Chapter clxiii
should be read “in the presence of a serpent on two legs,” which means a high Initiate, a Hierophant, for the discus and ram’s horns(485) that adorn his “serpent’s” head in the hieroglyphics of the title of the said chapter, denote this. Over the “serpent” are represented the two mystic eyes of Ammon,(486) the hidden “Mystery God.” The above passages corroborate our assertion, and show what the word “serpent” really meant in antiquity.
But as to the Nagals and Nargals; whence came the similarity or names between the Indian Nâgas and the American Nagals?
The Nargal was the Chaldæan and Assyrian chief of the Magi [Rab‐ Mag], and the Nagal was the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians. Both derive their names from Nergal‐Serezer, the Assyrian god, and the Hindû Nâgas. Both have the same faculties and the power to have an attendant Dæmon, with whom they identify themselves completely. The Chaldæan and Assyrian Nargal kept his Dæmon, in the shape of some animal considered sacred, inside the temple; the Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can—in the neighbouring lake, or wood, or in the house, in the shape of some household animal.(487)
Such similarity cannot be attributed to _coincidence_. A new world is discovered, and we find that, for our forefathers of the Fourth Race, it was already an old one; that Arjuna, Krishna’s companion and Chelâ, is said to have descended into Pâtâla, the “antipodes” and therein married Ulûpî,(488) a Nâga, or Nâgî rather, the daughter of the king of the Nâgas, Kauravya.(489)
And now it may be hoped the full meaning of the serpent emblem is proven. It is neither that of evil, nor, least of all, that of the devil; but is, indeed, the ΣΕΜΕΣ ΕΙΛΑΜ ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ, the “Eternal Sun Abrasax,” the Central Spiritual Sun of all the Kabalists, represented in some diagrams by the circle of Tiphereth.
And here, again, we may quote from our earlier volumes and enter into further explanations.
From this region of unfathomable Depth (Bythos, Aditi, Shekinah, the Veil of the Unknown) issues forth a Circle formed of spirals. This is Tiphereth; which, in the language of symbolism, means a grand Cycle, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as to follow the spirals, lies the Serpent—emblem of Wisdom and Eternity—the Dual Androgyne; the cycle representing Ennoia, or the Divine Mind (a Power which does not create but which must assimilate), and the Serpent, the Agathodæmon, the Ophis, the _Shadow_ of the Light (non‐eternal, yet the greatest Divine Light on our plane). Both were the Logoi of the Ophites; or the Unity as Logos manifesting itself as a double principle of Good and Evil.(490)
Were it Light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not appreciate nor even realize it. Shadow is that which enables Light to manifest itself, and gives it objective reality. Therefore, Shadow is not evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary which completes Light or Good; it is its _creator_ on Earth.
According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable Light and Shadow; Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed through all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist so long as there are manifested worlds.
This symbol accounts for the adoration by this sect of the Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled either round the sacramental loaf, or a Tau (the phallic emblem). As a unity, Ennoia and Ophis are the Logos. When separated, one is the Tree of Spiritual Life, the other, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find Ophis urging the first human couple—the material production of Ilda‐baoth, but owing its spiritual principle to Sophia‐ Achamoth—to eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis represents divine Wisdom.
The Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life, are all symbols transplanted from the soil of India. The Arasa‐maram [?], the banyan tree, so sacred with the Hindûs—since Vishnu during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty shade and there taught human philosophy and sciences—is called the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protecting foliage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils their first lessons on immortality and initiate them into the mysteries of life and death. The Java‐Aleim of the Sacerdotal College are said, in the Chaldæan tradition, to have taught the sons of men to become like one of them. To the present day Foh‐ tchou(491) who lives in his Foh‐Maëyu, or the temple of Buddha, on the top of the Kouin‐Long‐Sang,(492) the great mountain, produces his greatest religious miracles under a tree called in Chinese Sung‐Ming‐Shŭ, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, for ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality. This marvellous display takes place every three years, when an immense concourse of Chinese Buddhists assembles in pilgrimage at the holy place.(493)
Now it may become comprehensible why the earliest Initiates and Adepts, or the “Wise Men,” who are claimed to have been initiated into the Mysteries of Nature by the Universal Mind, represented by the highest Angels, were named the “Serpents of Wisdom” and “Dragons”; and also how the first physiologically complete couples—after being initiated into the Mystery of Human Creation through Ophis, the Manifested Logos and the Androgyne, by eating of the fruit of knowledge—gradually began to be accused by the material spirit of posterity of having _committed sin_, of having disobeyed the “Lord God,” and of having been tempted by the Serpent.
So little have the first Christians—who despoiled the Jews of their _Bible_—understood the first four chapters of _Genesis_ in their esoteric meaning, that they have never perceived that not only was no sin intended in this disobedience, but that the “Serpent” was actually the “Lord God” himself, who, as the Ophis, the Logos, or the bearer of divine creative wisdom, taught mankind to become creators in their turn.(494) They never realized that the Cross was an evolution from the Tree and the Serpent, and thus became the _salvation of mankind_. By this it would become the very first fundamental symbol of Creative Cause, applying to geometry, to numbers, to astronomy, to measure and to animal reproduction. According to the _Kabalah_, _the curse on man came with the formation of woman_.(495) The circle was separated from its diameter line.
From the possession of the double principle in one, that is, the Androgyne condition, the separation of the dual principle was made, presenting two opposites, whose destiny it was, for ever after, to seek reünion into the original _one_ condition. The curse was this, viz., that Nature, impelling the search, evaded the desired result by the production of a new being, distinct from that reünion or oneness desired, by which the natural longing to recover a lost state was and is for ever being cheated. It is by this tantalizing process of a continued curse that Nature lives.(496)
The allegory of Adam being driven away from the Tree of Life means, Esoterically, that the newly separated Race abused and dragged down the mystery of Life into the region of animalism and bestiality. For, as the _Zohar_ shows, Matronethah—Shekinah, the wife of Metatron symbolically—“is the way to the great Tree of Life, the Mighty Tree,” and Shekinah is Divine Grace. As explained, this Tree reaches the heavenly vale and is hidden between three mountains (the upper Triad of Principles, in man). From these three mountains, the Tree ascends above (the Adept’s knowledge aspires heavenward), and then redescends below (into the Adept’s Ego on earth). This Tree is revealed in the day time and is hidden during the night, _i.e._, revealed to an enlightened mind and hidden to ignorance, which is night.(497) As says the Commentary:
_The Tree of the Knowledge of the Good and the Evil grows from the roots of the Tree of Life._
But then also, as the author of _The Source of Measures_ writes:
In the Kabalah it is plainly to be found that the “Tree of Life” was the ansated cross in its sexual aspect, and that the “Tree of Knowledge” was the separation and the coming together again to fulfil the fatal condition. To display this in numbers the values of the letters composing the word Otz (עץ), tree, are 7 and 9, the seven being the holy feminine number and the nine the number of the phallic or male energy. This ansated cross is the symbol of the Egyptian _female‐male_, Isis‐Osiris, the germinal principle in all forms, based on the primal manifestation applicable in all directions and in all senses.
