the “Creation” and the “Nativity,” is a clear and unmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 years of the Hindû Yugas. Otherwise, why make such efforts to prove that these figures, which are preëminently Chaldæan and Indo‐Âryan, play such a part in the _New Testament_? This we shall now prove still more forcibly.

Let the impartial critic compare the two accounts—the _Vishnu Purâna_ and the _Bible_—and he will find that the “seven creations” of Brahmâ are at the foundation of the “week of creation” in _Genesis_. The two allegories are different, but the systems are both built on the same foundation‐ stone. The _Bible_ can be understood _only by the light of_ the _Kabalah_. Take the _Zohar_, the “Book of Concealed Mystery,” however now disfigured, and compare. The seven Rishis and the fourteen Manus, of the seven Manvantaras, issue from Brahmâ’s head; they are his “Mind‐born Sons,” and it is with them that begins the division of mankind into its Races from the Heavenly Man, the manifested Logos, who is Brahmâ Prajâpati. Speaking of the “Skull” (Head) of Macroprosopus, the Ancient One(1508) (in Sanskrit Sanat is an appellation of Brahmâ), the _Ha Idra Rabba Qadisha_, or “Greater Holy Assembly,” says that in every one of his hairs is a hidden fountain issuing from the concealed brain.

And it shineth and goeth forth through that hair unto the hair of Microprosopus, and from it [which is the manifest Quaternary, the Tetragrammaton] is his brain formed; and thence that brain goeth forth into _thirty_ and _two_ paths [or the Triad and the Duad, or again 432].

And again:

Thirteen curls of hair exist on the one side and on the other of the skull [_i.e._, six on one and six on the other, the thirteenth being also the fourteenth, as it is male‐female]; ... and through them commenceth the division of the hair [the division of things, of mankind and the races].(1509)

“We _six_ are lights which shine forth from a _seventh_ (light),” saith Rabbi Abba; “_thou art the seventh light_”—the synthesis of us all—he adds, speaking of Tetragrammaton and his seven “companions,” whom he calls the “eyes of Tetragrammaton.”(1510)

Tetragrammaton is Brahmâ Prajâpati, who assumed _four_ forms, in order to create four kinds of _supernal_ creatures, _i.e._, made himself _four‐ fold_, or the manifest Quaternary;(1511) after that, he is re‐born in the _seven_ Rishis, his Mânasaputras, “Mind‐born Sons,” who became later, nine, twenty‐one, and so on, and who are all said to be born from various parts of Brahmâ.(1512)

There are two Tetragrammatons: the Macroprosopus and the Microprosopus. The first is the absolute perfect Square, or the Tetraktys within the Circle, both abstract conceptions, and is therefore called Ain—Non‐being, _i.e._, illimitable or absolute “Be‐ness.” But when viewed as Microprosopus, or the Heavenly Man, the Manifested Logos, he is the Triangle in the Square—the _sevenfold_ Cube, not the fourfold, or the plane Square. For it is written in “The Greater Holy Assembly”:

And concerning this, the children of Israel wished to inquire in their hearts [know in their minds], like as it is written, Exod. xvii. 7: “Is the Tetragrammaton in the midst of us, or the Negatively Existent One?”(1513)

—where they distinguished between Microprosopus, who is called Tetragrammaton, and between Macroprosopus, who is called Ain, the Negatively Existent.(1514)

Therefore, Tetragrammaton is the Three _made_ four and the Four made three, and is represented on this Earth by his seven “Companions,” or “Eyes”—the “seven eyes of the Lord.” Microprosopus is, at best, only a _secondary_ manifested Deity. For “The Greater Holy Assembly” elsewhere says:

We have learned that there _were ten_ (_Rabbis_) [Companions] entered into (_the Assembly_) [the Sod, “mysterious assembly or mystery”] and that _seven_ came forth(1515) [_i.e._, _ten_ for the unmanifested, seven for the manifested Universe].

1158. And when Rabbi Schimeon revealed the Arcana, there were found none present there save those [seven] (_companions_). And Rabbi Schimeon called them the seven eyes of Tetragrammaton, like as it is written, Zach. iii. 9: “These are the seven eyes [or principles] of Tetragrammaton” [—_i.e._, the four‐fold Heavenly Man, or pure Spirit, is resolved into septenary man, pure Matter and Spirit].(1516)

Thus the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and the latter is the male‐female Chokmah‐Binah, the second and third Sephiroth. The Tetragrammaton is the very essence of number _seven_, in its terrestrial significance. Seven stands between four and nine—the basis and foundation, astrally, of our physical world and man, in the kingdom of Malkuth.

For Christians and believers, this reference to _Zechariah_ and especially to the _Epistle of Peter_,(1517) ought to be conclusive. In the old symbolism, “man,” chiefly the Inner Spiritual Man is called a “stone.” Christ is the corner‐stone, and Peter refers to all men as “lively” (living) stones. Therefore a “stone with seven eyes” on it can only mean a man whose constitution (_i.e._, his “principles”) is septenary.

To demonstrate more clearly the seven in Nature, it may be added that not only does the number seven govern the periodicity of the phenomena of life, but that it is also found dominating the series of chemical elements, and equally paramount in the world of sound and in that of colour as revealed to us by the spectroscope. This number is the factor, _sine quâ non_, in the production of occult astral phenomena.

It is needless to refer in detail to the number of vibrations constituting the notes of the musical scale; they are strictly analogous to the scale of chemical elements, and also to the scale of colour as unfolded by the spectroscope, although in the latter case we deal with only _one_ octave, while both in music and chemistry we find a series of _seven_ octaves represented theoretically, of which _six_ are fairly complete and in ordinary use in both sciences. Thus, to quote Hellenbach:

It has been established that, from the standpoint of phenomenal law, upon which all our knowledge rests, the vibrations of sound and light increase regularly, that they divide themselves into _seven_ columns, and that the successive numbers in each column are closely allied; _i.e._, that they exhibit a close relationship which not only is expressed in the figures themselves, but also is practically confirmed in chemistry as in music, in the latter of which the ear confirms the verdict of the figures.... The fact that this periodicity and variety is governed by the number _seven_ is undeniable, and it far surpasses the limits of mere chance, and must be assumed to have an adequate cause, which cause must be discovered.

