Chapter ii

, Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him. Even the state of mental torpor and unconsciousness of the first two Races, and of the first half of the Third Race, is symbolized, in the second chapter of _Genesis_, by the _deep sleep of Adam_. It is the dreamless sleep of mental inaction, the slumber of the Soul and Mind, which is meant by that “sleep,” and not at all the physiological process of differentiation of sexes, as a learned French theorist, M. Naudin, imagined.

The _Purânas_, the Chaldæan and Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese traditions, all show an agreement with the Secret Doctrine as to the process and order of evolution. We find in them the corroboration of almost all our teaching: for instance, the statement concerning the oviparous mode of procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint at a less innocent mode of procreation of the first mammal forms. “_Gigantic, transparent, dumb and monstrous they were_,” says the Commentary. Study in this connection the stories of the several Rishis and their multifarious progeny. Pulastya is the father of all the Serpents and Nâgas—an oviparous brood; Kashyapa is grandsire, through his wife Tâmrâ, of the birds and of Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was the parent of cows and buffaloes, etc.

In the Secret Doctrine, the first Nâgas—Beings wiser than Serpents—are the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” born before the complete separation of the sexes, “matured in the man‐bearing eggs(410) produced by the power (Kriyâshakti) of the holy Sages” of the early Third Race.(411)

“In these were incarnated the Lords of the three [upper] worlds—the various classes of Rudras, who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who are Âdityas;” for, as explained by Parâshara: “There are a hundred appellations of the immeasurably mighty Rudras.”

Some of the descendants of the primitive Nâgas, the Serpents of Wisdom, peopled America, when its continent arose during the palmy days of the great Atlantis; America being the Pâtâla or Antipodes of Jambu‐dvîpa, not of Bhârata‐varsha. Otherwise, whence the traditions and legends—the latter _always more true than history_, as says Augustin Thierry—and even the identity in the names of certain “medicine men” and priests, who exist to this day in Mexico? We shall have to say something of the Nargals and the Nagals, and also of Nagalism, called “devil‐worship” by the missionaries.

In almost all the _Purânas_, the story of the “Sacrifice of Daksha” is given, the oldest account of which is to be found in the _Vâyu Purâna_. Allegorical as it is, there is more meaning and biological revelation in it to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo‐scientific vagaries, which are regarded as learned theories and hypotheses.

Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out as the creator of _physical man_, in the “fable” which makes him lose his head from his body in the general strife between the Gods and the Raumas. This head, being burnt in the fire, is replaced by the _head of a ram_, according to the Kâshi Khanda of the _Skanda Purâna_. Now the ram’s head and horns are ever the symbol of generating power and of reproductive force, and are phallic. As we have shown, it is Daksha who establishes the era of men engendered by sexual intercourse. This mode of procreation did not occur suddenly, however, as one might think, but required long ages before it became the one “natural” way. Therefore, Daksha’s sacrifice to the Gods is shown to have been interfered with by Shiva—the _Destroying_ Deity, _Evolution and Progress personified_, who is the _Regenerator_ at the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall them to life under another more perfect type. Shiva‐Rudra creates the terrible Vîrabhadra, born of his breath, the “thousand‐headed, thousand‐armed” monster, and commissions him to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha. Then Vîrabhadra, “abiding in the region of ghosts (ethereal men) ... created from _the pores of his skin_ (Roma‐kûpas) powerful Raumas.”(412) Now, however mythical the allegory, the _Mahâbhârata_(413)—which is as much history as is the _Iliad_—shows the Raumas and other races springing in the same manner from the Roma‐kûpas, hair or skin pores. This allegorical description of Daksha’s “sacrifice” is full of significance to the students of the Secret Doctrine who know of the “Sweat‐born.”

In the _Vâyu Purâna’s_ account of the sacrifice, moreover, it is said to have taken place in the presence of creatures _born from the egg_, from the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally only, from the womb.(414)

Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, as yet devoid of an Individual Ego, and possessing passive capacities only. Brahmâ, therefore, commands him to create (in the exoteric texts); when, obeying the command, he made “inferior and superior” (Avara and Vara) progeny (Putra), _bipeds_ and _quadrupeds_; and by his _will_, gave birth to females, to the Gods, the Daityas (Giants of the Fourth Race), the snake‐gods, animals, cattle and the Dânavas (Titans and Demon Magicians) and other beings.

From that period forward, _living creatures were engendered by sexual intercourse. Before the time of Daksha, they were variously propagated_—by the _will_, by sight, by touch, and by the influence of religious austerities practised by devout sages and holy saints.(415)

And now comes the simply zoölogical teaching.

29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP, AND FLYING SARPAS(416) WERE ADDED TO THE CREEPING THINGS. THEY THAT CREEP ON THE GROUND GOT WINGS. THEY OF THE LONG NECKS IN THE WATER BECAME THE PROGENITORS OF THE FOWLS OF THE AIR.

This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation are in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition process between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot, especially in the Ornithoscelidæ, Hesperornis, and the Archæopteryx of Vogt.

30. DURING THE THIRD,(417) THE BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND CHANGED; THEY BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES, THEIR CHHÂYÂS BECAME SOLID.(418)

Vertebrates, and after that mammalians. Before that the animals were also ethereal proto‐organisms, just as man was.

31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST.(419) THEY BEGAN TO BREED. THE TWO‐ FOLD MAN(420) SEPARATED ALSO. HE(421) SAID: “LET US AS THEY; LET US UNITE AND MAKE CREATURES.” THEY DID....

32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK(422) TOOK HUGE SHE‐ANIMALS UNTO THEM. THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY(423) WERE THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR TONGUES UNTIED.(424) THE TONGUES OF THEIR PROGENY REMAINED STILL. MONSTERS THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED RED‐HAIR‐COVERED MONSTERS GOING ON ALL FOURS.(425) A DUMB RACE, TO KEEP THE SHAME UNTOLD.(426)

The fact of former hermaphrodite mammals and the subsequent separation of sexes is now indisputable, even from the standpoint of Biology. As Prof. Oscar Schmidt, an avowed Darwinist, shows:

Use and disuse, combined with selection, elucidate [?] _the separation of the sexes_, and the existence, otherwise totally incomprehensible, of rudimentary sexual organs. In the Vertebrata especially, _each sex possesses such distinct traces of the reproductive apparatus characteristic of the other_, that even antiquity assumed hermaphroditism as a natural primæval condition of mankind.... The tenacity with which these rudiments of sexual organs are inherited is remarkable. In the class of mammals, actual hermaphroditism is unheard of, although through the whole period of their development they drag along with them these residues, borne by _their unknown ancestry_, no one can say how long.(427)

“The animals separated the first,” says Shloka 31. Bear in mind that at that period men were different, even physiologically, to what they are now; the middle point of the Fifth Race being already passed. We are not told what the “huge she‐animals” were; but they certainly were as different from any we now know, as were the “men” from the men of to‐day.