This is the Kabalistic view of the Western Occultists, and it differs from the more philosophical Eastern or Âryan views upon the subject.(498) The separation of the sexes was in the programme of Nature and of natural evolution; and the creative faculty in male and female was a gift of Divine Wisdom. In the truth of such traditions the whole of Antiquity, from the patrician philosopher to the humblest spiritually inclined plebeian, has believed. And as we proceed, we may successfully show that the _relative_ truth of such legends, if not their absolute exactness—vouched for by such giants of intellect as were Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, and others—begins to dawn upon more than one modern Scientist. He is perplexed; he stands startled and confused before proofs that are being daily accumulated before him; he feels that there is no way of solving the many historical problems that stare him in the face, unless he begins by accepting ancient traditions. Therefore, in saying that we believe absolutely in ancient records and _universal_ legends, we need hardly plead guilty before the impartial observer, for other and far more learned writers, and that too among those who belong to the modern Scientific School, evidently believe in much that the Occultists do—in “dragons,” for instance, and not only symbolically, but also in their actual existence at one time.
It would have indeed been a bold step for anyone, some thirty years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated tales, time‐honoured as fictions, as actual facts; and those of the nursery as being, in many instances, legends, more or less distorted, descriptive of real beings or events. Nowadays it is a less hazardous proceeding.(499)
Thus opens the Introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting work by Mr. Charles Gould, called _Mythical Monsters_. He boldly states his belief in most of these monsters. He submits that:
Many of the so‐called mythical animals, which throughout long ages and in all nations have been the fertile subjects of fiction and fable, come legitimately within the scope of plain matter‐of‐fact Natural History, and that they may be considered, not as the outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and inaccurate descriptions have filtered down to us, probably very much refracted, through the mists of time; ... traditions of creatures _once coëxisting with man, some of which are so weird and terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible_....
For me the major part of those creatures are not chimeras but objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a creature evolved out of the imagination of Âryan man by the contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew....
To me the specific existence of the unicorn seems not incredible, and, in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth.(500)...
For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from “the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature.” It seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the utterance of these oft‐told tales until their original appearance is almost unrecognizable, than that _uncultured savages should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present day_; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions are _transformations_ than to believe them to be _inventions_.(501)
It is shown by the same Geologist that:
Palæontologists have successively traced back the existence of man to periods variously estimated at from _thirty thousand to one million_ years—to periods when he coëxisted with animals which have long since become extinct.(502)
These animals, “weird and terrible,” were, to give a few instances: (1) The genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebræ show them to have attained a length of nearly two hundred feet. The remains of such monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus Montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet in length. (3) The Dinosaurians, in the Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains, of still more gigantic proportions. (4) The Atlantosaurus Immanis, a femur of which alone is over six feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet in length. But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the discovery of remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh‐ bone over twelve feet in length!(503) Then we read of the monstrous Sivatherium in the Himâlayas, the four‐horned stag, as large as an elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium; of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with crocodile jaws on a duck’s head, etc. _All these were coëxistent with man, most probably attacked man, as man attacked them._ And we are asked to believe that the said man was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that, surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a colossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? Is it with his stone hatchet that he had the best of a Sivatherium or a gigantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one great man of Science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why man should not have been “contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and go back _as far as the Secondary Period_.”(504)
The very conservative Professor Jukes writes:
It appears that the flying dragons of romance had something like a real existence in former ages of the world.(505)
And the author goes on to ask.
Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldæa and China, shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from others which, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization?(506)
The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants—themselves smaller than their ancestors the Mastodons—and hippopotami, are the only surviving relics, and tend to disappear more entirely every day. But even they have already had a few pioneers of their future genus, and have decreased in size in the same proportion as men have done. For the remains of a pigmy elephant, E. Falconeri, were found in the cave deposits of Malta; and the same author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy hippopotami, the former being only two feet six inches high. There is also the still existing Hippopotamus (Chœropsis) Liberiensis, “which M. Milne‐ Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height.”(507)
Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy‐ tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that:
The things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically speaking, to the things that are unknown.(508)
Thus they laugh only at their own ignorance.
The “Sons Of God” And The “Sacred Island.”
The “legend” given in _Isis Unveiled_(509) in relation to a portion of the globe which Science now concedes to have been the cradle of humanity—though it was but one of the _seven_ cradles, in truth—runs as follows:
Tradition says, and the records of the _Great Book_ (the _Book of Dzyan_) explain, that long before the days of Ad‐am, and his inquisitive wife, He‐va, where now are found but salt lakes and desolate barren deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which extended over Middle Asia, north of the proud Himâlayan range, and its western prolongation. In it an island, which, for its unparalleled beauty, had no rival in the world, was inhabited by the last remnant of the Race which preceded ours.
“The last remnant” means the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” who, with a few tribes, survived the great cataclysm. For it was the Third Race, inhabiting the great Lemurian Continent, which preceded the veritable and complete human Races—the Fourth and the Fifth. Therefore was it said in _Isis Unveiled_ that:
This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for it had an unlimited control over the elements. These were the “Sons of God”; not those who saw the daughters of men, but the real Elohim, though in the oriental _Kabalah_ they have another name. It was they who imparted Nature’s most weird secrets to men, and revealed to them the ineffable, and now _lost_ “word.”
The “Island,” according to belief, exists to the present hour, as an oasis surrounded by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Gobi Desert—whose sands “no foot hath crossed in the memory of man.”
This word, which is no word, has travelled once round the globe, and still lingers as a far‐off dying echo in the hearts of some privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges were aware of the existence of this island; but the “word” was known only to the Java Aleim (Mahâ Chohan in another tongue), or chief Lord of every College, and was passed to his successor only at the moment of death. There were many such Colleges, and the old classical authors speak of them.
There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but subterranean passages, known only to the chiefs, communicated with it in all directions.(510)
Tradition asserts, and Archæology accepts the truth of the legend, that there is more than one city now flourishing in India, which is built on several other cities, making thus a subterranean city of six or seven stories high. Delhi is one of them, Allahabad another; examples being found even in Europe, _e.g._, in Florence, which is built on several defunct Etruscan and other cities. Why, then, could not Ellora, Elephanta, Karli, and Ajunta have been built over subterranean labyrinths and passages, as it is claimed? Of course we do not allude to the caves which are known to every European, whether _de visu_ or by hearsay, notwithstanding their enormous antiquity, though that even is disputed by modern Archæology; but to a fact, known to the initiated Brâhmans of India and especially to Yogîs, viz., that there is not a cave‐temple in the country but has its subterranean passages running in every direction, and that these underground caves and endless corridors have in their turn _their_ caves and corridors.
Who can tell whether the lost Atlantis—which is also mentioned in the _Secret Book_, but, again, under another name, peculiar to the sacred language—did not still exist in those days?—
we went on to ask. It _did_ exist most assuredly, for it was approaching its greatest days of glory and civilization when the last of the Lemurian continents went down.