Verily, then, as Rabbi Abba said:

We are six lights which shine forth from a seventh (_light_); thou [Tetragrammaton] art the seventh light (_the origin of_) us all.

For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save (_what they derive_) from the seventh. For all things depend from the seventh.(1518)

The ancient and modern Western American Zuñi Indians seem to have entertained similar views. Their present‐day customs, their traditions and records, all point to the fact that, from time immemorial, their institutions, political, social and religious, were, and still are, shaped according to the septenary principle. Thus all their ancient towns and villages were built in clusters of six, around a seventh. It is always a group of seven, or of thirteen, and always the six surround the seventh. Again, their sacerdotal hierarchy is composed of six “Priests of the House” seemingly synthesized in the seventh, who is a woman, the “Priestess Mother.” Compare this with the “seven great officiating priests” spoken of in the _Anugîtâ_, the name given to the “seven senses,” exoterically, and to the seven human principles, Esoterically. Whence this identity of symbolism? Shall we still doubt the fact of Arjuna going over to Pâtâla, the Antipodes, America, and there marrying Ulûpî, the daughter of the Nâga, or rather Nargal, king? But to the Zuñi priests.

These receive, to this day, an annual tribute of corn of seven colours. Undistinguished from other Indians during the rest of the year, on a certain day they come out—six priests and one priestess—arrayed in their priestly robes, each of a colour sacred to the particular God whom the priest serves and personifies; each of them representing one of the seven regions, and each receiving corn of the colour corresponding to that region. Thus, the white represents the East, because from the East comes the first sun‐light; the yellow corresponds to the North, from the colour of the flames produced by the Aurora Borealis; the red, the South, as from that quarter comes the heat; the blue stands for the West, the colour of the Pacific Ocean, which lies to the West; black is the colour of the nether underground region—darkness; corn with grains of all colours on one ear represents the colours of the upper region—of the firmament, with its rosy and yellow clouds, shining stars, etc. The “speckled” corn, each grain containing all the colours, is that of the “Priestess‐Mother”—woman containing in herself the seeds of all races past, present and future; Eve being the mother of all living.

Apart from these was the Sun—the Great Deity—whose priest was the spiritual head of the nation. These facts were ascertained by Mr. F. Hamilton Cushing, who, as many are aware, became a Zuñi, lived with them, was initiated into their religious mysteries, and has learned more about them than any other man now living.

Seven is also the great magic number. In the Occult Records the weapon mentioned in the _Purânas_ and the _Mahâbhârata_—the Âgneyâstra or “fiery weapon” bestowed by Aurva upon his Chelâ Sagara—is said to be constructed of seven elements. This weapon—supposed by some ingenious Orientalists to have been a “rocket” (!)—is one of the many thorns in the side of our modern Sanskritists. Wilson exercises his penetration over it, on several pages in his _Specimens of the Hindû Theatre_, and finally fails to explain it. He can make nothing out of the Âgneyâstra, for he argues:

These weapons are of a very unintelligible character. Some of them are occasionally wielded as missiles; but, in general, they _appear to be mystical powers exercised by the individual_—such as those of paralyzing an enemy, or _locking his senses fast in sleep_, or bringing down storm, and rain, and fire, from heaven.(1519)... They are supposed to assume celestial shapes, endowed with human faculties.... The _Râmâyana_ calls them the sons of Krishâshva.(1520)

The Shastra‐devatâs, “Gods of the divine weapons,” are no more Âgneyâstras, the weapons, than the gunners of modern artillery are the cannon they direct. But this simple solution did not seem to strike the eminent Sanskritist. Nevertheless, as he himself says of the armiform progeny of Krishâshva, “the allegorical origin of the Âgneyâstra weapons is, undoubtedly, the more ancient.”(1521) It is the fiery javelin of Brahmâ.

The seven‐fold Âgneyâstra, like the seven senses and the seven principles, symbolized by the seven priests, are of untold antiquity. How old is the doctrine believed in by Theosophists, the following Section will tell.

F. The Seven Souls Of The Egyptologists.

If one turns to those wells of information, _The Natural Genesis_ and the _Lectures_ of Mr. Gerald Massey, the proofs of the antiquity of the doctrine under analysis become positively overwhelming. That the belief of the author differs from ours can hardly invalidate the facts. He views the symbol from a purely natural standpoint, one perhaps a trifle too materialistic, because too much that of an ardent Evolutionist and follower of the modern Darwinian dogmas. Thus he shows that:

The student of Böhme’s books finds much in them concerning these Seven “Fountain Spirits,” and primary powers, treated as seven properties of Nature in the alchemistic and astrological phase of the mediæval mysteries....

The followers of Böhme look on such matter as the divine revelation of his inspired Seership. They know nothing of the natural genesis, the history and persistence of the “Wisdom”(1522) of the past (or of the broken links), and are unable to recognize the physical features of the ancient “Seven Spirits” beneath their modern metaphysical or alchemist mask. A second connecting link between the theosophy of Böhme and the physical origins of Egyptian thought, is extant in the fragments of _Hermes Trismegistus_.(1523) No matter whether these teachings are called Illuminatist, Buddhist, Kabalist, Gnostic, Masonic, or Christian, the elemental types can only be truly known in their beginnings.(1524) When the prophets or visionary showmen of cloudland come to us claiming original inspiration, and utter something new, we judge of its value by what it is in itself. But if we find they bring us the ancient matter which they cannot account for, and we can, it is natural that we should judge it by the primary significations rather than the latest pretensions.(1525) It is useless for us to read our later thought into the earliest types of expression, and then say the ancients meant that!(1526) Subtilized interpretations which have become doctrines and dogmas in theosophy have now to be tested by their genesis in physical phenomena, in order that we may explode their false pretensions to supernatural origin or supernatural knowledge.(1527)