This was the first physical “fall into matter” of some of the then existing and lower races. Bear in mind Shloka 24. The “Sons of Wisdom” had spurned the _early_ Third Race, _i.e._, the non‐developed, and are shown incarnating in, and thereby endowing with intellect, the _later_ Third Race. Thus the sin of the brainless or “mindless” Races, who had no “spark” and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them their Karmic duty.

What May Be The Objections To The Foregoing.

Thus Occultism rejects the idea that Nature developed man from the ape, or even from an ancestor common to both; but, on the contrary, traces some of the most anthropoid species to the Third Race man of the early Atlantean Period. As this proposition will be maintained and defended elsewhere, a few words more are all that are needed at present. For greater clearness, however, we shall repeat in brief what was said previously in Volume I, Stanza VI.

Our teachings show that, while it is quite correct to say that Nature had, at one time, built round the human astral form an _ape‐like external_ shape, it is also as correct that this shape was no more that of the “missing link,” than were the multitudinous other coverings of that astral form, during the course of its natural evolution through all the kingdoms of Nature. Nor was it, as has been shown, on this Fourth Round Planet that such evolution took place, but only during the First, Second, and Third Rounds, when Man was, in turn, “a stone, a plant, and an animal” until he became what he was in the First Root‐Race of present Humanity. The real line of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two systems are irreconcilable, unless the latter is divorced from the dogmas of “natural selection” and the like. Indeed, between the Moneron of Hæckel and the Sarîsripa of Manu, there lies an impassable chasm in the shape of the Jîva; for the “human” Monad, whether “immetallized” in the stone‐atom, or “in‐vegetalized” in the plant, or “inanimalized” in the animal, is still ever a divine, hence also a _human_ Monad. It ceases to be human only when it becomes _absolutely divine_. The terms “mineral,” “vegetable” and “animal” Monad are intended to create a superficial distinction: there is no such thing as a Monad (Jîva) other than divine, and consequently having once been, or having in the future to become, human. The latter term has to remain meaningless unless this difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop out of the Shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, _within_, the plane of primæval differentiation. It is _divine_ in its higher and _human_ in its lower condition—the adjectives “higher” and “lower” being used for lack of better words—but a Monad it remains at all times, save in the Nirvânic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms. As the Logos reflects the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the Manifested Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it repeating an Eastern teaching, so the Monad has, during the cycle of its incarnations, to reflect in itself every _root‐form_ of each kingdom. Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that “Man becomes a stone, a plant, an animal, a man, a spirit, and finally God,” thus accomplishing his cycle or circuit and returning to the point from which he had started as the _Heavenly Man_. But by “Man” the Divine Monad is meant, and not the Thinking Entity, much less his Physical Body. The men of Science now try to trace the immortal Soul, while rejecting its existence, through a series of animal forms from the lowest to the highest; whereas, in truth, all the present fauna are the descendants of those primordial monsters of which the Stanzas speak. The animals—the creeping beasts and those in the waters that preceded Man in this Fourth Round, as well as those contemporary with the Third Race, and again the mammalia that are posterior to the Third and Fourth Races—all are either directly or indirectly the mutual and correlative product, _physically_, of Man. It is correct to say that the man of this Manvantara, _i.e._, of the three preceding Rounds, has passed through all the kingdoms of Nature. That he was “a stone, a plant, an animal.” But (_a_) these stones, plants, and animals were the prototypes, the filmy presentments of those of the Fourth Round; and (_b_) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the astral shadows, as the Occultists express it, of the present stones, plants and animals. And finally, neither the forms nor genera of either man, animal, or plant were what they became later. Thus the astral prototypes of the lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round, which _preceded_ the Chhâyâs of Men, were the consolidated, though still very ethereal _sheaths_ of the still more ethereal forms, or models, produced at the close of the Third Round on Globe D, as set forth in _Esoteric Buddhism_; produced “from the residue of the substance; matter from dead bodies of men and [other _extinct_] animals of the Wheel before,” or the previous _Third_ Round—as Shloka 28 tells us. Hence, while the nondescript “animals” that preceded the Astral Man at the beginning of this Life‐cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the progeny of the Man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their existence, in a great measure, to Man again. Moreover, the “ancestor” of the present anthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet mindless Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the level of an animal.

The above accounts for some of the alleged physiological proofs, brought forward by the Anthropologists as a demonstration of the descent of man from the animals.

The point most insisted upon by the Evolutionists is that, “The history of the embryo is an epitome of that of the race.” That:

Every organism, in its development from the egg, runs through a series of forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors have passed in the long course of earth’s history.(428) The history of the embryo ... is a picture in little, and outline of that of the race. _This conception forms the gist of our fundamental biogenetic law, which we are obliged to place at the head of the study of the fundamental law of organic development._(429)

This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically expressed by, the Sages and Occultists from the remotest ages. A passage from _Isis Unveiled_ may here be cited to furnish a few points of comparison. It was asked why, with all their great learning, Physiologists were unable to explain teratological phenomena?

Any Anatomist who has made the development and growth of the embryo ... “a subject of special study,” can tell, without much brain‐work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes show him, viz., that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the spawn—a tadpole. But no Physiologist or Anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying to the development of the human being—from the first instant of its physical appearance as a germ to its ultimate formation and birth—the Pythagorean esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics. The meaning of the Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man,” etc., was mentioned in another place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of men on this Earth. We will now add a few more words to make the matter clearer.

What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a corpuscle, say some Physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the ovum, say others. If it could be analyzed—by the microscope or otherwise—of what ought we to expect to find it composed? Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of inorganic matter, deposited from the circulation at the germinating point, and united with a deposit of organic matter. In other words, this infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same elements as a stone—of the same elements as the Earth, which the man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the Kabalists as authority for the remark, that it required earth and water to make a living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as a stone.

At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant‐ like appearance, one extremity having become spheroidal and the other tapering, like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be composed, like an onion, of very delicate laminæ or coats, enclosing a liquid. The laminæ approach each other at the lower end, and the embryo hangs from the root of the umbilicus almost like the fruit from the bough. The stone has now become changed, by “metempsychosis,” into a plant. Then the embryonic creature begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its limbs, and develops its features. The eyes are visible as two black dots; the ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of a pineapple, before they begin to project. The embryo develops into an animal‐like fœtus—the shape of a tadpole—and, like an amphibious reptile, lives in water and develops from it. Its monad has not yet become either human or immortal, for the Kabalists tell us that this only occurs at the “fourth hour.” One by one the fœtus assumes the characteristics of the human being, the first flutter of the immortal breath passes through its being: it moves; ... and the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it will inhabit until the moment of physical death, when man becomes a spirit.

This mysterious process of a nine‐months’ formation, the Kabalists call the completion of the “individual cycle of evolution.” As the fœtus develops amidst the _liquor amnii_ in the womb, so the Earths germinate in the Universal Ether, or Astral Fluid, in the Womb of the Universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy inhabitants, are first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature; and becoming mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms. From centre to circumference, from the imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of the cosmos, those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle merging into cycle, containing and contained in an endless series. The embryo evolving in its pre‐natal sphere, the individual in his family, the family in the state, the state in mankind, the earth in our system, that system in its central universe, the universe in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos in the ONE CAUSE—the Boundless and Endless.(430)

Thus runs _their_ philosophy of evolution, differing as we see, from that of Hæckel.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm) the Soul.