The great lost Continent might have, perhaps, been situated south of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania.(511) If the hypothesis—now so much doubted, and positively denied by some learned authors, who regard it as a joke of Plato—is ever verified, then, perhaps, will the Scientists believe that the description of the God‐inhabited continent was not altogether a fable.(512) And they may then perceive that Plato’s guarded hints and his attributing the narrative to Solon and the Egyptian priests, were but a prudent way of imparting the fact to the world, and at the same time, by cleverly combining truth and fiction, of disconnecting himself from a story which the obligations imposed at Initiation forbade him to divulge.
To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of hierophants was divided into two distinct categories;(513) those who were instructed by the “Sons of God” of the island, and who were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation; and others who inhabited the lost Atlantis—if such must be its name—and who, being of another race (produced _sexually_ but of _divine_ parents), were born with a sight which embraced all hidden things, and was independent of both distance and material obstacle. In short, they were the Fourth Race of men mentioned in the _Popol Vuh_, whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once.
In other words, they were the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, the first who had a Dynasty of Spirit‐Kings; not of Manes, or “Ghosts,” as some believe,(514) but of actual living Devas, or Demi‐gods or Angels, again, who had assumed bodies to rule over this Race, and who, in their turn, instructed them in arts and sciences. Only, as these Dhyânîs were Rûpa or material Spirits, they were not always good. Their King Thevetat was one of the latter, and it is under the evil influence of this King‐Demon that the Atlantis‐Race became a nation of wicked “magicians.”
In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which would be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the submersion of Atlantis, which finds its imitation in the stories of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood. The giants and magicians “and all flesh died ... and every man.” All except Xisuthrus and Noah, who are substantially identical with the great Father of the Thlinkithians,(515) who, they say, also escaped in a large boat like the Hindû Noah Vaivasvata.
If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further story that, from the intermarrying of the progeny of the hierophants of the island and the descendants of the Atlantean Noah, a mixed race of righteous and wicked sprang up. On the one side the world had its Enochs, Moseses, various Buddhas, its numerous “Saviours,” and great hierophants; on the other hand, its “_natural_ magicians” who, through lack of the restraining power of proper spiritual enlightenment, ... perverted their gifts to evil purposes.
We may supplement this by the testimony of some records and traditions. In _L’Histoire des Vierges: les Peuples et les Continents Disparus_, Louis Jacolliot says:
One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean an immense continent, which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the principal isles of Polynesia.
The high plateaux of Hindûstan and Asia, according to this hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent.... According to the Brâhmans, this country had attained a high civilization, and the peninsula of Hindûstan, enlarged by the displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm, has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent, and from their speech _was derived the Sanskrit_. The Indo‐Hellenic tradition, preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from the plains of India, also relates the existence of a continent and a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides, and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of the Tropics.
Apart from this fact, the supposition of an ancient continent in those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the Canaries and Cape de Verd Islands, is not devoid of geographical probability. The Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond the Pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the mysterious Ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, from the Straits of Sunda to Easter Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most important of all.
A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to say, to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms “that all these islands once formed two immense countries, inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and, since then, it has been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone, the mountain‐peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had committed.”
Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly important to Science to recover its traces, however feeble and fugitive they may be.(516)
This Oceanic tradition corroborates the legend given from the “Records of the Secret Doctrine.” The war mentioned between the yellow and the black men, relates to a struggle between the “Sons of Gods” and the “Sons of Giants,” or the inhabitants and magicians of Atlantis.
The final conclusion of the author, who personally visited all the islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:
As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.
The three summits of this continent, the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate islands, Viti (Fiji), Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna (? Foutouha), Ouvea (? Oueeha), the Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumoutou (? Pomatou), the Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.
All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central groups could never have communicated in view of their actual geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without provisions.
On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti, etc., _had never known each other, had never heard of each other_, before the arrival of the Europeans. _And yet each of these people maintained that their island had at one time formed part of an immense stretch of land which extended towards the West on the side of Asia._ And all, brought together, were found to speak the same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same religious belief. And all to the question, “Where is the cradle of your race?” for sole response, _extended their hand toward the setting sun_.(517)
Geographically, this description clashes slightly with the facts in the Secret Records; but it shows the existence of such traditions, and this is all one cares for. For, as there is no smoke without fire, so a tradition must be based on some approximate truth.
In its proper place we will show Modern Science fully corroborating the above and other traditions of the Secret Doctrine with regard to the two lost Continents. The Easter Island relics, for instance, are the most astounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval giants. They are as grand as they are mysterious; and one has but to examine the heads of the colossal statues, that have remained unbroken, to recognize at a glance the features of the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race giants. They seem of one cast though different in features—of a distinctly sensual type, such as the Atlanteans (the Daityas and “Atalantians”) are said to have had in the Esoteric Hindû books. Compare these with the faces of some other colossal statues in Central Asia—those near Bamian, for instance—the portrait‐statues, tradition tells us, of Buddhas belonging to _previous_ Manvantaras; of those Buddhas and heroes who are mentioned in the Buddhist and Hindû works, as men of fabulous size,(518) the good and holy brothers of their wicked coüterine brothers generally, just as Râvana, the giant king of Lankâ, was the brother of Kumbhakarna; all descendants of the Gods through the Rishis, and thus, like “Titan and his enormous brood,” all “Heaven’s first‐born.” These “Buddhas,” though often spoilt by the symbolical representation of great pendent ears, show a suggestive difference, perceived at a glance, in the expression of their faces from that of the Easter Island statues. They may be of one race—but the former are “Sons of Gods”; the latter the brood of mighty sorcerers. All these are reïncarnations however, and, apart from unavoidable exaggerations in popular fancy and tradition, they are _historical characters_.(519) When did they live? How long ago lived the two Races, the Third and Fourth; and how long after did the various tribes of the Fifth begin their strife, the wars between Good and Evil? We are assured by the Orientalists that chronology is both hopelessly mixed and absurdly exaggerated in the _Purânas_ and other Hindû Scriptures. We feel quite prepared to agree with the accusation. But, if Âryan writers have occasionally allowed their chronological pendulum to swing too far one way, beyond the legitimate limit of fact; nevertheless, when the distance of that deviation is compared with the distance of the Orientalists’ deviation in the opposite direction, moderation will be found on the Brâhmanical side. It is the Pandit who will, in the long run, be found more truthful and nearer to fact than the Sanskritist. The Sanskritist’s curtailing—even when proved to have been resorted to in order to fit a personal hobby—is regarded by Western public opinion as “a _cautious_ acceptance of facts,” whereas the Pandit is brutally treated in print as a “_liar_.” But, surely, this is no reason why everyone should be compelled to see this in the same light! An impartial observer may judge it otherwise. He may either proclaim both unscrupulous historians, or justify both, each on his respective ground, and say: Hindû Âryans wrote for their Initiates, who read truth between the lines; not for the masses. If they did mix up events and confuse Ages _intentionally_, it was not with the view of deceiving any one, but in order to preserve their knowledge from the prying eye of the foreigner. But, to him who can count the _generations_ from the Manus, and the _series of incarnations_ specified in the cases of some heroes,(520) in the _Purânas_, the meaning and chronological order are very clear. As for the Western Orientalist, he must be excused, on account of his undeniable ignorance of the methods used by archaic Esotericism.