But the able author of _The Book of the Beginnings_ and of _The Natural Genesis_ does—very fortunately, for us—quite the reverse. He demonstrates most triumphantly our Esoteric (Buddhist) teachings, by showing them identical with those of Egypt. Let the reader judge from his learned lecture on “The Seven Souls of Man.”(1528) Says the author:

The first form of the mystical Seven was seen to be figured in heaven by the seven large stars of the _Great Bear_, the constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven Elemental Powers.(1529)

Just so, for the Hindûs place their seven primitive Rishis in the Great Bear, and call this constellation the abode of the Saptarshi, Riksha and Chitra‐shikhandinas. And their Adepts claim to know whether it is only an astronomical myth, or a primordial mystery having a deeper meaning than it bears on its surface. We are also told that:

The Egyptians divided the face of the sky by night into seven parts. The primary Heaven was sevenfold.(1530)

So it was with the Âryans. One has but to read the _Purânas_ about the beginnings of Brahmâ and his Egg, to see this. Have the Âryans then, taken the idea from the Egyptians? But, as the lecturer proceeds:

The earliest forces recognized in Nature were reckoned as seven in number. These became Seven Elementals, devils [?], or later divinities. Seven properties were assigned to Nature—as matter, cohesion, fluxion, coagulation, accumulation, station, and division—and _seven elements or souls to man_.(1531)

All this was taught in the Esoteric Doctrine, but it was interpreted and its mysteries unlocked, as already stated, with _seven_, not two or, at the utmost, three keys; hence the causes and their effects worked in invisible or mystic as well as in psychic Nature, and were made referable to Metaphysics and Psychology as much as to Physiology. As the author says:

A principle of _sevening_, so to say, was introduced, and the number seven supplied a sacred type _that could be used for manifold purposes_.(1532)

And it was so used. For:

The seven souls of the Pharaoh are often mentioned in the Egyptian texts.... _Seven souls, or principles in man were identified by our British Druids_.... The Rabbins also ran the number of souls up to seven: so, likewise, do the Karens of India.(1533)

And then, the author, with several misspellings, tabulates the two teachings—the Esoteric and the Egyptian—and shows that the latter had the same series and in the same order.

[Esoteric] Indian. Egyptian. 1. Rûpa, body or element of 1. Kha, body. form. 2. Prâna, the breath of life. 2. Ba, the soul of breath. 3. Astral body. 3. Khaba, the shade. 4. Manas, or 4. Akhu, intelligence or intelligence.(1534) perception. 5. Kâma Rûpa, or animal soul. 5. Seb, ancestral soul. 6. Buddhi, or spiritual soul. 6. Putah, the first intellectual father. 7. Âtmâ, pure spirit. 7. Atmu, a divine, or eternal soul.(1535)

Further on, the lecturer formulates these seven (Egyptian) Souls, as (1) The Soul of Blood—the _formative_; (2) The Soul of Breath—that _breathes_; (3) The Shade or Covering Soul—that _envelopes_; (4) The Soul of Perception—that _perceives_; (5) The Soul of Pubescence—that _procreates_; (6) The Intellectual Soul—that _reproduces intellectually_; and (7) The Spiritual Soul—that is _perpetuated permanently_.

From the exoteric and physiological standpoint this may be very correct; it becomes less so from the Esoteric point of view. To maintain this, does not at all mean that the “Esoteric Buddhists” _resolve men into a number of elementary spirits_, as Mr. G. Massey, in the same lecture, accuses them of maintaining. No “Esoteric Buddhist” has ever been guilty of any such absurdity. Nor has it been ever imagined that these shadows “become spiritual beings in another world,” or “seven potential spirits or elementaries of another life.” What is maintained is simply that every time the immortal Ego incarnates it becomes, as a total, a compound unit of Matter and Spirit, which together act on seven different planes of being and consciousness. Elsewhere, Mr. Gerald Massey adds:

The seven souls [our “principles”] ... are often mentioned in the Egyptian texts. The moon‐god, Taht‐Esmun, or the later sun‐god, expressed the seven nature‐powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls [we say “principles”].... The seven stars in the hand of the Christ in Revelation, have the same significance.(1536)

And a still greater one, as these stars represent also the _seven keys_ of the Seven Churches or the Sodalian Mysteries, kabalistically. However, we will not stop to discuss, but add that other Egyptologists have also discovered that the septenary constitution of man was a cardinal doctrine with the old Egyptians. In a series of remarkable articles in the _Sphinx_, of Munich, Herr Franz Lambert gives incontrovertible proof of his conclusions from the _Book of the Dead_ and other Egyptian records. For details the reader must be referred to the articles themselves.

Böhme, the prince of all the mediæval seers, says:

We find seven especial properties in nature whereby this only Mother works all things [which he calls fire, light, sound (the upper three) and _desire_, _bitterness_, _anguish_, and _substantiality_, thus analyzing the lower in his own mystic way]; whatever the six forms are spiritually, that the seventh [the body or substantiality], is essentially. These are the seven forms of the Mother of all Beings, from whence all that is in this world is generated.(1537)

And again:

The Creator hath, in the body of this world, generated himself as it were _creaturely_ in his qualifying or Fountain Spirits, and all the stars are ... God’s powers, and the whole body of the world consisteth in the seven qualifying or fountain spirits.(1538)

This is rendering in mystical language our theosophical doctrine. But how can we agree with Mr. Gerald Massey when he states that:

The Seven Races of Men that have been sublimated and made Planetary [?] by Esoteric Buddhism,(1539) may be met with in the Bundahish as (1) the earth‐men; (2) water‐men; (3) breast‐eared men; (4) breast‐eyed men; (5) one‐legged men; (6) bat‐winged men; (7) men with tails.(1540)