These are the proofs of Occultism, and they are rejected by Science. But how is the chasm between the mind of man and animal to be bridged in this case? How, if the anthropoid and homo primigenius had, _argumenti gratiâ_, a common ancestor—in the way modern speculation puts it—how did the two groups diverge so widely from one another as regards mental capacity? True, the Occultist may be told that in every case Occultism does what Science repeats; it gives a _common_ ancestor to ape and man, since it makes the former issue from Primæval Man. Aye, but that “Primæval Man” was _man_ only in external form. He was _mindless_ and _soulless_ at the time he begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather of a series of apes. This speculation—if speculation it be—is at least logical, and fills the chasm between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and explains the hitherto unaccountable and inexplicable. The fact—of which Science is almost certain—that, in the present stage of evolution, no issue can follow from the union of man and animal, is considered and explained elsewhere.

Now what is the fundamental difference between the accepted (or nearly so) conclusions—as enunciated in _The Pedigree of Man_—that man and ape have a common ancestor, and the teachings of Occultism, which deny this conclusion and accept the fact that all things and all living beings have originated from one common source? Materialistic Science makes man evolve gradually to what _he is now_. Starting from the first protoplasmic speck called Moneron—which we are told has, like the rest, “originated in the course of immeasurable ages from a few, or from one simple, _spontaneously arising_ original form, that has obeyed one law of evolution”—he is made to pass through “unknown and unknowable” types up to the ape, and thence to the human being. Where the transitional shapes are discoverable we are not told; for the simple reason that no “missing‐links” between man and the apes have ever yet been found, though this fact in no way prevents men like Hæckel from inventing them _ad libitum_.

Nor will they ever be met with; simply, again, because that link which unites man with his real ancestry is searched for on the objective plane and in the material world of forms, whereas it is safely hidden from the microscope and dissecting knife _within_ the animal tabernacle of man himself. We repeat what we have said in _Isis Unveiled_:

All things had their origin in Spirit—evolution having originally begun from above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words, there has been a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed ultimate of debasement is reached. This point is that at which the doctrine of modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis. Arrived at this period we shall find it easier to understand Hæckel’s _Anthropogeny_, which traces the pedigree of man “from its protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed before the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,” according to Mr. Huxley’s exposition. We may more easily still believe man (of the Third Round) evolved “by gradual modification of an [astral] mammal of ape‐like organization,” when we remember that the same theory, in a more condensed and less elegant, but equally comprehensible, phraseology, was said by Berosus to have been taught many thousands of years before his time by the man‐ fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi‐demon of Babylonia(431) (though on somewhat modified lines).

But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as Darwin is concerned nothing but “unverifiable hypotheses.” For, as he puts it, he views all beings “as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited.”(432) He does not attempt to show us what these “few beings” were. But it answers our purpose quite as well, for, in the bare admission of their existence, recourse to the ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea receives the stamp of scientific approbation.(433)

Truly, as we said in our first work, if we accept Darwin’s theory of the development of species, we find that his starting‐point lies in front of an open door. We are at liberty either to remain within with him, or cross the threshold, beyond which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible, or rather the Unutterable. If our mortal language is inadequate to express what our spirit—while on this earth—dimly foresees in the great “Beyond,” it _must_ realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity. But what lies “beyond” Hæckel’s theory? Why Bathybius Hæckelii, and no more!

Stanza IX. The Final Evolution Of Man.

33. The creators repent. 34. They atone for their neglect. 35. Men become endowed with minds. 36. The Fourth Race develops perfect speech. 37. Every androgynous unit is separated and becomes bisexual.

33. SEEING WHICH,(434) THE LHAS(435) WHO HAD NOT BUILT MEN,(436) WEPT, SAYING:

34. “THE AMÂNASA(437) HAVE DEFILED OUR FUTURE ABODES. THIS IS KARMA. LET US DWELL IN THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM BETTER, LEST WORSE SHOULD HAPPEN.” THEY DID....

35. THEN ALL MEN BECAME ENDOWED WITH MANAS.(438) THEY SAW THE SIN OF THE MINDLESS.

But they had already _separated_, before the ray of divine reason had enlightened the dark region of their hitherto slumbering minds, and had _sinned_. That is to say, they had committed evil unconsciously, by producing an effect which was unnatural. Yet, like the other six primitive brother or fellow races, even so this seventh, henceforth degenerated race, which will have to bide its time for its final development on account of the _sin_ committed—even this race will find itself _on the last day_ on one of the Seven Paths. For:

The Wise(439) guard the home of nature’s order, they assume excellent forms in secret.(440)

But we must see whether the “animals” tampered with, were of the same kind as those known to Zoölogy.

The “Fall” occurred, according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the old records, as soon as Daksha—the reïncarnated Creator of men and things in the early Third Race—disappeared to make room for that portion of mankind which had “separated.” This is how one Commentary explains the details that preceded the “Fall”:

_In the initial period of man’s Fourth Evolution, the human kingdom branched off in several and various directions. The outward shape of its first specimens was not uniform, for the vehicles [the egg‐like, external shells, in which the future fully physical man gestated] were often tampered with, before they hardened, by huge animals, of species now unknown, and belonging to the tentative efforts of Nature. The result was that intermediate races of monsters, half animals, half men, were produced. But as they were failures, they were not allowed to breathe long and live, although, the intrinsically paramount power of psychic over physical nature being yet very weak, and hardly established, the __“__Egg‐ born__”__ Sons had taken several of their females unto themselves as mates, and bred other human monsters. Later, animal species and human races becoming gradually equilibrized, they separated, and mated no longer. Man created no more—he begot. But he also begot animals as well as men, in days of old. Therefore the Sages [or wise men], who speak of males who had no more will‐begotten offspring, but begat various animals along with Dânavas [Giants] on females of other species—animals being as [or in the manner of] sons putative to them; and they [the human males] refusing in time to be regarded as [putative] fathers of dumb creatures—spoke truthfully and wisely. Upon seeing this [state of things], the Kings and Lords of the last Races [of the Third and the Fourth] placed the seal of prohibition upon the sinful intercourse. It interfered with Karma, it developed new [Karma]_(_441_)_. They [the Divine Kings] struck the culprits with sterility. They destroyed the Red and Blue Races._(442)

In another we find:

_There were blue and red‐faced animal‐men even in later times; not from actual intercourse [between the human and animal species], but by descent._

And still another passage mentions:

_Red‐haired, swarthy men going on all‐fours, who bend and unbend [stand erect and fall on their hands again], who speak as their forefathers, and run on their hands as their giant fore‐mothers._

Perchance in these specimens Hæckelians might recognize, not the “Homo Primigenius,” but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the Australian savages. Nevertheless, even these are not descended from the anthropoid apes, but from human fathers and semi‐human mothers, or, to speak more correctly, from human monsters—those “failures” mentioned in the first Commentary. The real anthropoids, Hæckel’s Catarrhini and Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of Atlantis. The Orang‐ Outang, the Gorilla, the Chimpanzee and Cynocephalus are the latest and purely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a spark of the purely human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not one drop of pithecoid(443) blood in his veins. Thus saith old Wisdom and universal tradition.