But such existing prejudices will have to give way and disappear very soon before the light of new discoveries. Already Dr. Weber’s and Prof. Max Müller’s favourite theories—namely, that writing was not known in India, even in the days of Pânini (!); that the Hindûs had all their arts and sciences—even to the Zodiac and their architecture (Fergusson)—from the Macedonian Greeks; these and other such cock‐and‐bull hypotheses, are threatened with ruin. It is the ghost of old Chaldæa that comes to the rescue of truth. In his third Hibbert Lecture (1887) Professor Sayce of Oxford, speaking of newly‐discovered Assyrian and Babylonian cylinders, refers at length to Ea, the God of Wisdom, now identified with the Oannes of Berosus, the half‐man, half‐fish, who taught the Babylonians culture and the _art of writing_. This Ea, to whom, thanks only to the Biblical Deluge, an antiquity of hardly 1,500 B.C. had been hitherto allowed, is now spoken of in the following terms, to summarize from the Professor:
The city of Ea was Eridu, which stood 6,000 years ago on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The name means “the good city,” a
## particularly holy spot, since it was the centre from which the
earliest Chaldæan civilization made its way to the north. As the culture‐god was represented as coming from the sea, it was possible that the culture of which Eridu was the seat was of foreign importation. We now know that there was intercourse at a very early period between Chaldæa and the Sinaitic peninsula, as well as with India. The statues discovered by the French at Tel‐ loh (dating from at latest B.C. 4,000) were made of the extremely hard stone known as diorite, and the inscriptions on them stated the diorite to have been brought from Magan—_i.e._, the Sinaitic peninsula, which was then ruled by the Pharaohs. The statues are known to resemble in general style the diorite statue, Kephren, the builder of the second Pyramid, while, according to Mr. Petrie, the unit of measurement marked on the plan of the city, which one of the Tel‐loh figures holds on his lap, is the same as that employed by the Pyramid builders. Teak wood has been found at Mugheir, or Ur of the Chaldees, although that wood is an Indian special product; add to this that an ancient Babylonian list of clothing mentions _sindhu_ or “muslin,” explained as “vegetable cloth.”(521)
Muslin, best known now as Dacca muslin, known in Chaldæa as Hindu (Sindhu), and teak wood used 4,000 years B.C., and yet the Hindûs, to whom Chaldæa owes its civilization, as has been well proven by Colonel Vans Kennedy, were _ignorant of the art of writing_ before the Greeks taught them their alphabet—if, at least, we have to believe Orientalists!
Stanza X. The History Of The Fourth Race.
38. The birth of the Fourth (Atlantean) Race. 39. The sub‐races of the Fourth Humanity begin to divide and interblend; they form the first mixed races of various colours. 40. The superiority of the Atlantean over other Races. 41. They fall into sin and beget children and monsters. 42. The first germs of anthropomorphism and sexual religion. They lose their “third eye.”
38. THUS, TWO BY TWO, ON THE SEVEN ZONES, THE THIRD RACE GAVE BIRTH TO THE FOURTH; THE SURA BECAME A‐SURA.(522)
39. THE FIRST,(523) ON EVERY ZONE, WAS MOON‐COLOURED;(524) THE SECOND YELLOW LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD RED; THE FOURTH BROWN, WHICH BECAME BLACK WITH SIN.(525) THE FIRST SEVEN HUMAN SHOOTS WERE ALL OF ONE COMPLEXION.(526) THE NEXT SEVEN,(527) BEGAN MIXING.(528)
To understand Shloka 38, it must be read together with the Shlokas of Stanza IX. Up to this point of evolution man belongs more to metaphysical than physical Nature. It is only after the so‐called “Fall,” that the Races began to develop rapidly into a purely human shape. In order that the student may correctly comprehend the full meaning of the Fall—so mystic and transcendental in its real significance—he must at once be told the details which preceded it, seeing that modern Theology has made of the event a pivot on which its most pernicious and absurd dogmas and beliefs are made to turn.
The Archaic Commentaries, as the reader may remember, explain that, of the Host of Dhyânîs, whose turn it was to incarnate as the Egos of the immortal, but, _on this plane_, senseless Monads—some “obeyed” (the Law of Evolution) immediately the men of the Third Race became physiologically and physically ready, _i.e._, when they had separated into sexes. These were those early conscious Beings who, now adding conscious knowledge and will to their inherent divine purity, “created” by Kriyâshakti the semi‐ divine man, who became the Seed on Earth for future Adepts. Those, on the other hand, who, jealous of their intellectual freedom—unfettered as it then was by the bonds of Matter—said: “We can choose, ... we have wisdom,”(529) and so incarnated far later—these had their first Karmic punishment prepared for them. They got bodies inferior (physiologically) to their Astral Models, because their Chhâyâs had belonged to Progenitors of an inferior degree in the seven Classes. As to those “Sons of Wisdom” who “deferred” their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already tainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, these produced a terrible cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day. It was produced in themselves, and they became the carriers of that seed of iniquity for æons to come, because the bodies they had to inform had become defiled through their own procrastination.(530)
This was the “Fall of the Angels,” owing to their rebellion against Karmic Law. The “fall of _man_” was no fall, _for he was irresponsible_. But “creation” having been invented on the dualistic system as the “prerogative of God alone”—the legitimate _attribute_ patented by Theology in the name of an _infinite_ Deity of their own making—the power of Kriyâshakti had to be regarded as “Satanic,” and as a usurpation of divine rights. Thus, in the light of such narrow views, the foregoing must naturally be considered as a terrible slander on man, “created in the image of God,” and a still more dreadful blasphemy in the face of the dead‐letter dogma. “Your doctrine,” the Occultists have already been told, “makes of man, created out of dust in the likeness of his God, a vehicle of the Devil, from the first.” “Why do you make of your God a Devil—both, moreover, created in _your own_ image?”—is our reply. The Esoteric interpretation of the _Bible_, however, sufficiently refutes this slanderous invention of Theology; the Secret Doctrine must some day become the just Karma of the Churches—more anti‐Christian than the representative assemblies of the most confirmed Materialists and Atheists.
The true meaning of the old doctrine of the “Fallen Angels,” in its anthropological and evolutionary sense, is contained in the _Kabalah_, and explains the _Bible_. It is found preëminently in _Genesis_ when the latter is read in a spirit of research for truth, with no eye to dogma, and in no mood of preconception. This is easily proven. In _Genesis_ (vi), the “Sons of God”—B’ne Aleim—become enamoured of the daughters of men, marry, and reveal to their wives the mysteries unlawfully learnt by them in Heaven, according to Enoch; and this is the “Fall of the Angels.”(531) But what, in reality, is the _Book of Enoch_ itself, from which the author of _Revelation_ and even the St. John of the Fourth Gospel(532) have so profusely quoted? Simply a _Book of Initiation_, giving out in allegory and cautious phraseology the programme of certain Archaic Mysteries performed in the _inner_ Temples. The author of the _Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quichés_ very justly suggests that the so‐called “Visions” of Enoch relate to his (Enoch’s) experience at Initiation, and what he learned in the Mysteries; while he very erroneously states his opinion that Enoch had learned them before being converted to Christianity (! !); furthermore, he believes that this book was written “at the beginning of the Christian era, when ... the customs and religion of the Egyptians fell into decadency”! This is hardly possible, since Jude, in his Epistle,(533) quotes from the _Book of Enoch_; and, therefore, as Archbishop Laurence, the translator of the _Book of Enoch_ from the Ethiopic version, remarks, it “could not have been the production of a writer who lived after ... or was even coëval with” the writers of the _New Testament_, unless, indeed, Jude and the Gospels, and all that follows, were also a production of the already established Church—which, some critics say, is not impossible. But we are now concerned with the “Fallen Angels” of Enoch, rather than with Enoch himself.