Each of these descriptions, allegorical and even perverted in their later form, is, nevertheless, an echo of the Secret Doctrine teaching. They all refer to the pre‐human evolution of the “Water‐men terrible and bad” by _unaided_ Nature through millions of years, as previously described. But we deny point‐blank the assertion that “these were never real races,” and point to the Archaic Stanzas for our answer. It is easy to infer and to say that our “instructors have mistaken these shadows of the Past, for things human and spiritual”; but that “they are neither, and never were either,” it is less easy to prove. The assertion must ever remain on a par with the Darwinian claim that man and the ape had a common pithecoid ancestor. What the lecturer takes for a “mode of expression” and nothing more, in the Egyptian _Ritual_, we take as having quite another and an important meaning. Here is one instance. Says the _Ritual_, the _Book of the Dead_:

“I am the mouse.” “I am the hawk.” “I am the ape.”... “_I am the crocodile whose soul comes from_ MEN.”... “_I am the soul of the gods._”(1541)

The last sentence but one is explained by the lecturer, who says parenthetically, “_that is, as a type of intelligence_,” and the last as meaning, “the Horus, or Christ, as the outcome of all.”

The Occult Teaching answers: It means far more.

It gives first of all a corroboration of the teaching that, while the human Monad has passed on Globe A and others, in the First Round, through all the three kingdoms—the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal—in this our Fourth Round, every mammal has sprung from Man, if the semi‐ethereal, many‐shaped creature with the _human_ Monad in it, of the first two Races, can be regarded as Man. But it must be so called; for, in the Esoteric language, it is not the form of flesh, blood, and bones, now referred to as man, which is in any way the Man, but the inner divine Monad with its manifold principles or aspects.

The lecture referred to, however, much as it opposes _Esoteric Buddhism_ and its teachings, is an eloquent answer to those who have tried to represent the whole as a new‐fangled doctrine. And there are many such, in Europe, America, and even India. Yet, between the Esotericism of the old Arhats, and that which has now survived in India among the few Brâhmans who have seriously studied their Secret Philosophy, the difference does not appear so very great. It seems centred in, and limited to, the question of the order of the evolution of cosmic and other principles, more than anything else. At all events it is no greater divergence than the everlasting question of the _filioque_ dogma, which since the eighth century has separated the Roman Catholic from the older Greek Eastern Church. Yet, whatever the differences in the forms in which the septenary dogma is presented, the substance is there, and its presence and importance in the Brâhmanical system may be judged by what one of India’s learned meta‐physicians and Vedântic scholars says of it:

The real esoteric seven‐fold classification is one of the most important, if not the most important classification, which has received its arrangement from the mysterious constitution of this eternal type. I may also mention in this connection that the four‐ fold classification claims the same origin. The light of life, as it were, seems to be refracted by the treble‐faced prism of Prakriti, having the three Gunams for its three faces, and divided into seven rays, which develop in course of time the seven principles of this classification. The progress of development presents some points of similarity to the gradual development of the rays of the spectrum. While the four‐fold classification is amply sufficient for all practical purposes, this real seven‐fold classification is of great theoretical and scientific importance. It will be necessary to adopt it to explain certain classes of phenomena noticed by occultists; and it is perhaps better fitted to be the basis of a perfect system of psychology. It is not the peculiar property of the “Trans‐Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine.” In fact, it has a closer connection with the Brâhmanical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos. In order to make my meaning clear I may point out here that the Logos has seven forms. In other words, there are seven kinds of Logoi in the Cosmos. Each of these has became the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the ancient Wisdom‐Religion. This classification is not the seven‐fold classification we have adopted. I make this assertion without the slightest fear of contradiction. The real classification has all the requisites of a scientific classification. It has seven distinct principles, which correspond with seven distinct states of Prajñâ or consciousness. It bridges the gulf between the objective and subjective, and indicates the mysterious circuit through which ideation passes. The seven principles are allied to seven states of matter, and to seven forms of force. These principles are harmoniously arranged between two poles, which define the limits of _human_ consciousness.(1542)

The above is perfectly correct, save, perhaps, on one point. The “seven‐ fold classification” in the Esoteric System has never (to the writer’s knowledge) been claimed by any one belonging to it, as “the peculiar property of the ‘Trans‐Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine’ ”; but only as having survived in that old School alone. It is no more the property of the Trans‐, than it is of the Cis‐Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine, but is simply the common inheritance of all such Schools, left to the Sages of the Fifth Root‐Race by the great Siddhas(1543) of the Fourth. Let us remember that the Atlanteans became the terrible sorcerers, now celebrated in so many of the oldest MSS. of India, only toward their “Fall,” whereby the submersion of their Continent was brought on. What is claimed is simply that the Wisdom imparted by the “Divine Ones”—born through the Kriyâshaktic powers of the Third Race before its Fall and separation into sexes—to the Adepts of the early Fourth Race, has remained in all its pristine purity in a certain Brotherhood. The said School or Fraternity being closely connected with a certain island of an inland sea—believed in by both Hindûs and Buddhists, but called “mythical” by Geographers and Orientalists—the less one talks of it, the wiser he will be. Nor can one accept the said “seven‐ fold classification” as having “a closer connection with the Brâhmanical Logos than with the Buddhist Logos,” since both are identical, whether the one Logos is called Îshvara or Avalokiteshvara, Brahmâ or Padmapâni. These are, however, very small differences, more fanciful than real, in fact. Brâhmanism and Buddhism, both viewed from their orthodox aspects, are as inimical and as irreconcilable as water and oil. Each of these great bodies, however, has a vulnerable place in its constitution. While even in their esoteric interpretation both can agree but to disagree, once that their respective vulnerable points are confronted, every disagreement must fall, for the two will find themselves on common ground. The “Achilles’ heel” of orthodox Brâhmanism is the Advaita philosophy, whose followers are called by the pious “Buddhists in disguise”; as that of orthodox Buddhism is Northern Mysticism, as represented by the disciples of the philosophies of the Yogâchârya School of Âryâsangha and the Mahâyâna, who are twitted in their turn by their co‐religionists as “Vedântins in disguise.” The Esoteric Philosophy of both these can be but one if carefully analyzed and compared, as Gautama Buddha and Shankarâchârya are most closely connected, if one believes tradition and certain Esoteric Teachings. Thus every difference between the two will be found one of form rather than of substance.