How was the separation of sexes effected? it is asked. Are we to believe in the old Jewish fable of the rib of Adam yielding Eve? Even such belief is more logical and reasonable than the descent of man from the Quadrumana without any reservation; as the former hides an Esoteric truth under a fabulous version, while the latter conceals no deeper fact than a desire to force upon mankind a materialistic fiction. The rib is bone, and when we read in _Genesis_ that Eve was made out of the rib, it only means that the Race “with bones” was produced out of a previous Race and Races, which were “boneless.” This is an Esoteric tenet spread far and wide. It is almost universal under its various forms. A Tahitian tradition states that man was created out of Aræa, “red earth.” Taaroa, the Creative Power, the chief God, “put man to sleep for long years, for several lives.” This means racial periods, and is a reference to his _mental sleep_, as shown elsewhere. During that time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out of man and she became a woman.(444)

Nevertheless, whatever the allegory may signify, even its exoteric meaning necessitates a _divine_ Builder of man—a “Progenitor.” Do we then believe in such “supernatural” Beings? We say: No. Occultism has never believed in anything, whether animate or inanimate, _outside_ Nature. Nor are we Cosmolaters or Polytheists for believing in “Heavenly Man” and Divine Men, for we have the accumulated testimony of the ages, with its unvarying evidence on every essential point, to support us in this; the Wisdom of the Ancients and _universal_ tradition. We reject, however, such groundless and baseless traditions as have outgrown strict allegory and symbolism, although they may have found acceptance in exoteric creeds. But that which is preserved in _unanimous_ tradition, only the wilfully blind could reject. Hence we believe in races of Beings other than our own in far remote geological periods; in races of ethereal, following _incorporeal_ (Arûpa) Men, with form but no solid substance, giants who preceded us pigmies; in Dynasties of Divine Beings, those Kings and Instructors of the Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with which our little Modern Science stands less chance than elementary arithmetic with geometry.

No, certainly not. We do not believe in _supernatural_ but only in _superhuman_, or rather _interhuman_, intelligences. One can easily appreciate the feeling of reluctance that an educated person would have to being classed with the superstitious and ignorant; and even realize the great truth uttered by Renan when he says that:

The supernatural has become like the original sin, a blemish that everyone seems ashamed of—even those most religious persons who refuse in our day to accept be it a minimum of Bible miracles in all their crudeness, and who, seeking to reduce them to the minimum, hide and conceal it in the furthermost corners of the past.(445)

But the “supernatural” of Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It has nought to do with its spirit nor with the reality of facts in Nature. If Theology asks us to believe that it was only four or five thousand years ago that men lived 900 years and more, that a portion of mankind, the enemies of the people of Israel exclusively, was composed of giants and monsters, we decline to believe that such a thing existed in Nature only five _thousand_ years back. For Nature never proceeds by jumps and starts, and logic and common sense, besides Geology, Anthropology and Ethnology, have justly rebelled against such assertions. But if this same Theology, giving up her fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived 969 years—the age of Methuselah—five _million_ years ago, we should have nothing to say against the claim. For in those days the physical frame of men was, compared to the present human body, as that of a Megalosaurus to a common lizard.

A Naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species which, however unequal in its races, can breed together. “There is no question of selection between _human races_,” say the anti‐Darwinists, and no Evolutionist can deny the argument—one which very triumphantly proves _specific unity_. How then can Occultism insist that a portion of the Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females of another, only semi‐ human, if not quite an animal, race; the hybrids resulting from which union not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern anthropoid apes? Esoteric Science replies to this that it was in the very beginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has changed her ways, and sterility is the only result of the crime of man’s bestiality. But we have even to‐day proofs of this. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the _specific unity of mankind_ is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or rather still were a few years ago, descendants of these half‐animal tribes or races, both of remote Lemurian and Lemuro‐Atlantean origin. The world knows them as Tasmanians (now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders, etc. The descent of the Tasmanians can be almost proved by a fact, which struck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make anything of it. This fact deserves notice.

De Quatrefages and other Naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the very fact of every race of mankind being capable of crossing with every other, have left out of their calculations _exceptions_, which do not in this case confirm the rule. Human crossing may have been a general rule from the time of the separation of sexes, but this does not prevent another law asserting itself, viz., sterility between two human races, just as between two animal species of different kinds, in those rare cases when a European, condescending to see in a female of a savage tribe a mate, happens to choose a member of such mixed tribes.(446) Darwin notes such a case in a Tasmanian tribe, whose women were suddenly struck with sterility, _en masse_, some time after the arrival among them of European colonists. The great Naturalist tried to explain this fact by change of diet, food conditions, etc., but finally gave up the solution of the mystery. For the Occultist it is very evident. “Crossing,” as it is called, of Europeans with Tasmanian women—_i.e._, the representatives of a race, whose progenitors were a “soulless”(447) and mindless monster, with a real human, though still as mindless a man—brought on sterility; and this, not only as a consequence of a physiological law, but also as a decree of Karmic evolution in the question of further survival of the abnormal race. In no one point of the above is Science prepared to believe _as yet_—but it will have to in the long run. Esoteric Philosophy, let us remember, only fills the gaps left by Science and corrects her false premisses.

Yet, in this particular, Geology and even Botany and Zoology support the Esoteric Teachings. It has been suggested by many Geologists that the Australian native—coëxisting as he does with an _archaic fauna and flora_—must date back to an enormous antiquity. The whole environment of this mysterious race, about whose origin Ethnology is silent, is a testimony to the truth of the Esoteric position. As Jukes says:

It is a very curious fact that not only these marsupial animals [the mammals found in the Oxfordshire Stone‐field Slates], but several of the shells—as for instance, the Trigonias and even some of the plants found fossil in the Oolitic rocks—much more nearly resemble those now living in Australia than the living forms of any other part of the globe. This might be explained on the supposition that, since the Oolitic [Jurassic] period _less change has taken place in Australia than elsewhere_, and that the Australian flora and fauna consequently retain something of the Oolitic type, _while it had been altogether supplanted and replaced on the rest of the globe_ [! !].(448)

Now why has less change taken place in Australia than elsewhere? Where is the _raison d’être_ for such a “curse of retardation”? It is simply because the nature of the environment develops _pari passu_ with the race concerned. Correspondences rule in every quarter. The survivors of those later Lemurians, who escaped the destruction of their fellows when the main Continent was submerged, became the ancestors of a portion of the present native tribes. Being a very low sub‐race, begotten originally of animals, of monsters, whose very fossils are now resting miles under the sea floors, their stock has since existed in an environment strongly subjected to the _law of retardation_. Australia is one of the oldest lands now above the waters, and in the senile decrepitude of old age, its “_virgin_ soil” notwithstanding. It can produce no new forms, unless helped by new and fresh races, and artificial cultivation and breeding.