In Indian exotericism, these Angels (Asuras) are also denounced as the “enemies of the Gods”; those who oppose sacrificial worship offered to the Devas. In Christian Theology they are broadly referred to as the “Fallen Spirits,” the heroes of various conflicting and contradictory legends, gathered from Pagan sources. The _coluber tortuosus_, the “tortuous snake”—a qualification said to have originated with the Jews—had quite another meaning before the Roman Church distorted it; among others, _a purely astronomical_ signification.
The “Serpent” fallen from on high (_deorsum fluens_) was credited with the possession of the Keys of the Empire of the Dead (τοῦ θανάτου ἀρχή) to the day when Jesus saw it fall “as lightning ... from heaven,”(534) notwithstanding the Roman Catholic interpretation of “_cadebat ut fulgur_.” It means indeed that even “the devils are subject” to the Logos—who is Wisdom, but at the same time, as the opponent of ignorance, Satan or Lucifer. This remark refers to divine Wisdom falling like lightning on, and so quickening, the intellects of those who fight the devils of ignorance and superstition. Up to the time when Wisdom, in the shape of the incarnating Spirits of Mahat, descended from on high to animate and call the Third Race to real conscious life—Humanity, if it can be so called in its animal, senseless state, was of course doomed to _moral_ as well as to physical death. The Angels _fallen into generation_ are referred to metaphorically as Serpents and Dragons of Wisdom. On the other hand, regarded in the light of the Logos, the Christian Saviour, like Krishna, whether as man or Logos, may be said to have saved those who believed in the Secret Teachings, from “eternal death,” and to have conquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or Hell, as every Initiate does. This is the human, terrestrial form of the Initiates, and also—because the Logos is Christos—that “principle” of our inner nature which develops in us into the Spiritual Ego—the Higher Self—formed of the indissoluble union of Buddhi, the sixth, and the spiritual efflorescence of Manas, the fifth “principle.”(535) “The Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven and conscious, self‐active Wisdom on Earth,” we are taught. It is the Marriage of the “Heavenly Man” with the “Virgin of the World,” or Nature, as described in _Pymander_; the result of which is their progeny—immortal man. It is this which is called in St. John’s _Revelation_(536) the marriage of the Lamb with his Bride. This “wife” is now identified with the Church of Rome owing to the arbitrary interpretations of her votaries. But they seem to forget that her “linen” may be “clean and white” _outwardly_, like the “whited sepulchre,” but that the rottenness she is inwardly filled with, is not the “righteousness of saints,”(537) but rather the blood of the saints she has “slain upon the earth.”(538) Thus the remark made by the great Initiate, in _Luke_—referring allegorically to the ray of enlightenment and reason, _falling like lightning_ from on high into the hearts and minds of the converts to the old Wisdom‐Religion, then presented in a new form by the wise Galilean Adept(539)—was distorted out of all recognition, as was also his own personality, and made to fit in with one of the most cruel and the most pernicious of all theological dogmas.
But if Western Theology alone holds the patent and copyright of Satan—in all the dogmatic horror of that fiction—other nationalities and religions have committed equal errors in their misinterpretation of a tenet, which is one of the most profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of ancient thought. They have both disfigured, and hinted at, the correct meaning of it in their numerous allegories on the subject. Nor have the semi‐esoteric dogmas of Paurânic Hindûism failed to evolve very suggestive symbols and allegories concerning the rebellious and fallen Gods. The _Purânas_ teem with them; and we find a direct hint at the truth in the frequent allusions of Parâshara, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, to all those Rudras, Rishis, Asuras, Kumâras and Munis, who have _to be born in every age_—to reïncarnate in every Manvantara. This, Esoterically, is equivalent to saying that the “Flames” born of the Universal Mind, or Mahat, owing to the mysterious workings of Karmic Will and the impulse of Evolutionary Law, had—without any gradual transition—landed on this Earth, after having, as in _Pymander_, broken through the “Seven Circles of Fire,” or, in short, the seven intermediate Worlds.
There is an Eternal Cyclic Law of Re‐births, and the series is headed at every new Manvantaric Dawn by those who have enjoyed their rest from reïncarnations in previous Kalpas for incalculable Æons—by the highest and the earliest Nirvânîs. It was the turn of these “Gods” to incarnate in the present Manvantara; hence their presence on Earth, and the ensuing allegories; hence, also, the perversion of the original meaning.(540) The Gods who had “_fallen_ into generation,” whose mission it was to complete _Divine_ Man, are found represented later on as Demons, Evil Spirits, and Fiends, at feud and war with Gods, or the irresponsible agents of the one Eternal Law. But no conception of such creatures as the Devils and the Satan of the Christian, Jewish, and Mahommedan religions was ever intended by these thousand and one Âryan allegories.(541)
The true Esoteric view about “Satan,” the opinion held on this subject by the whole of philosophic antiquity, is admirably brought out in an Appendix, entitled “The Secret of Satan,” to the second edition of Dr. A. Kingsford’s _Perfect Way_.(542) No better and clearer indication of the truth could be offered to the intelligent reader, and it is therefore quoted here at some length:
1. And on the seventh day [seventh creation of the Hindûs],(543) there went forth from the presence of God a _mighty Angel_, full of wrath and consuming, and God gave him the dominion of the outermost sphere.(544)
2. Eternity brought forth Time; the Boundless gave birth to Limit; Being descended into generation.(545)
4. _Among the Gods is none like unto him_, into whose hands are committed the kingdoms, the power and the glory of the worlds:
5. Thrones and empires, the dynasties of kings,(546) the fall of nations, the birth of churches, the triumphs of Time.
For, as is said in Hermes:
20. Satan is the door‐keeper of the _Temple of the King_; he standeth in Solomon’s porch; he holdeth _the Keys of the Sanctuary_;