A most mystic discourse, full of septenary symbology, may be found in the _Anugita_(1544) There the Brâhmana narrates the bliss of having crossed beyond the regions of illusion:

In which fancies are the gadflies and mosquitoes, in which grief and joy are cold and heat, in which delusion is the blinding darkness, in which avarice is the beasts of prey and reptiles, in which desire and anger are the obstructors.

The sage describes the entrance into and exit from the forest—a symbol for man’s life‐time—and also that forest itself:(1545)

In that forest are seven large trees [the senses, mind and understanding, or Manas and Buddhi, included], seven fruits, and seven guests; seven hermitages, seven (forms of) concentration, and seven (forms of) initiation. This is the description of the forest. That forest is filled with trees producing splendid flowers and fruits of five colours.

The senses, says the commentator:

Are called trees, as being producers of the fruits ... pleasures and pains ...; the guests are the powers of each sense personified—they receive the fruits above described; the hermitages are the trees ... in which the guests take shelter; the seven forms of concentration are the exclusion from the self of the seven functions of the seven senses, etc., already referred to; the seven forms of initiation refer to the initiation into the higher life, by repudiating as not one’s own the actions of each member out of the group of seven.(1546)

The explanation is harmless, if unsatisfactory. Says the Brâhmana, continuing his description:

That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of four colours. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of three colours, and mixed. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of two colours, and of beautiful colours. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of one colour, and fragrant. That forest is filled [instead of with seven] with two large trees producing numerous flowers and fruits of undistinguished colours [mind and understanding—the two higher senses, or theosophically, Manas and Buddhi]. There is one fire [the Self] here, connected with the Brahman,(1547) and having a good mind [or _true knowledge_, according to Arjuna Mishra]. And there is fuel here, (namely) the five senses [or human passions]. The seven (forms of) emancipation from them are the seven (forms of) initiation. The qualities are the fruits.... There ... the great sages receive hospitality. And when they have been worshipped and have disappeared, another forest shines forth, in which _intelligence_ is the tree, and emancipation the fruit, and which possesses shade (in the form of) tranquillity, which depends on knowledge, which has contentment for its water, and which has the Kshetrajña(1548) within for the sun.

Now, all the above is very plain, and no Theosophist, even among the least learned, can fail to understand the allegory. And yet, we see great Orientalists making a perfect mess of it in their explanations. The “great sages” who “receive hospitality” are explained as meaning the senses, “which, having worked _as unconnected with the self_ are finally absorbed into it.” But one fails to understand, if the senses are “unconnected” with the “Higher Self,” in what manner they can be “absorbed into it.” One would think, on the contrary, that it is just because the _personal_ senses gravitate and strive to be connected with the _impersonal_ Self, that the latter, which is Fire, burns the lower five and purifies thereby the higher two, “mind and understanding,” or the higher aspects of Manas(1549) and Buddhi. This is quite apparent from the text. The “great sages” _disappear_ after having “been worshipped.” Worshipped by whom if they (the presumed senses) are “unconnected with the self”? By Mind, of course; by Manas (in this case merged in the _sixth sense_) which is not, and cannot be, the Brahman, the Self, or Kshetrajña—the Soul’s Spiritual Sun. Into the latter, in time, Manas itself must be absorbed. It has worshipped “great sages” and given hospitality to _terrestrial_ wisdom; but once that “another forest shone forth” upon it, it is Intelligence (Buddhi, the seventh sense, but sixth principle) which is transformed into _the_ Tree—that Tree whose fruit is emancipation—which finally destroys the very roots of the Ashvattha tree, the symbol of _life_ and of its illusive joys and pleasures. And therefore, those who attain to that state of emancipation have, in the words of the above‐cited Sage, “no fear afterwards.” In this state “the end cannot be perceived because it extends on all sides.”

“There always dwell seven females there,” he goes on to say, carrying out the imagery. These females—who, according to Arjuna Mishra, are the Mahat, Ahamkâra and five Tanmâtras—have always their faces turned downwards, as they are obstacles in the way of spiritual ascension.

In that same [Brahman, the Self] the seven perfect sages, together with their chiefs, ... abide, and again emerge from the same. Glory, brilliance and greatness, enlightenment, victory, perfection and power—these seven rays follow after this same sun [Kshetrajña, the Higher Self].... Those whose wishes are reduced [the unselfish]; ... whose sins [passions] are burnt up by penance, merging the self in the self,(1550) devote themselves to Brahman. Those people who understand the forest of knowledge [Brahman, or the Self], praise tranquillity. And aspiring to that forest, they are [re‐] born so as not to lose courage. Such, indeed, is this holy forest.... And understanding it, they [the sages] act (accordingly), being directed by the Kshetrajña.

No translator among the Western Orientalists has yet perceived in the foregoing allegory anything higher than mysteries connected with sacrificial ritualism, penance, or ascetic ceremonies, and Hatha Yoga. But he who understands symbolical imagery, and hears the voice of _Self within Self_, will see in this something far higher than mere ritualism, however often he may err in minor details of the Philosophy.

And here we must be allowed a last remark. No true Theosophist, from the most ignorant up to the most learned, ought to claim infallibility for anything he may say or write upon Occult matters. The chief point is to admit that, in many a way, in the classification of either cosmic or human principles, in addition to mistakes in the order of evolution, and especially on metaphysical questions, those of us who pretend to teach others more ignorant than ourselves—are all liable to err. Thus mistakes have been made in _Isis Unveiled_, in _Esoteric Buddhism_, in _Man_, in _Magic: White and Black_, etc., and more than one mistake is likely to be found in the present work. This cannot be helped. For a large or even a small work on such abstruse subjects to be entirely exempt from error and blunder, it would have to be written from its first to its last page by a great Adept, if not by an Avatâra. Then only should we say, “This is verily a work without sin or blemish in it!” But so long as the artist is imperfect, how can his work be perfect? “Endless is the search for truth!” Let us love it and aspire to it for its own sake, and not for the glory or benefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer on us. For who of us can presume to have the _whole_ truth at his fingers’ ends, even upon one minor teaching of Occultism?