To return once more, however, to the history of the Third Race, the “Sweat‐born,” the “Egg‐bearing,” and the “Androgyne.” Almost sexless, in its early beginnings, it became bisexual or androgynous; very gradually of course. The passage from the first to the last transformation required numberless generations, during which the simple cell that issued from the earliest parent (the two in one), first developed into a bisexual being; and then the cell, becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual creature. The Third Race mankind is the most mysterious of all the five hitherto developed Races. The mystery of the “How” of the generation of the distinct sexes must, of course, be very obscure here, as it is the business of an embryologist and a specialist; the present work giving only faint outlines of the process. But it is evident that the units of the Third Race humanity began to separate in their pre‐natal shells, or eggs,(449) and to issue out of them as distinct male and female babes, ages after the appearance of its early progenitors. And, as time rolled on its geological periods, the newly born sub‐races began to lose their natal capacities. Toward the end of the fourth sub‐race of the Third Race, the babe lost its faculty of walking as soon as liberated from its shell, and by the end of the fifth, mankind was born under the same conditions and by identically the same process as our historical generations. This required, of course, millions of years. The reader has been made acquainted with the approximate figures, at least of the exoteric calculations.(450)

We are approaching the turning‐point of the evolution of the Races. Let us see what Occult Philosophy says on the origin of language.

36. THE FOURTH RACE DEVELOPED SPEECH.

The Commentaries explain that the First Race—the ethereal or astral Sons of Yoga, also called “Self‐born”—was, in our sense, speechless, for it was devoid of mind on our plane. The Second Race had a “sound‐language,” to wit, chant‐like sounds composed of vowels alone. The Third Race developed in the beginning a kind of language which was only a slight improvement on the various sounds in Nature, on the cry of gigantic insects and of the first animals, which, however, were hardly nascent in the day of the “Sweat‐born” or the _early_ Third Race. In its second half, when the “Sweat‐born” gave birth to the “Egg‐born,” the _middle_ Third Race; and when these, instead of “hatching out”—may the reader pardon the rather ridiculous expression when applied to human beings in our age—as androgynous beings, began to evolve into separate males and females; and when the same law of evolution led them to reproduce their kind sexually—an act which forced the Creative Gods, compelled by Karmic law, to incarnate in _mindless_ men; then only was speech developed. But even then it was still no better than a tentative effort. The whole human race was at that time of “one language and of one lip.” This did not prevent the last two sub‐races of the Third Race(451) from building cities, and sowing far and wide the first seeds of civilization under the guidance of their Divine Instructors,(452) and their own already awakened minds. Let the reader also bear in mind that, as each of the seven Races is divided into four Ages—the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Age—so is every smallest division of such Races. Speech then developed, according to Occult Teaching, in the following order:

I. _Monosyllabic speech_: that of the first approximately fully developed human beings at the close of the Third Root‐Race, the “golden‐coloured,” yellow‐complexioned men, after their separation into sexes, and the full awakening of their minds. Before that, they communicated through what would now be called “thought‐transference,” though, with the exception of the Race called the “Sons of Will and Yoga”—the first in whom the “Sons of Wisdom” had incarnated—thought was but very little developed in nascent physical man, and never soared above a low terrestrial level. Their physical bodies belonging to the Earth, their Monads remained on a higher plane altogether. Language could not be well developed before the full acquisition and development of their reasoning faculties. This monosyllabic speech was the vowel‐parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard consonants, still in use amongst the yellow races which are known to the Anthropologist.(453)

II. _Agglutinative speech_: these linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative languages. The latter were spoken by some Atlantean races, while other parent stocks of the Fourth Race preserved the mother‐ language. And as languages have their cyclic evolution, their childhood, purity, growth, _fall into matter_, admixture with other languages, maturity, decay and finally death,(454) so the primitive speech of the most civilized Atlantean races—that language, which is referred to as Râkshasî Bhâshâ, in old Sanskrit works—decayed and almost died out. While the “cream” of the Fourth Race gravitated more and more toward the apex of physical and intellectual evolution, thus leaving as an heirloom to the nascent Fifth (the Âryan) Race the inflectional, highly developed languages, the agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil idiom, now scattered, and nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of America.

III. _Inflectional speech_: the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously called the “elder sister” of the Greek, instead of its mother—was the first language, now the mystery tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth Race. The “Semitic” languages are the bastard descendants of the first phonetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit. The Occult Doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Âryan and the Semite, and accepts even the Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites, especially the Arabs, are later Âryans—degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a tribe descended from the Chandâlas of India, the outcasts, many of them ex‐Brâhmans, who sought refuge in Chaldæa, in Scinde, and Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father A‐Bram (No‐Brâhman) some 8,000 years B.C. The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those Âryans who would not go into India at the time of the dispersion of nations, some of whom remained on the borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan and Kabul(455) and along the Oxus, while others penetrated into and invaded Arabia. But this was when Africa had already been raised as a continent.

We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited space will permit, the gradual evolution of the now truly human species. It is in the suddenly arrested evolution of certain sub‐races, and their forced and violent diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross‐breeding, truly analogous to the hybridization which we have now learned to utilize in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the anthropoids.

In these red‐haired and hair‐covered monsters, the fruit of the unnatural connection between men and animals, the “Lords of Wisdom” did not incarnate, as we see. Thus through a long series of transformations due to unnatural cross‐breeding—unnatural “sexual selection”—originated in due course of time the lowest specimens of humanity; while further bestiality and the fruit of their first animal efforts of reproduction begat a species which developed into mammalian apes ages later.(456)

As to the separation of sexes, it did not occur suddenly, as one may think. Nature proceeds slowly in whatever she does.

37. THE ONE(457) BECAME TWO; ALSO ALL THE LIVING AND CREEPING THINGS THAT WERE STILL ONE, GIANT FISH, BIRDS AND SERPENTS WITH SHELL‐HEADS.

This relates evidently to the so‐called age of amphibious reptiles, during which Science denies that man existed! But what could the Ancients know of antediluvian prehistoric animals and monsters? Nevertheless, in Book VI of the Commentaries is found a passage which, freely translated, says:

_When the Third separated and fell into sin by breeding men‐animals, these [the animals] became ferocious, and men and they mutually destructive. Till then, there was no sin, no life taken. After [the separation] the Satya [Yuga] was at an end. The eternal spring became constant change and seasons succeeded. Cold forced men to build shelters and devise clothing. Then man appealed to the superior Fathers [the higher Gods or Angels]. The Nirmânakâyas, of the Nâgas, the wise Serpents and Dragons of Light, came, and the precursors of the Enlightened [the Buddhas]. Divine Kings descended and taught men sciences and arts, for man could live no longer in the first land [Âdi‐Varsha, the Eden of the first Races], which had turned into a white frozen corpse._

The above is suggestive. We will see what can be inferred from this brief statement. Some may incline to think that there is more in it than is apparent at first sight.

Edens, Serpents, And Dragons.

