Chapter XVII

of the _Book of the Dead_, which seems to contain the exposition of the system of the world, as it was understood at Heliopolis during the time of the first dynasties, is known to us by a few copies of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties. Every one of the verses composing it was already interpreted in three or four different ways; so different, indeed, that according to this or another school, the Demiurge became either the solar fire—Ra‐ shoo, or the primordial water. Fifteen centuries later, the number of readings had increased considerably. Time, in its course, had modified their ideas about the universe and the forces that ruled it. In the short eighteen centuries that Christianity has existed, it has worked up, developed and transformed most of its dogmas; how many times, then, might not the Egyptian priesthood have altered their dogmas during those fifty centuries that separate Theodosius from the King Builders of the Pyramids.(457)

Here we believe the eminent Egyptologist is going too far. The exoteric dogmas may often have been altered, the esoteric never. He does not take into account the sacred immutability of the primitive truths, revealed only during the mysteries of Initiation. The Egyptian priests _had forgotten much, they altered nothing_. The loss of a great part of the primitive teaching was due to the sudden deaths of the great Hierophants, who passed away before they had time to reveal _all_ to their successors, mostly in the absence of worthy heirs to the knowledge. Yet they have preserved in their rituals and dogmas the principal teachings of the Secret Doctrine.

Thus, in the Chapter of the _Book of the Dead_, mentioned by Maspero, we find (1) Osiris saying he is Toom—the creative force in Nature, giving form to all beings, spirits and men, self‐generated and self‐ existent—issued from Noon, the celestial river, called Father‐Mother of the Gods, the primordial deity, which is Chaos or the Deep, impregnated by the unseen Spirit. (2) He has found Shoo, the solar force, on the Stairway in the City of the Eight (the two squares of Good and Evil), and he has annihilated the Children of Rebellion, the evil principles in Noon (Chaos). (3) He is the Fire and Water, Noon the Primordial Parent, and he created the Gods out of his Limbs—fourteen Gods (twice seven), seven dark and seven light Gods—the seven Spirits of the Presence of the Christians, and the seven dark Evil Spirits.

(4) He is the Law of Existence and Being, the Bennoo, or Phœnix, the Bird of Resurrection in Eternity, in whom Night follows Day, and Day Night—an allusion to the periodical cycles of cosmic resurrection and human reïncarnation. For what else can this mean? “The Wayfarer who crosses millions of years is the name of one, and the Great Green [Primordial Water or Chaos] the name of the other,” one begetting millions of years in succession, the other engulfing them, to restore them back. (5) He speaks of the Seven Luminous Ones who follow their Lord, Osiris, who confers justice, in Amenti.

All this is now shown to have been the source and origin of Christian dogmas. That which the Jews had from Egypt, through Moses and other Initiates, was confused and distorted enough in later days; but that which the Church got from both, is still more misinterpreted.

Yet the system of the former, in this special department of symbology—the key, namely, to the mysteries of astronomy as connected with those of generation and conception—is now proven identical with those ideas in ancient religions which have developed the phallic element of theology. The Jewish system of sacred measures, applied to religious symbols, is the same, so far as geometrical and numerical combinations go, as those of Greece, Chaldæa and Egypt, for it was adopted by the Israelites during the centuries of their slavery and captivity among the two latter nations.(458) What was this system? It is the intimate conviction of the author of _The Source of Measures_ that: “the Mosaic Books were intended, by a mode of art‐speech, to set forth a geometrical and numerical system of exact science, which should serve as an origin of measures.” Piazzi Smyth believes similarly. This system and these measures are found by some scholars to be identical with those used in the construction of the Great Pyramid: but this is only partially so. “The foundation of these measures was the Parker ratio,” says Ralston Skinner, in _The Source of Measures_.