Our chief point in the present subject, however, has been to show that the septenary doctrine, or division of the constitution of man, was a very ancient one, and was not invented by us. This has been successfully done, for we are supported in this, consciously and unconsciously, by a number of ancient, mediæval, and modern writers. What the former said, was well said; what the latter repeated, has generally been distorted. An instance: Read the Pythagorean Fragments, and study the septenary man as given by the Rev. G. Oliver, the learned Mason, in his _Pythagorean Triangle_, who speaks as follows:

The Theosophic Philosophy ... counted seven properties [or principles] in man—viz.:

(1) The divine golden man.

(2) The inward holy body from fire and light, like pure silver.

(3) The elemental man.

(4) The mercurial ... paradisiacal man.

(5) The martial soul‐like man.

(6) The venerine, ascending to the outward desire.

(7) The solar man, [a witness to and] an inspector of the wonders of God [the Universe].

They had also seven fountain spirits or powers of nature.(1551)

Compare this jumbled account and distribution of Western Theosophic Philosophy with the latest Theosophic explanations by the Eastern School of Theosophy, and then decide which is the more correct. Verily:

Wisdom hath builded her house, She hath hewn out her _seven pillars_.(1552)

As to the charge that our School has not adopted the sevenfold classification of the Brâhmans, but has confused it, this is quite unjust. To begin with, the “School” is one thing, its exponents (to Europeans) quite another. The latter have first to learn the A B C of practical Eastern Occultism, before they can be made to understand correctly the tremendously abstruse classification based on the seven distinct states of Prajñâ or Consciousness; and, above all, to realize thoroughly what Prajñâ _is_, in Eastern metaphysics. To give a Western student that classification is to try to make him suppose that he can account for the origin of consciousness, by accounting for the process by which a certain knowledge, though _only one of the states_ of that consciousness, came to him; in other words, it is to make him account for something he knows on _this_ plane, by something he knows nothing about on the other planes; _i.e._, to lead him from the spiritual and the psychological, direct to the ontological. This is why the primary, old classification was adopted by the Theosophists—of which classifications in truth there are many.

To busy oneself, after such a tremendous number of independent witnesses and proofs have been brought before the public, with an additional enumeration from theological sources, would be quite useless. The seven capital sins and seven virtues of the Christian scheme are far less philosophical than even the seven liberal and the seven accursed sciences—or the seven arts of enchantment of the Gnostics. For one of the latter is now before the public, pregnant with danger in the present as for the future. The modern name for it is _Hypnotism_; used as it is by scientific and ignorant Materialists, in the general ignorance of the seven principles, it will soon become _Satanism_ in the full acceptation of the term.

## PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.

The knowledge of this nether world— Say, friend, what is it, false or true? The false, what mortal cares to know? The true, what mortal ever knew?

Section I. Archaic, or Modern Anthropology?

Whenever the question of the Origin of Man is offered seriously to an unbiassed, honest, and earnest man of Science, the answer comes invariably: “We do not know.” De Quatrefages with his agnostic attitude is one of such Anthropologists.

This does not imply that the rest of the men of Science are neither fair‐ minded nor honest, as such a remark would be questionably discreet. But it is estimated that 75 per cent. of European Scientists are Evolutionists. Are these representatives of Modern Thought all guilty of flagrant misrepresentation of the facts? No one says this—but there are a few very exceptional cases. However, the Scientists, in their anti‐clerical enthusiasm and in despair of any alternative theory to Darwinism except that of “special creation,” are unconsciously insincere in “forcing” a hypothesis the elasticity of which is inadequate, and which resents the severe strain to which it is now subjected. Insincerity on the same subject is, however, patent in ecclesiastical circles. Bishop Temple has come forward as a thorough‐going supporter of Darwinism in his _Religion and Science_. This clerical writer goes so far as to regard Matter—after it has received its “primal impress”—as the unaided evolver of all cosmic phenomena. This view only differs from that of Hæckel, in postulating a hypothetical Deity at “the back of beyont,” a Deity which stands entirely aloof from the interplay of forces. Such a metaphysical entity is no more the Theological God than is that of Kant. Bishop Temple’s truce with materialistic Science is, in our opinion, impolitic—apart from the fact that it involves a total rejection of the biblical cosmogony. In the presence of this display of flunkeyism before the materialism of our “learned” age, we Occultists can but smile. But how about loyalty to the Master such theological truants profess to serve—Christ, and Christendom at large?

However, we have no desire, for the present, to throw down the gauntlet to the clergy, our business being now with materialistic Science alone. The latter, in the person of its best representatives, answers to our question, “We do not know;” yet the majority of them act as though Omniscience were their heirloom, and they knew all things.

For, indeed, this negative reply has not prevented the majority of Scientists from speculating on the question, each seeking to have his own special theory accepted to the exclusion of all others. Thus, from Maillet in 1748, down to Hæckel in 1870, theories on the origin of the human race have differed as much as the personalities of their inventors themselves. Buffon, Bory de St. Vincent, Lamarck, E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Gaudry, Naudin, Wallace, Darwin, Owen, Hæckel, Filippi, Vogt, Huxley, Agassiz, etc., each has evolved a more or less scientific hypothesis of genesis. De Quatrefages arranges these theories in two principal groups—one based on a rapid, and the other on a very gradual transmutation; the former favouring a new type (man) produced by a being entirely different, the latter teaching the evolution of man by progressive differentiations.