Whence the idea, and the true meaning of the term “Eden”? Christians will maintain that the Garden of Eden is the holy Paradise, the place _desecrated by the sin_ of Adam and Eve; the Occultist will deny this dead‐letter interpretation, and show the reverse. One need not believe in the _Bible_ and see in it divine revelation, to say that this ancient book, if read esoterically, is based upon the same universal traditions as the other ancient scriptures. What Eden was is partially shown in _Isis Unveiled_, where it is said that:

The Garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at all; it belongs to those landmarks of history which occasionally disclose to the student that the _Bible_ is not all mere allegory. “Eden, or the Hebrew גן עדן, Gan‐Eden, meaning the Park or the Garden of Eden, is an archaic name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its many branches, from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraian sea.”(458) In the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_, its location is designated in numerals, and in the cypher Rosicrucian manuscript, left by Count St. Germain, it is fully described. In the Assyrian _Tablets_ it is rendered Gan‐duniyas. “Behold,” say the אלהִם, Elohim, of _Genesis_, “the man is become as one of us.” The Elohim may be accepted in one sense for _gods_ or powers, and in another for Aleim, or priests—the hierophants initiated into the good and evil of this world; for there was a college of priests called the Aleim, while the head of their caste, or the chief of the hierophants, was known as Java‐Aleim. Instead of becoming a neophyte, and gradually obtaining his esoteric knowledge through a regular initiation, an Adam, or Man, uses his intuitional faculties and, prompted by the serpent—_Woman_ and Matter—tastes of the Tree of Knowledge, the Esoteric or Secret Doctrine, unlawfully. The priests of Hercules, or Mel‐karth, the “Lord” of the Eden, all wore “coats of skin.” The text says: “And Java‐Aleim made for Adam and his wife, כתנותעור. Chitonuth‐our.” The first Hebrew word, Chiton, is the Greek Χιτὼν (Chitôn). It became a Slavonic word by adoption from the _Bible_, and means a _coat_, an upper garment.

Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth as does every early Cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its face the marks of a double origin. Its _Genesis_ is purely a reminiscence of the Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men, and even objects, can be traced from the original text to the Chaldæans and the Akkadians, the progenitors and Âryan instructors of the former. It is strongly contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldæa, Babylonia and Assyria were in any way cognate with the Brâhmans of Hindûstan; but there are more proofs in favour of this opinion than otherwise. The Shemite or Assyrian ought, perchance, to have been called the Turanian, and the Mongolians have been denominated Scyths. But if the Akkadians ever existed, otherwise than in the imagination of some Philologists and Ethnologists, they certainly would never have been a Turanian tribe, as some Assyriologists have striven to make us believe. They were simply emigrants on their way to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of humanity, and their sacerdotal adepts tarried to civilize and initiate a barbarian people. Halévy proved the fallacy of the Turanian mania in regard to Akkadian people, and other scientists have proved that the Babylonian civilization was neither born nor developed in that country. It was imported from India, and the importers were Brâhmanical Hindûs.(459)

And now, ten years after this was written, we find ourselves corroborated by Professor Sayce, who says in his first Hibbert Lecture that the culture of the Babylonian city Eridu was of “foreign importation.” It came from India.

Much of the theology was borrowed by the Semites from the non‐ Semitic Akkadians or Proto‐Chaldæans, whom they supplanted, and whose local cults they had neither the will nor the power to uproot. Indeed, throughout a long course of ages the two races, Semites and Akkadians, lived side by side, their notions and worship of the gods blending insensibly together.

Here, the Akkadians are called “non‐Semitic,” as we had insisted they were in _Isis Unveiled_, which is another corroboration. Nor are we less right in always maintaining that the Jewish biblical history was a compilation of _historical_ facts, arranged from other people’s history in Jewish garb—_Genesis_ excluded, which is Esotericism pure and simple. But it is really from the Euxine to Kashmir, and beyond, that Science has to search for the cradle—or rather one of the chief cradles—of mankind and the sons of Ad‐ah; especially in after times, when the Garden of Ed‐en on the Euphrates became the College of the Astrologers and Magi, the Aleim.

But this College and this Eden belong to the Fifth Race, and are simply a faint reminiscence of the Âdi‐Varsha, of the primeval Third Race. What is the etymological meaning of the word Eden? In Greek it is ἡδονὴ, signifying “voluptuousness.” In this aspect it is no better than the Olympus of the Greeks, Indra’s Heaven, Svarga, on Mount Meru, and even the Paradise full of Houris, promised by Mahomet to the faithful. The Garden of Eden was never the property of the Jews, for China, which can hardly be suspected of having known anything of the Jews 2,000 B.C., had such a primitive Garden in Central Asia inhabited by the “Dragons of Wisdom,” the Initiates. And according to Klaproth, the hieroglyphical chart copied from a Japanese Cyclopædia in the book of _Foĕ‐kouĕ‐ki_(460) places its “Garden of Wisdom” on the Plateau of Pamir between the highest peaks of the Himâlayan ranges; and, describing it as the culminating point of Central Asia, shows the four rivers—Oxus, Indus, Ganges, and Silo—flowing from a common source, the “Lake of the Dragons.”

But this is not the Genetic Eden; nor is it the Kabalistical Garden of Eden. For the former—Eden Illa‐ah—means in one sense Wisdom, a state like that of Nirvâna, a Paradise of Bliss; while in another sense it refers to Intellectual Man himself, the container of the Eden in which grows the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil; man being the Knower thereof.

Renan and Barthélemy St. Hilaire, basing themselves “on the most solid inductions,” think it impossible to doubt any longer, and both place the cradle of humanity “in the region of the Timaus.” Finally, the _Journal Asiatique_(461) concludes that:

All the traditions of the human race gathering its primitive families at the region of their birth‐place, show them to us grouped around the countries where Jewish tradition places the Garden of Eden; where the Âryans [Zoroastrians] established their Airyana Vaêjô or the Meru [?]. They are hemmed in to the North by the countries which join Lake Aral, and to the South by Baltistan, or Little Tibet. Everything concurs in proving that there was the abode of that primitive humanity to which we have to be traced.

That “primitive humanity” was in its Fifth Race, when the “Four‐mouthed Dragon,” the lake, of which very few traces are now left, was the abode of the “Sons of Wisdom,” the first Mind‐born Sons of the Third Race. Yet it was neither the only nor the primitive cradle of humanity, though it was the copy of the cradle, verily, of the first thinking _divine_ Man. It was the Paradesha, the highland of the first Sanskrit‐speaking people, the Hedone, the country of delight of the Greeks, but it was not the “Bower of Voluptuousness” of the Chaldæans, for the latter was but the reminiscence of it; nor again was it there that the “Fall of Man” occurred after the “separation.” The Eden of the Jews was _copied_ from the Chaldæan _copy_.

That the Fall of Man into generation occurred during the earliest portion of what Science calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of the reptiles, is evidenced by the bible phraseology concerning the serpent, the nature of which is explained in the _Zohar_. The question is not whether Eve’s incident with the tempting reptile is allegorical or textual, for no one can doubt that it is the former, but to show the antiquity of the symbolism on the very face of it, and that it was not a Jewish but a universal idea.