21. That no man may enter therein save the anointed, having the arcanum of Hermes.
These suggestive and majestic verses had reference, with the ancient Egyptians and other civilized peoples of antiquity, to the _creative and __ generative Light of the Logos_—Horus, Brahmâ, Ahura Mazda, etc., as primeval manifestations of the Ever‐unmanifested Principle, whether called Ain Suph, Parabrahman, or Zeruâna Akerne, or Boundless Time, Kâla—but the meaning is now degraded in the _Kabalah_. The “Anointed”—who has the secrets and mysteries of Hermes, or Budha, Wisdom, and who alone is entrusted with the “Keys of the Sanctuary,” the Womb of Nature, in order to fructify it and call to active life and being the whole Kosmos—has become, with the Jews, Jehovah, the “God of Generation” on the Lunar Mountain—Sinai, the Mountain of the Moon (Sin). The “Sanctuary” has become the “Holy of Holies,” and the arcanum has been anthropomorphized, and “phallicized,” and dragged down into Matter, indeed. Hence arose the necessity of making of the “Dragon of Wisdom,” the “Serpent” of _Genesis_; of the conscious God who needed a body to clothe his too subjective divinity, Satan. But the “innumerable incarnations of Spirit,” and “the ceaseless pulse and current of Desire,”(547) refer, the first, to our doctrine of Karmic and Cyclic Rebirths, the second—to Erôs, not the later God of material, physiological love, but to the Divine Desire in the Gods, as well as in all Nature, to create and give life to Beings. This, the Rays of the one “Dark,” because invisible and incomprehensible, “Flame” could achieve only by themselves descending into Matter. Therefore, as continued in the Appendix:
12. Many names hath God given him [Satan], names of mystery, secret and terrible.
13. ... The Adversary, because Matter opposeth Spirit, and Time accuseth even the saints of the Lord.
28. Stand in awe of him, and sin not: speak his name with trembling....
29. For Satan is the magistrate of the Justice of God [Karma]; he beareth the balance and the sword.
31. For to him are committed _Weight and Measure and Number_.
Compare the last sentence with what the Rabbi, who explains the Kabalah to the Prince in the Book of _Al Chazari_, says, and it will be found that Weight and Measure and Number are, in the _Sepher Jetzirah_, the attributes of the Sephiroth (the three Sephrim, or figures, ciphers), covering the whole collective number of 10; and that the Sephiroth are the collective Adam Kadmon, the “Heavenly Man” or the Logos. Thus Satan and the Anointed were identified in ancient thought. Therefore:
33. Satan is the minister of God, Lord of the seven mansions of Hades, the Angel of the manifest Worlds.
The seven Lokas, or Saptaloka, of the Earth with the Hindûs; for Hades, or the Limbo of Illusion, of which Theology makes a region bordering on Hell, _is simply our Globe_, the Earth, and thus Satan is called the “Angel of the _manifest_ Worlds.”
It is “Satan who is the God of our planet and _the only_ God,” and this without any metaphorical allusion to its wickedness and depravity. For he is one with the Logos.
The first and “eldest of the gods,” in the order of microcosmic [divine] evolution, Saturn (Satan) [astronomically] is the _seventh and last_ in the order of macrocosmic emanation, being the circumference of the Kingdom of which Phœbus [the Light of Wisdom, also the Sun] is the centre.
The Gnostics were right, then, in calling the Jewish God an “Angel of Matter,” or he who breathed (conscious) life into Adam, and whose Planet was Saturn.
34. And God hath put a girdle about his loins [the rings of Saturn], and the name of the girdle is Death.
In Anthropogony this “girdle” is the human body with its two lower principles. These three die, while the innermost Man is immortal. And now we approach the _secret_ of Satan.
37. ... Upon Satan only _is the shame of generation_.
38. He hath lost his virginal estate [so hath the Kumâra, by incarnating]: _uncovering heavenly secrets_, he hath entered into bondage.
39. He encompasseth with bonds and limits all things....
42. Twain are the armies of God: in heaven the hosts of Michael; in the abyss [the manifested world] the legions of Satan.
43. These are the Unmanifest and the Manifest; the free and the bound [in Matter]; the virginal and the fallen.
44. And both are the ministers of the Father, fulfilling the Word divine.
Therefore:
55. Holy and venerable is the Sabbath of God: _blessed and sanctified is the name of the Angel of Hades_ [Satan].
For:
41. The glory of Satan is the shadow of the Lord [God in the manifested World]: the throne of Satan is the footstool of Adonai [the whole Kosmos].
When the Church, therefore, curses Satan, it curses the Kosmic reflection of God; it anathematizes God made manifest in Matter or in the objective; it maledicts God, or the ever‐incomprehensible Wisdom, revealing itself as Light and Shadow, Good and Evil in Nature, in the only manner comprehensible to the limited intellect of Man.
This is the true philosophical and metaphysical interpretation of Samael, or Satan, the Adversary in the _Kabalah_; the same tenets and spirit being found in the allegorical interpretations of every other ancient religion. This philosophical view does not interfere, however, with the historical records connected with it. We say “historical,” because allegory and mythical ornamentation round the kernel of tradition, in nowise prevent that kernel being a record of real events. Thus, the _Kabalah_, repeating the time‐honoured revelations of the once universal history of our Globe and the evolution of its Races, has presented it under the legendary form of the various records which have formed the _Bible_. Its historical foundation, in however imperfect a form, is now offered in these pages from the Secret Doctrine of the East; and thus the allegorical and symbolical meaning of the Serpent of _Genesis_ is found explained by the “Sons of Wisdom”—or Angels from higher Spheres, though all and each pertain to the Kingdom of Satan, or Matter—revealing to men the mysteries of Heaven. Hence, also, all the so‐called myths of the Hindû, Grecian, Chaldæan, and Jewish Pantheons are found to be built on fact and truth. The Giants of _Genesis_ are the historical Atlanteans of Lankâ, and the Greek Titans.
Who can forget that Troy was once upon a time proclaimed a myth, and Homer a non‐existent personage, while the existence of such cities as Herculaneum and Pompeii was denied, and attributed to mere fairy legends? Yet Schliemann has proved that Troy did really exist, and the two latter cities, though buried for long ages under the Vesuvian lava, have had their resurrection day, and live again on the surface of the Earth. How many more cities and localities called “fabulous” are on the list of future discoveries, how many more personages regarded as mythical(548) will one day become historical, those alone can tell who read the decrees of Fate in the Astral Light.
As the tenets of the Eastern Doctrine, however, have always been kept secret, and as the reader can hardly hope to be shown the original texts unless he becomes an accepted disciple, let the Greek and Latin scholar turn to the original texts of Hermetic literature. Let him, for instance, read carefully the opening pages of the _Pymander_ of Hermes Trismegistus, and he will see our doctrines corroborated therein, however veiled its text. There also he will find the evolution of the Universe, of our Earth, called “Nature” in _Pymander_, as of everything else, from the “Moyst Principle,” or the great Deep, Father‐Mother—the first differentiation in the manifested Kosmos. First the “Universal Mind,” which the hand of the Christian translator has metamorphosed in the earliest renderings into God, the Father; then the “Heavenly Man,”(549) the great Total of that Host of Angels, which was too pure for the creation of the inferior Worlds or of the Men of our Globe, but which nevertheless _fell_ into Matter by virtue of that same evolution, as the Second Logos of the “Father.”(550)
Synthetically, every Creative Logos, or “the Son who is one with the Father,” is the Host of the Rectores Mundi in itself. Even Christian Theology makes of the seven “Angels of the Presence” the Virtues, or the personified attributes, of God, which, being created by him, as the Manus were by Brahmâ, became Archangels. The Roman Catholic Theodice itself, recognizing in its creative Verbum Princeps the Head of these Angels (_caput angelorum_) and the Angel of the great Counsel (_magni consilii angelus_), thus recognizes the identity of Christ with them.