The author of this very extraordinary work has discovered it, he says, in the use of the integral ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle, discovered by John A. Parker, of New York. This ratio is 6561 for diameter, and 20612 for circumference. Furthermore, that this geometrical ratio was the very ancient and probably the divine origin of what have now become, through exoteric handling and practical application, the British linear measures, “the underlying unit of which, viz., the _inch_, was likewise the base of one of the royal Egyptian _cubits_, and of the Roman _foot_.”

He also discovered that there was a modified form of the ratio, viz., 113 to 355; and that while this last ratio pointed through its origin to the exact integral _pi_, or to 6561 to 20612, it also served as a base for astronomical calculations. The author discovered that a system of _exact science_, geometrical, numerical, and astronomical, founded on these ratios, and to be seen in use in the construction of the Great Egyptian Pyramid, was in part the burden of this _language_, as contained in, and concealed under, the verbiage of the Hebrew text of the Bible. The _inch_ and the two‐foot rule of 24 inches, interpreted for use through the elements of the circle and the ratios mentioned, were found to be at the basis or foundation of this natural, and Egyptian, and Hebrew system of science; while, moreover, it seems evident enough that the system itself was looked upon as of divine origin, and of divine revelation.

But let us see what is said by the opponents of Prof. Piazzi Smyth’s measurements of the Pyramid.

Mr. Petrie seems to deny them, and to have made short work altogether of Piazzi Smyth’s calculations in their Biblical connection. So does Mr. Proctor, the champion “Coincidentalist” for many years past in every question of ancient arts and sciences. Speaking of “the multitude of relations independent of the Pyramid, which have turned up while the Pyramidalists have been endeavouring to connect the Pyramid with the solar system,” he says:

These coincidences [which “would still remain if the Pyramid had no existence,”] are altogether more curious than any coincidence between the Pyramid and astronomical numbers: the former are as close and remarkable as they are real; the latter, which are only _imaginary_ (?), have only been established by the process which schoolboys call “fudging,” and now new measures have left the work to be done all over again.(459)

On this Mr. C. Staniland Wake justly observes:

They must, however, have been more than _mere coincidences_, if the builders of the Pyramid had the astronomical knowledge displayed in its perfect orientation and in its other admitted astronomical features.(460)

They had it assuredly; and it is on this “knowledge” that the programme of the Mysteries and of the series of Initiations was based: hence, the construction of the Pyramid, the everlasting record and the indestructible symbol of these Mysteries and Initiations on Earth, as the courses of the stars are in Heaven. The cycle of Initiation was a reproduction in miniature of that great series of cosmic changes to which astronomers have given the name of the Tropical or Sidereal Year. Just as, at the close of the cycle of the Sidereal Year (25,868 years), the heavenly bodies return to the same relative positions as they occupied at its outset, so at the close of the cycle of Initiation the Inner Man has regained the pristine state of divine purity and knowledge from which he set out on his cycle of terrestrial incarnation.

Moses, an Initiate into the Egyptian Mystagogy, based the religious mysteries of the new nation which he created, upon the same abstract formulæ derived from this Sidereal Cycle, symbolized by the form and measurements of the Tabernacle, which he is supposed to have constructed in the Wilderness. On these data, the later Jewish High Priests constructed the allegory of Solomon’s Temple—a building which never had a real existence, any more than had King Solomon himself, who is as much a solar myth as is the still later Hiram Abif of the Masons, as Ragon has well demonstrated. Thus, if the measurements of this allegorical Temple, the symbol of the cycle of Initiation, coincide with those of the Great Pyramid, it is due to the fact that the former were derived from the latter through the Tabernacle of Moses.