Now we find in the _Zohar_ a very strange assertion, one that is calculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was used by Shamaël, the supposed Satan, to seduce Eve, was a kind of “flying camel”—καμηλόμορφον.(462)

A “flying camel” is indeed too much for the most liberal‐minded F.R.S. Nevertheless, the _Zohar_, which can hardly be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its description; for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the _Avesta_ is represented as having after the Fall lost its _nature_ and its _name_, and is described as a huge serpent with a camel’s neck.

Salverte asserts that:

There are no winged serpents nor veritable dragons.... Grasshoppers are still called by the Greeks _winged serpents_, and this metaphor may have created several narratives on the existence of winged serpents.(463)

There are none _now_; but there is no reason why they should not have existed during the Mesozoic Age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their skeletons, is a witness to “flying camels.” Already, after finding simple fossils of certain saurians, the great Naturalist has written, that:

If anything can justify the hydras and other monsters, whose figures were so often repeated by mediæval historians, it is incontestably the Plesiosaurus.(464)

We are unaware if Cuvier has added anything in the way of a further _mea culpa_, but we may well imagine his confusion for all his slanders against archaic veracity, when he found himself in the presence of a _flying_ saurian, the Pterodactyl, found in Germany, seventy‐eight feet long, and carrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body. This fossil is described as a reptile, the _little fingers of whose hands_ are so elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the “flying camel” of the _Zohar_ is vindicated. For surely, between the long neck of the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, or still better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability on which to build a “flying camel,” or a long‐necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a winged serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebræ, which indicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.

And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never claimed Palæontography and Palæontology among its arts and sciences; and it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest Pagodas and monuments, and in the Imperial Library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognized perfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform Chinese dragons.(465) Moreover, the prophets speak in the _Bible_ of the flying fiery serpents,(466) and Job mentions the Leviathan.(467) Now the following questions are put very directly:

I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of the Carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them orally and pictorially, unless they had either _seen those monsters themselves_ or _possessed descriptions of them in their traditions_; which descriptions necessitate _living and intelligent eye‐witnesses_?

II. And if such eye‐witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palæolithic men be no earlier than about the middle of the Tertiary period? We must bear in mind that most of the men of Science do not allow man to have appeared before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out completely from the Cainozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described by, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly have begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.

It does not follow that, because the Occultists believe in and defend Ancient Wisdom and Science, even though winged saurians are called “flying camels” in the translations of the _Zohar_, we therefore as readily believe in all the stories which the Middle Ages give us of such dragons. Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to credit Christopher Scherer’s and Father Kircher’s cock‐and‐bull stories of their having seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons, respectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be allowed to regard their assertions as either dreams or fibs.(468) Nor shall we regard otherwise than as a “poetical license” the story told of Petrarch, who, while following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is credited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his dagger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of his heart.(469) We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have existed. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea‐serpent is one thing, the dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority because it lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was such a thing as a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped detection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and exists no more.

The reader may enquire why we speak of dragons at all? We answer: firstly, because the knowledge of such animals is a proof of the enormous antiquity of the human race; and, secondly, to show the difference between the real zoological meaning of the words “Dragon,” “Nâga,” and “Serpent,” and the metaphorical meaning, when used symbolically. The profane reader, who knows nothing of the mystery language, is likely, whenever he finds one of these words mentioned, to accept it literally. Hence, the _quidproquos_ and unjust accusations. A couple of instances will suffice.

“Sed et Serpens?” Aye: but what was the nature of the serpent? Mystics intuitionally see in the serpent of _Genesis_ an animal emblem and a high spiritual essence: a cosmic force, superintelligent, a “great fallen light,” a spirit, sidereal, aërial and tellurian at the same time, “whose influence circumambulates the globe” (_qui circumambulat terram_), as De Mirville,(470) a Christian fanatic of the dead‐letter, has it, and which only “manifested itself under the physical emblem which agreed the better with its moral and intellectual _coils_”—_i.e._, under the ophidian form.

But what will Christians make of the Brazen Serpent, the “Divine Healer,” if the serpent is to be regarded as the emblem of cunning and evil; the “Evil One” itself? How can the line of demarcation ever be settled, when it is traced arbitrarily in a sectarian theological spirit? For, if the followers of the Roman Church are taught that Mercury and Æsculapius, or Asclepios, who are, in truth, one, are “devils and sons of devils,” and the wand and serpent of the latter, the “Devil’s wand”; how about the Brazen Serpent of Moses? Every scholar knows that both the Heathen “wand” and the Jewish “serpent” are one and the same, namely, the Caduceus of Mercury, son of Apollo‐Python. It is easy to comprehend why the Jews adopted the ophidian shape for their “seducer.” With them it was purely _physiological_ and _phallic_; and no amount of casuistical reasoning on the part of the Roman Catholic Church can give it another meaning, once that the mystery language is well studied, and that the Hebrew scrolls are read numerically. The Occultists know that the Serpent, the Nâga, and the Dragon have each a septenary meaning; that the Sun, for instance, was the astronomical and cosmic emblem of the two contrasted Lights and the two Serpents of the Gnostics, the good and the evil. They also know that, when _generalized_, the conclusions of both Science and Theology present two most ridiculous extremes. For, when the former tells us that it is sufficient to trace the legends of the serpents to their primal source, the astronomical legend, and to meditate seriously on the Sun, the conqueror of Python, and the celestial Virgin in the Zodiac forcing back the devouring Dragon, if we would have the key of all the subsequent religious dogmas—it is easy to perceive that, instead of generalizing, the author simply has his eye on Christian religion and _Revelation_. We call this the one extreme. We see the other when Theology, repeating the famous decision of the Council of Trent, seeks to convince the masses that:

From the fall of man until the hour of his baptism the Devil has full power over him, and possesses him _by right_—_diabolum dominium et potestatem super homines habere et jure eos possidere_.(471)

To this Occult Philosophy answers: Prove first the existence of the Devil _as an entity_, and then we may believe in such congenital possession. A very small amount of observation and knowledge of human nature may be sufficient to prove the fallacy of this theological dogma. Had Satan any reality, in the objective or even subjective world (in the ecclesiastical sense), it is the poor Devil who would find himself chronically obsessed and even possessed by the wicked—hence by the bulk of mankind. It is humanity itself, and especially the clergy, headed by the haughty, unscrupulous and intolerant Roman Church, which has begotten, given birth to, and reared in love the Evil One. But this is a digression.

The whole world of thought is reproached by the Church with having adored the serpent.