“The Sura became A‐Sura”—the Gods became No‐Gods—says the text; _i.e._, Gods became Fiends—Satan, when read literally. But Satan will now be shown, in the teaching of the Secret Doctrine, to be allegorized as Good and Sacrifice, a God of Wisdom, under different names.
The _Kabalah_ teaches that Pride and Presumption—the two chief prompters of Selfishness and Egotism—are the causes that emptied Heaven of _one‐ third_ of its divine denizens, mystically, and of _one‐third_ of the stars, astronomically; in other words, the first statement is an allegory, and the second a fact. The former, nevertheless, is, as shown, intimately connected with humanity.
In their turn the Rosicrucians, who were well acquainted with the secret meaning of the tradition, kept it to themselves, teaching merely that the whole of “creation” was due to, and the result of, that legendary “War in Heaven,” brought on by the rebellion of the Angels(551) against Creative Law, or the Demiurge. The statement is correct, but the _inner_ meaning is to this day a mystery. To elude further explanation of the difficulty, by appealing to divine mystery, or to the sin of prying into its policy—is to say nothing at all. It may prove sufficient for believers in the Pope’s infallibility, but will hardly satisfy the philosophical mind. Yet the truth, although known to most of the higher Kabalists, has never been told by any of their number. One and all, Kabalists and Symbologists, have shown an extraordinary reluctance to confess the primitive meaning of the Fall of the Angels. In a Christian such silence is only natural. Neither Alchemist nor Philosopher during the Mediæval Ages could have uttered that(552) which in the sight of Orthodox Theology was terrible blasphemy, for it would have led them directly through the “Holy” Office of the Inquisition, to rack and stake. But for our modern Kabalists and Freethinkers the case is different. With the latter, we fear, it is merely human pride, vanity based on a loudly rejected but ineradicable superstition. Since the Church, in her struggle with Manicheeïsm, invented the Devil, and by placing a theological extinguisher on the radiant Star‐ God Lucifer, the “Son of the Morning,” thus created the most gigantic of all her paradoxes, _a black and tenebrous_ Light—the myth has struck its roots too deeply into the soil of blind faith to permit, in our age, even those, who do not acquiesce in her dogmas, and laugh at her horned and cloven‐footed Satan, to come out bravely and confess the antiquity of the oldest of all traditions. In a few brief words it is this. Semi‐ exoterically, the “First‐born” of the Almighty—Fiat Lux—or the Angels of Primordial Light, were commanded to “create”; one‐third of them rebelled and “refused”; while those who “obeyed” as Fetahil did—_failed_ most signally.
To realize the refusal and failure in their correct physical meaning, one must study and understand Eastern Philosophy; one has to be acquainted with the fundamental mystical tenets of the Vedântins, as to the utter fallacy of attributing functional activity to the Infinite and Absolute Deity. Esoteric Philosophy maintains that during the Sandhyâs, the “Central Sun” emits _Creative Light_—passively, so to say. Causality is latent. It is only during the active periods of Being that it gives rise to a stream of ceaseless Energy, whose vibrating currents acquire more
## activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic ladder of Being
which they descend. Hence it becomes comprehensible how the process of “creating,” or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe, with all its units of the seven kingdoms, necessitated intelligent Beings—who became collectively a Being or Creative God, differentiated already from the One Absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to conditioned “creation.”(553)
Now the Vatican MS. of the _Kabalah_—the only copy of which (in Europe) is said to have been in the possession of Count St. Germain—contains the most complete exposition of the doctrine, including the peculiar version accepted by the Luciferians(554) and other Gnostics; and in that parchment the “Seven Suns of Life” are given in the order in which they are found in the Saptasûrya. Only four of these, however, are mentioned in the editions of the _Kabalah_ which are procurable in public libraries, and that even in a more or less veiled phraseology. Nevertheless even this reduced number is amply sufficient to show an identical origin, as it refers to the quaternary group of the Dhyân Chohans, and proves the speculation to have had its origin in the Secret Doctrines of the Âryans. As is well known, the _Kabalah_ did not originate with the Jews, for the latter got their ideas from the Chaldæans and the Egyptians.
Thus even the _exoteric_ Kabalistic teachings speak of a “Central Sun,” and of three secondary Suns in each Solar System—our own included. As shown in that able though too materialistic work, _New Aspects of Life and Religion_, which is a synopsis of the views of the Kabalists in an aspect deeply thought out and assimilated:
The central sun ... was to them [as much as to the Âryans] the _centre of rest_; the centre to which all motion was to be ultimately referred. Round this central sun ... “the first of three systemic suns ... revolved on a polar plane ... the second, on an equatorial plane” ... and the third only was our visible sun. These four solar bodies were “_the organs on whose action what man calls the creation, the evolution of life on the planet earth, depends_.” The channels through which the influence of these bodies was conveyed to the earth they [the Kabalists] held to be electrical.... The radiant energy flowing from the central sun(555) called the earth into being as a watery globe, ... [whose tendency], as the nucleus of a planetary body, was to rush to the (central) sun ... within the sphere of whose attraction it had been created.... But the radiant energy, similarly electrifying both, withheld the one from the other, and so changed motion towards into motion round the centre of attraction, which the revolving planet [earth] thus sought to reach.
In the organic cell the _visible sun_ found its own proper matrix, and produced through this the animal [while maturing the vegetable] kingdom, finally placing man at its head, in whom, through the animating action of that kingdom, it originated the psychic cell. But the man so placed at the head of the animal kingdom, at the head of the creation, was the animal, the _soul‐ less, the perishable man_.... Hence man, although apparently its crown, would, by his advent have marked the close of creation; since creation, culminating in him, would at his death have entered on its decline.(556)
This Kabalistic view is here quoted, to show its perfect identity in spirit with the Eastern Doctrine. Explain, or complete the teaching of the Seven Suns with the seven systems of Planes of Being, of which the “Suns” are the central bodies, and you have the seven Angelic Planes, whose “Host” collectively are the Gods thereof.(557) They are the Head Group divided into four Classes, from the Incorporeal down to the Semi‐ corporeal. These Classes are directly connected—though in very different ways as regards voluntary connection and functions—with our mankind. They are three, synthesized by the fourth, the first and highest, which is called the “Central Sun” in the Kabalistic doctrine just quoted. This is the great difference between the Semitic and the Âryan Cosmogony—one materializing, humanizes the mysteries of Nature; the other spiritualizes Matter, and its physiology is always made subservient to metaphysics. Thus, though the seventh “principle” reaches man through all the phases of Being, pure as an indiscrete element and an impersonal unity, it passes through—the _Kabalah_ teaches _from_—the Central Spiritual Sun and Group the Second, the Polar Sun, which two radiate on man his Âtmâ. Group Three, the Equatorial Sun, cements the Buddhi to Âtman and the higher attributes of Manas; while Group Four, the Spirit of our visible Sun, endows him with his Manas and its vehicle, the Kâma Rûpa, or body of passions and desires—the two elements of Ahamkâra which evolve _individualized consciousness_, the personal Ego. Finally, it is the Spirit of the Earth, in its triple unity, that builds the Physical Body, attracting to it the Spirits of Life and forming his Linga Sharîra.