Strangely enough, it is from the most scientific of these authorities that has emanated the most unscientific of all the theories upon the subject of the Origin of Man. This is now so evident, that the hour is rapidly approaching when the current teaching about the descent of man from an ape‐like mammal will be regarded with less respect than the formation of Adam out of clay, and of Eve out of Adam’s rib. For

It is evident, especially after the most fundamental principles of Darwinism, that an organized being cannot be a descendant of another whose development is in an inverse order to its own. Consequently, in accordance with these principles, man cannot be considered as the descendant of any simian type whatever.(1553)

Lucae’s argument _versus_ the Ape‐theory, based on the different flexures of the bones constituting the axis of the skull in the cases of man and the anthropoids, is fairly discussed by Schmidt. He admits that:

The ape as he grows becomes more bestial; man ... more human—

and seems, indeed, to hesitate a moment before he passes on:

This flexure of the cranial axis may, therefore, still be emphasized as a human character, in contradistinction to the apes; the peculiar characteristic of an order can scarcely be elicited from it; and especially as to the doctrine of descent, this circumstance seems in no way decisive.(1554)

The writer is evidently not a little disquieted by his own argument. He assures us that it upsets any possibility of the present apes having been the progenitors of mankind. But does it not also negative the bare possibility of the man and the anthropoid having had a common—though, so far, an absolutely theoretical—ancestor?

Even “Natural Selection” itself is with every day more threatened. The deserters from the Darwinian camp are many, and those who were at one time its most ardent disciples are, owing to new discoveries, slowly but steadily preparing to turn over a new leaf. In the _Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society_ for October, 1886, we may read as follows:

PHYSIOLOGICAL SELECTION.—Mr. G. J. Romanes finds certain difficulties in regarding natural selection as a theory for the origin of species, as it is rather a theory of the origin of adaptive structures. He proposes to replace it by what he calls physiological selection, or segregation of the fit. His view is based on the extreme sensitiveness of the reproductive system to small changes in the conditions of life, and he thinks that variations in the direction of greater or less sterility must frequently occur in wild species. If the variation be such that the reproductive system, while showing some degree of sterility with the parent form, continues to be fertile within the limits of the varietal form, the variation would neither be swamped by intercrossing nor die out on account of sterility. When a variation of this kind occurs, the physiological barrier must divide the species into two parts. The author, in fine, regards mutual sterility, not as one of the effects of specific differentiation, but as the cause of it.(1555)

An attempt is made to show the above to be a complement of, and sequence to, the Darwinian theory. This is a clumsy attempt at best. The public will soon be asked to believe that Mr. C. Dixon’s _Evolution without Natural Selection_ is also Darwinism—expanded, as the author certainly claims it to be!

But it is like splitting the body of a man into three pieces, and then maintaining that each piece is the identical man he was before, only—expanded. Yet the author states:

Let it be clearly understood that not one single syllable in the foregoing pages has been written antagonistic to Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. All I have done is to explain _certain_ phenomena ... the more one studies Darwin’s works, the more one is convinced of the truth of his hypothesis [! !].(1556)

And before this, he alludes to:

The overwhelming array of facts which Darwin gave in support of his hypothesis, and which triumphantly carried the theory of Natural Selection over all obstacles and objections.(1557)

This does not prevent the learned author, however, from upsetting this theory as “triumphantly,” and from even openly calling his work _Evolution_ without _Natural Selection_, or, in so many words, with Darwin’s fundamental idea knocked to atoms in it.

As to Natural Selection itself, the utmost misconception prevails among many present‐day thinkers, who tacitly accept the conclusions of Darwinism. It is, for instance, a mere device of rhetoric to credit Natural Selection with the power of _originating_ species. Natural Selection is no entity; it is merely a convenient phrase for describing the mode in which the survival of the fit and the elimination of the unfit among organisms are brought about by the Struggle for Existence. Every group of organisms tends to multiply beyond the means of subsistence; the constant battle for life—the “struggle to obtain enough to eat and to escape being eaten” added to the environmental conditions—necessitates a perpetual weeding out of the unfit. The _élite_ of any stock, thus sorted out, propagate the species and transmit their organic characteristics to their descendants. All useful variations are thus perpetuated, and a progressive improvement is effected. But Natural Selection—in the writer’s humble opinion, “Selection, _as a Power_”—is in reality a pure myth; especially when it is resorted to as an explanation of the Origin of Species. It is merely a representative term expressive of the manner in which “useful variations” are stereotyped when produced. Of itself, “it” can _produce_—_nothing_, and only operates on the rough material presented to “it.” The real question at issue is: What _cause_—combined with other secondary causes—produces the “variations” in the organisms themselves? Many of these secondary causes are purely physical—climatic, dietary, etc. Very well. But beyond the secondary aspects of organic evolution, a deeper principle has to be sought for. The Materialist’s “spontaneous variations,” and “_accidental_ divergencies” are self‐contradictory terms in a universe of “Matter, Force and _Necessity_.” Mere variability of type, apart from the supervisory presence of a quasi‐intelligent impulse, is powerless to account for the stupendous complexities and marvels of the human body, for instance. The insufficiency of the Darwinists’ mechanical theory has been exposed at length by Dr. Von Hartmann among other purely negative thinkers. It is an abuse of the reader’s intelligence to write, as does Hæckel, of _blind_ indifferent cells, “arranging themselves into organs.” The Esoteric solution of the origin of animal species is given elsewhere.

Those purely _secondary_ causes of differentiation, grouped under the head of sexual selection, natural selection, climate, isolation, etc., mislead the Western Evolutionist and offer no real explanation whatever of the “whence” of the “ancestral types” which served as the _starting point_ for physical development. The truth is that the differentiating “causes” known to Modern Science only come into operation after the _physicalization of the primeval animal root‐types out of the astral_. Darwinism only meets Evolution at its midway point—that is to say, when astral evolution has given place to the play of the ordinary physical forces with which our present senses acquaint us. But even here the Darwinian Theory, even with the “expansions” recently attempted, is inadequate to meet the facts of the case. The cause underlying physiological variation in species—one to which all other laws are subordinate and secondary—is a sub‐conscious intelligence pervading matter, ultimately traceable to a _reflection_ of the Divine and Dhyân‐Chohanic wisdom.(1558) A not altogether dissimilar conclusion has been arrived at by so well known a thinker as Ed. von Hartmann, who, despairing of the efficacy of _unaided_ Natural Selection, regards Evolution as being intelligently guided by the Unconscious—the Cosmic Logos of Occultism. But the latter acts only mediately through Fohat, or Dhyân‐Chohanic energy, and not quite in the direct manner which the great pessimist describes.