The whole of humanity burnt incense to it or stoned it. The _Zends_ speak of it as do the _Kings_ and _Vedas_, as the _Edda_ ... and the _Bible_.... Everywhere the sacred serpent [the Nâga] has its shrine and its priest; in Rome it is the Vestal who ... prepares its meal with the same care that she bestows on the sacred fire. In Greece, Æsculapius cannot cure without its assistance, and delegates to it his powers. Every one has heard of the famous Roman embassy sent by the Senate to the god of medicine and its return with the not less famous serpent, which proceeded of its own will and by itself toward its master’s temple on one of the islands of the Tiber. Not a Bacchante that did not wind it [the serpent] in her hair, not an Augur but questioned it with care, not a Necromancer whose tombs are free from its presence! The Cainites and the Ophites call it Creator, while recognizing, as Schelling did, that the serpent is “evil in substance and in person.”(472)

Yes, the author is right, and if one would have a complete idea of the prestige which the serpent enjoys to our own day, he ought to study the matter in India and learn all that is believed about, and still attributed to, the Nâgas (cobras) in that country; one should also visit the Africans of Whydah, the Voodoos of Port‐au‐Prince and Jamaica, the Nagals of Mexico, and the Pâ, or Men‐serpents of China, etc. But why wonder that the serpent is “adored” and at the same time cursed, since we know that from the beginning it was a symbol? In every ancient language the word _dragon_ signified what it now does in Chinese, _long_ or “the being who excels in intelligence,” and in Greek, δράκων, or “he who sees and watches.”(473) Is it to the animal of this name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it not evident, wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning may have led savages now, that the above qualifications were intended to apply to the human originals, who were symbolized by Serpents and Dragons? These originals—called to this day in China the “Dragons of Wisdom”—were the first disciples of the Dhyânîs, who were their Instructors; in short, the Primitive Adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era would ever have confounded the man and the symbol.

The symbol of Chnouphis, or the Soul of the World, writes Champollion:

Is among others that of an enormous serpent standing on human legs; this reptile, the emblem of the Good Genius, is a veritable Agathodæmon. It is often represented bearded.... This sacred animal, identical with the serpent of the Ophites, is found engraved on numerous Gnostic or Basilidean stones.... The serpent has various heads, but is constantly inscribed with the letters ΧΝΟΥΒΙΣ.(474)

Agathodæmon was endowed “with the knowledge of good and evil,” _i.e._, with Divine Wisdom, for without the latter the former is impossible.(475) Repeating Jamblichus, Champollion shows him to be:

The deity called Εἰχτῶν [or the Fire of the Celestial Gods—the Great Thot‐Hermes],(476) to whom Hermes Trismegistus attributes the invention of magic.(477)

The “invention of magic”! A strange term to use, as though the unveiling of the eternal and actual mysteries of Nature could be _invented_! As well attribute, millenniums hence, the _invention_ instead of the discovery of radiant matter to Mr. Crookes. Hermes was not the inventor, or even the discoverer, for, as said in the last footnote but one, Thot‐Hermes is a generic name, as is Enoch—Enoïchion, the “inner, spiritual eye”—Nebo, the prophet and seer, etc. It is not the proper name of any one living man, but a generic title of many Adepts. Their connection with the serpent in symbolic allegories is due to their enlightenment by the Solar and Planetary Gods during the earliest intellectual Race, the Third. They are all the representative patrons of the Secret Wisdom. Asclepios is the son of the Sun‐God Apollo, and he is Mercury; Nebo is the son of Bel‐Merodach; Vaivasvata Manu, the great Rishi, is the son of Vivasvat—the Sun or Sûrya, etc. And while, astronomically, the Nâgas along with the Rishis, the Gandharvas, Apsarases, Grâmanîs (or Yakshas, minor Gods), Yâtudhânas and Devas, are the Sun’s attendants throughout the twelve solar months; in theogony, and also in anthropological evolution, they are Gods and Men—when incarnated in the _Nether_ World. Let the reader be reminded, in this connection, of the fact that Apollonius met in Kashmir Buddhist Nâgas. These are neither serpents zoologically, nor yet the Nâgas ethnologically, but “wise men.”

The _Bible_, from _Genesis_ to _Revelation_, is but a series of historical records of the great struggle between White and Black Magic, between the Adepts of the Right Path, the Prophets, and those of the Left, the Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses. Even the students of Occultism, though some of them have more archaic MSS. and direct teaching to rely upon, find it difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the Sodales of the Right Path and those of the Left. The great schism that arose between the sons of the Fourth Race, as soon as the first Temples and Halls of Initiation had been erected under the guidance of the “Sons of God,” is allegorized in the Sons of Jacob. That there were two Schools of Magic, and that the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is shown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob. And here it may be well to quote a few sentences from _Isis Unveiled_.(478)

The dying Jacob thus describes his sons: “Dan,” he says, “shall be a _serpent_ by the way, an _adder_ in the path, that biteth the horse‐heels, so that his rider shall fall backwards [_i.e._, he will teach candidates _Black_ Magic]. I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!” Of Simeon and Levi the patriarch remarks that they “are brethren; instruments of _cruelty_ are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their _secret_; unto their _assembly_.”(479) Now in the original, the words “their secret” read—“their Sod.”(480) And Sod was the name for the great Mysteries of Baal, Adonis and Bacchus, who were all Sun‐Gods and had serpents for symbols. The Kabalists explain the allegory of the fiery serpents by saying that this was the name given to the tribe of Levi, to all the Levites, in short, and that Moses was the chief of the Sodales.(481)

It is to the Mysteries that the original meaning of the “Dragon‐Slayers” has to be traced, and the question is fully treated of hereafter.

Meanwhile it follows that, if Moses was the Chief of the Mysteries, he was the Hierophant thereof; and further, if, at the same time, we find the Prophets thundering against the “abominations” of the people of Israël, that there were two Schools. “Fiery serpents” was, then, simply the epithet given to the Levites of the priestly caste, after they had departed from the Good Law, the traditional teachings of Moses, and to all those who followed Black Magic. Isaiah, when referring to the “rebellious children” who will have to carry their riches into the lands whence come “the viper and _fiery_ flying _serpent_,”(482) or Chaldæa and Egypt, whose Initiates had already greatly degenerated in his day (700 B.C.), meant the sorcerers of those lands.(483) But these must be carefully distinguished from the “Fiery Dragons of Wisdom” and the “Sons of the Fire‐Mist.”

In the _Great Book of the Mysteries_ we are told that:

_Seven Lords created seven Men; three Lords [Dhyân Chohans or Pitris] were holy and good, four less heavenly and full of passion.... The Chhâyâs [phantoms] of the Fathers were as they._

This accounts for the differences in human nature, which is divided into seven gradations of good and evil. There were seven tabernacles ready to be inhabited by Monads under seven different Karmic conditions. The Commentaries explain on this basis the easy spread of evil, as soon as the human Forms had become real men. Some ancient philosophers, however, in their genetical accounts, ignored the seven and gave only four. Thus the Mexican local _Genesis_ has “four _good_ men,” described as the four real ancestors of the human race, “who were neither begotten by the Gods nor born of woman”; but whose creation was a wonder wrought by the Creative Powers, and who were made only after “_three attempts at manufacturing men had failed_.” The Egyptians in their theology had only “four Sons of God”—whereas in _Pymander_ _seven_ are given—thus avoiding any mention of the evil nature of man. When, however, Set from a God sank into Set‐ Typhon, he began to be called the “seventh son”; whence probably arose the belief that “the seventh son of the seventh son” is always a natural‐born magician—though at first only a _sorcerer_ was meant. Apap, the serpent symbolizing evil, is slain by Aker, Set’s serpent;(484) therefore Set‐ Typhon could not be that evil. In the _Book of the Dead_, it is commanded that