That our author has undeniably discovered _one_ and even _two_ of the _keys_, is fully demonstrated in the work just quoted. One has only to read it, to feel a growing conviction that the hidden meaning of the allegories and parables of both _Testaments_ is now unveiled. But that he owes this discovery far more to his own genius than to Parker and Piazzi Smyth, is also as certain, if not more so. For, as just shown, it is not so certain whether the measures of the Great Pyramid adopted by the Biblical Pyramidalists are beyond suspicion. A proof of this is to be found in the work called _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_, by Mr. F. Petrie, and also in other works written quite recently to oppose the said calculations, which their authors call “biassed.” We gather that nearly every one of Piazzi Smyth’s measurements differs from the later and more carefully made measurements of Mr. Petrie, who concludes the Introduction to his work with this sentence:

As to the results of the whole investigation, perhaps many theorists will agree with an American who was a warm believer in Pyramid theories when he came to Gizeh. I had the pleasure of his company there for a couple of days, and at our last meal together he said to me in a saddened way: “Well, sir! I feel as if I had been to a funeral. By all means let the old theories have a decent burial, though we should take care that in our haste none of the wounded ones are buried alive.”

As regards the late J. A. Parker’s calculation in general, and his third proposition especially, we have consulted some eminent mathematicians, and this is the substance of what they say:

Parker’s reasoning rests on sentimental, rather than on mathematical, considerations, and is logically inconclusive.

Proposition III, namely, that:

The circle is the natural basis or beginning of all area, and the square being made so in mathematical science, is artificial and arbitrary.

—is an illustration of an arbitrary proposition, and cannot safely be relied upon in mathematical reasoning. The same observation applies, even more strongly, to Proposition VII, which states that:

Because the circle is the primary shape in nature, and hence the basis of area; and because the circle is measured by, and is equal to the square only in ratio of half its circumference by the radius, therefore, circumference and radius, and not the square of diameter, are the only natural and legitimate elements of area, by which all regular shapes are made equal to the square, and equal to the circle.

Proposition IX is a remarkable example of faulty reasoning, though it is the one on which Mr. Parker’s Quadrature mainly rests. It states that:

The circle and the equilateral triangle are opposite to one another in all the elements of their construction, and hence the fractional diameter of one circle, which is equal to the diameter of one square, is in the opposite duplicate ratio to the diameter of an equilateral triangle whose area is one, etc., etc.

Granting, for the sake of argument, that a triangle can be said to have a radius, in the sense in which we speak of the radius of a circle—for what Parker calls the radius of the triangle, is the radius of a circle inscribed in a triangle, and therefore not the radius of the triangle at all—and granting for the moment the other fanciful and mathematical propositions united in his premisses, why must we conclude that, if the equilateral triangle and circle are opposite in all the elements of their construction, the diameter of any defined circle is in the opposite duplicate ratio of the diameter of any given equivalent triangle? What necessary connection is there between the premisses and the conclusion? The reasoning is of a kind not known in geometry, and would not be accepted by strict mathematicians.

Whether the archaic Esoteric system originated the British inch or not, is of little consequence, however, to the strict and true metaphysician. Nor does Mr. Ralston Skinner’s esoteric reading of the _Bible_ become incorrect, merely because the measurements of the Pyramid may not be found to agree with those of Solomon’s Temple, the Ark of Noah, etc., or because Mr. Parker’s Quadrature of the Circle is rejected by mathematicians. For Mr. Skinner’s reading depends primarily on the Kabalistic methods and the Rabbinical value of the Hebrew letters. But it is extremely important to ascertain whether the measures used in the evolution of the symbolic religion of the Âryans, in the construction of their temples, in the figures given in the _Purânas_, and especially in their chronology, their astronomical symbols, the duration of the cycles, and other computations, were, or were not, the same as those used in the Biblical measurements and glyphs. For this will prove that the Jews, unless they took their sacred cubit and measurements from the Egyptians—Moses being an Initiate of their Priests—must have got those notions from India. At any rate they passed them on to the early Christians. Hence, it is the Occultists and Kabalists who are the true heirs to the Knowledge, or the Secret Wisdom, which is still found in the _Bible_; for they alone now understand its real meaning, whereas profane Jews and Christians cling to the husks and dead letter thereof. That it was this system of measures which led to the invention of the God‐names Elohim and Jehovah, and to their adaptation to Phallicism, and that Jehovah is a not very flattering copy of Osiris, is now demonstrated by the author of the _Source of Measures_. But the latter and Mr. Piazzi Smyth both seem to labour under the impression that (_a_) the priority of the system belongs to the Israelites, the Hebrew language being the divine language, and that (_b_) this universal language belongs to direct revelation!