But everything proceeds cyclically, the evolution of man like everything else, and the order in which he is generated is described fully in the Eastern Teachings, whereas it is only hinted at in the _Kabalah_. Says the _Book of Dzyan_ with regard to Primeval Man when first projected by the “Boneless,” the Incorporeal Creator:
_First, the Breath, then Buddhi, and the Shadow‐Son [the Body] were __“__created.__”__ But where was the Pivot [the Middle Principle, Manas]? Man is doomed. When alone, the Indiscrete [Undifferentiated Element] and the Vâhan [Buddhi]—the Cause of the Causeless—break asunder from manifested life._
“_Unless_,” explains the Commentary:
_Unless cemented and held together by the Middle Principle, the Vehicle of the personal consciousness of Jîva._
In other words, the two higher “principles” _can have no individuality on Earth_, cannot be _man_, unless there is (_a_) the Mind, the Manas‐Ego, to cognize itself, and (_b_) the terrestrial false Personality, or the Body of egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round a Pivot—which it is, truly—to the physical form of man. It is the _fifth_ and the _fourth_ “principles”(558)—Manas and Kâma Rûpa—that contain the dual Personality; the real immortal Ego, if it assimilates itself to the two higher, and the false and transitory Personality, the Mâyâvi or Astral Body, so‐called, or the Animal‐human Soul—the two having to be closely blended for purposes of a _full_ terrestrial existence. Incarnate the Spiritual Monad of a Newton, grafted on that of the greatest saint on Earth, in a physical body the most perfect you can think of—_i.e._, in a two or even a three‐principled Body composed of its Sthûla Sharîra, Prâna (Life‐principle) and Linga Sharîra—and, if it lacks its middle and fifth “principles,” you will have created _an idiot_—at best a beautiful, soul‐ less, empty and unconscious appearance. “_Cogito—ergo sum_” can find no room in the brain of such a creature, not on this plane, at any rate.
There are students, however, who have long ago understood the philosophical meaning underlying the allegory—so tortured and disfigured by the Roman Church—of the “Fallen Angels.”
The kingdom of spirits and spiritual action, which flows from and is the product of spirit volition, is outside and contrasted with and in contradiction to the kingdom of [divine] souls and divine
## action.(559)
As said in the text of Commentary xiv:
_Like produces like and no more at the genesis of Being, and evolution with its limited conditioned laws comes later. The Self Existent_(_560_)_ are called __“__Creations,__”__ for they appear in the Spirit‐Ray, manifested through the potency inherent in its Unborn Nature, which is beyond Time and [limited or conditioned] Space. Terrene products, animate and inanimate, including mankind, are falsely called creation and creatures; they are the development [evolution] of the Discrete Elements._
Again:
_The Heavenly Rûpa [Dhyân Chohan] creates [man] in his own form; it is a spiritual ideation consequent on the first differentiation and awakening of the universal [manifested] Substance; that form is the ideal Shadow of Itself: and this is the Man of the First Race._
To express it in still clearer form, limiting the explanation to this Earth only, it was the duty of the first “differentiated” Egos—the Church calls them Archangels—to imbue Primordial Matter with the evolutionary impulse and guide its formative powers in the fashioning of its productions. This it is which is referred to in the sentences both in the Eastern and Western tradition—“the Angels were _commanded to create_.” After the Earth had been made ready by the _lower_ and more material Powers, and its three Kingdoms fairly started on their way to be “fruitful and multiply,” the higher Powers, the Archangels or Dhyânîs, were compelled by the Evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order to construct the crown of its evolution—Man. Thus the “Self‐created” and the “Self‐existent” projected their pale Shadows; but Group the Third, the Fire‐Angels, _rebelled and refused_ to join their fellow Devas.
Hindû exotericism represents them all as Yogins, whose piety inspired them to refuse to “create,” as they desired to remain eternally Kumâras, “Virgin Youths,” in order, if possible, to anticipate their fellows in progress towards Nirvâna‐the final liberation. But, agreeably to Esoteric interpretation, it was a self‐sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. The “Rebels” would not create will‐less irresponsible men, as the “obedient” Angels did; nor could they endow human beings with even the temporary reflections of their own attributes; for the latter, belonging to another and a so much higher plane of consciousness, would leave man still irresponsible, hence interfere with any possibility of higher progress. No spiritual and psychic evolution is possible on Earth—the lowest and most material plane—for one who, on that plane at all events, is inherently _perfect_ and cannot accumulate either merit or demerit. Had Man remained the pale Shadow of the inert, immutable, and motionless Perfection, the one negative and passive attribute of the real _I am that I am_, he would have been doomed to pass through life on Earth as in a heavy dreamless sleep; hence a failure on this plane. The Beings, or the Being, collectively called Elohim, who first pronounced (if, indeed, they ever were pronounced) the cruel words, “Behold, the man is become _as one of us_, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ...”—must have been indeed the Ilda‐baoth, the Demiurge of the Nazarenes, filled with rage and envy against his own creature, the reflection of which created Ophiomorphos. In this case it is but natural—even from the dead‐letter standpoint—to view Satan, the Serpent of _Genesis_, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual Mankind. For it is he who was the “Harbinger of Light,” bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton “created” by Jehovah, as alleged. And he who was the first to whisper, “in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good and evil,” can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An “Adversary” to Jehovah, the “_personating_ spirit,” he still remains in Esoteric Truth the ever‐loving “Messenger,” the Angel, the Seraphim and Cherubim who both “knew” well, and “loved” still more, and who conferred on us Spiritual, instead of Physical Immortality—the latter a kind of _static_ immortality that would have transformed man into an undying “Wandering Jew.”
As narrated in King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_ concerning Ildabaoth, whom several sects regarded as the God of Moses:
Ildabaoth was far from being a pure spirit; ambition and pride dominated in his composition. He therefore resolved to break off all connection with his mother, Achamoth, and to create a world entirely for himself. Aided by his own Six Spirits, he created Man, intending him for the image of his power; but he failed utterly in his work, his Man proving a vast, soulless monster, crawling upon the earth. The Six Spirits were obliged to bring their work again before their father, to be animated: he did so by communicating the ray of Divine Light which he himself had inherited from Achamoth, who by this loss punished him for his pride and self‐sufficiency.
Man, thus favoured by Achamoth at the expense of her own son, followed the impulse of the Divine Light that she had transferred to him, collected a further supply out of the creation with which it was intermingled, and began to present not the image of his creator Ildabaoth, but rather that of the Supreme Being, the “Primal Man.” At this spectacle the Demiurgus was filled with rage and envy at having produced a being so superior to himself. His looks, inspired by his passions, were reflected in the Abyss, as in a mirror, the image became instinct with life, and forth arose “Satan Serpent‐formed,” _Ophiomorphos_, the embodiment of envy and cunning.(561)
This is the exoteric rendering of the Gnostics, and the allegory, though a sectarian version, is suggestive, and seems true to life. It is the natural deduction from the dead‐letter text of