It is this divergence among men of Science, their mutual, and often their _self_‐contradictions, that gives the writer of the present volumes the courage to bring to light other and older teachings—if only as hypotheses for _future_ scientific appreciation. So evident, even to the humble recorder of this archaic teaching, though not in any way very learned in Modern Sciences, are the scientific fallacies and gaps, that she has 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_.(1559) This stupendous pretension comes from one, who, to prove his pithecoid descent, has not hesitated to include the Lemuridæ among the ancestors of man; these have been promoted by him to the rank of Prosimiæ, _indeciduate_ mammals, to which he very incorrectly contributes a _decidua_ and a discoidal placenta.(1560) For this Hæckel was taken severely to task by de Quatrefages, and criticised by his own brother Materialists and Agnostics—Virchow and du Bois‐Reymond, as great, if not greater authorities than himself.(1561)

Such opposition notwithstanding, Hæckel’s wild theories are, to this day, still called by some scientific and logical. The mysterious nature of Consciousness, of Soul, of 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 are told that:

The social instincts of the lower animals have, of late, been regarded for various reasons _as 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—(1562) and they seem to believe it. For such men, the Metaphysics of Occultism must produce the effect that our grandest oratorios produce on the Chinaman—sounds that jar upon their nerves.

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 easily be 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 learned bodies unless it has dovetailed with the habitually preconceived ideas of their professors. “The crown of the innovator is a crown of thorns”—said Geoffroy 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 that they are proclaimed by Virchow, du Bois‐Reymond, and others as the “_testimonium paupertatis_ of Natural Science.”

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 an 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 than even the Materialists to the Occult teachings now given. But as no worse fate can befall the exponents of Esoteric Anthropogenesis at the hands of their foes than being openly called 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 very existence 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 anything better _now_ 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, are willing to bow before such men of learning as the late Prof. Balfour Stewart, Messrs. Crookes, de Quatrefages, Wallace, Agassiz, Butlerof, and others, though, from the stand‐point of the Esoteric Philosophy, we may not agree with all they say. But nothing will make us consent to even a show of respect for the opinions of such other men of Science as Hæckel, Carl Vogt, or Ludwig Büchner, in Germany, or even 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 that, in the words of Job, his remembrance should perish from the Earth, and that he “shall have no name in the streets.” Hear the creator of the mythical Sozura 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.... Now the central point of Darwin’s teaching ... 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 (as 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 very wisely ... had 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 ... we are at present only concerned with a single consequence of the theory, the natural origin of the human race through almighty Evolution.(1563)

To this, unabashed by such a scientific farrago, Occultism replies: In the course of Evolution, when the physical triumphed over the spiritual and mental evolution, and nearly crushed it under its weight, the great gift of Kriyâshakti remained the heirloom of only a few elect men in every age. Spirit strove vainly to _manifest itself in its fulness 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 Spiritualists and Occultists, and as _scientifically impossible_ by Materialists.

In our modern day the mere assertion that there exists a power which can create human forms—ready‐made Sheaths within which can incarnate the _conscious_ Monads or Nirmânakâyas of past Manvantaras—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 his own immortal nature within himself—by “physico‐chemical forces,” guided by blind “Almighty Evolution.” 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—such a 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 compared as to their intrinsic value and probability with those of the modern Evolutionists—however unscientific and superstitious these theories may at the first glance appear. 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 so any better than does Webster:

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 is 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 Darwinians 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 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 against Darwin’s Natural Selection theory, though its author had never, probably, contemplated such widely stretched conclusions. The Russian scientist N. T. Danilevsky, in his remarkable work, _Darwinism, a Critical Investigation of the Theory_, upsets such Darwinism 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, a member of the Paris Anthropological Society, read by its author at a recent meeting of that society and called “Evolutionary Psychology; the Evolution of Spirit, etc.” In it he completely reconciles the two teachings—namely of physical and spiritual evolution. He explains the origin of the variety of organic forms—which are made to fit their environments with such evidently intelligent design—by the existence and the mutual help and interaction of two Principles in manifested Nature, the inner conscious Principle adapting itself to physical Nature and the innate potentialities of 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. The same idea was recently developed in Germany by Baron Hellenbach, in his remarkable work, _Individuality in the Light of Biology and Modern Philosophy_.

We find the same conclusions arrived at in yet another excellent volume by a deep thinking Russian, 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 mentioned, 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 all the best Scientists and Thinkers are gradually approaching the Occultists in their general conclusions.

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 the 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 Saïtic 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 brains to respond to “blind” physico‐chemical forces. At any rate Shakspere’s lines apply admirably to our modern Evolutionist, who symbolizes that “proud man,” who—

Drest 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!(1564)

These have nought to do with the “Angels.” Their only concern is with the human ancestor, the pithecoid Noah who gave birth to three sons—the tailed Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape, and the “arboreal” Palæolithic man. On this point, they will not be contradicted. Every doubt expressed is immediately set down as an attempt to cripple scientific enquiry. 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 tangibly 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.(1565)

And, withal, to reject a _scientific hypothesis_, however absurd, is to commit the one unpardonable sin! We risk it.

Section II. 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.(1566)

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 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 the

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.

This settled, everyone will see that one hypothesis is as good as another. And as we find 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,”(1567) 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

—we may put a brief 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 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 first “theory”—or rather, a “revealed fact”—is enunciated by all the exoteric Bibles, except the _Purânas_, preëminently by the Jewish Cosmogony. The second is that which is taught by the Occult Philosophy, as has been explained.

An answer is found to our question in a volume just published by Mr. Samuel Laing—the best lay exponent of Modern Science.(1568) In