The latter hypothesis is correct only in the sense shown in the last paragraph of the preceding Section; but we have yet to agree as to the nature and character of the divine “Revealer.” The former hypothesis as to priority will for the profane, of course depend on (_a_) the internal and external evidence of the revelation, and (_b_) on each scholar’s individual preconceptions. This, however, cannot prevent either the Theistic Kabalist, or the Pantheistic Occultist, from believing each in his way; neither of the two convincing the other. The data furnished by history are too meagre and unsatisfactory for either of them to prove to the sceptic which of them is right.

On the other hand, the proofs afforded by tradition are too constantly rejected for us to hope to settle the question in our present age. Meanwhile, Materialistic Science will be laughing at both Kabalists and Occultists indifferently. But the vexed question of priority once laid aside, Science, in its departments of Philology and Comparative Religion, will find itself finally taken to task, and be compelled to admit the common claim.

One by one the claims become admitted, as one Scientist after another is compelled to recognize the facts given out from the Secret Doctrine; though he rarely, if ever, recognizes that he has been anticipated in his statements. Thus, in the palmy days of Mr. Piazzi Smyth’s authority on the Pyramid of Gizeh, his theory was, that the porphyry sarcophagus of the King’s Chamber was “_the unit of measure_ for the two most enlightened nations of the earth, England and America,” and was no better than a “corn‐bin.” This was vehemently denied by us in _Isis Unveiled_, which had just been published at that time. Then the New York press arose in arms (the _Sun_ and the _World_ newspapers chiefly) against our presuming to correct or find fault with such a star of learning. In that work, we had said, that Herodotus, when treating of that Pyramid:

... might have added that, externally it symbolized _the creative principle of Nature_, and illustrated also the _principles of geometry_, _mathematics_, _astrology_, _and astronomy_. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the Mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation‐scenes of members of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn‐bin, was the _baptismal font_, upon emerging from which the neophyte was “born again” and became an adept.(461)

Our statement was laughed at in those days. We were accused of having got our ideas from the “craze” of Shaw, an English writer who had maintained that the sarcophagus had been used for the celebration of the Mysteries of Osiris, although we had never heard of that writer. And now, six or seven years later (1882), this is what Mr. Staniland Wake writes:

The so‐called King’s Chamber, of which an enthusiastic pyramidist says, “The polished walls, fine materials, grand proportions, and exalted place, eloquently tell of glories yet to come,” if not “the chamber of perfections” of Cheops’ tomb, was probably _the place to which the initiant was admitted after he had passed through the narrow upward passage and the grand gallery, with its lowly termination, which gradually prepared him for the final stage of the Sacred Mysteries_.(462)

Had Mr. Staniland Wake been a Theosophist, he might have added that the narrow upward passage leading to the King’s Chamber had a “narrow gate” indeed; the same “strait gate” which “leadeth unto life,” or the new spiritual re‐birth alluded to by Jesus in Matthew;(463) and that it was of this gate in the Initiation Temple, that the writer, who recorded the words alleged to have been spoken by an Initiate, was thinking.

Thus the greatest scholars of Science, instead of pooh‐poohing that supposed “farrago of absurd fiction and superstitions,” as the Brâhmanical literature is generally termed, will endeavour to learn the symbolical universal language, with its numerical and geometrical keys. But here, again, they will hardly be successful, if they share the belief that the Jewish Kabalistic system contains the key to the _whole_ mystery; for it _does not_. Nor does any other Scripture at present possess it in its entirety, since even the _Vedas_ are not complete. Every old religion is but a chapter or two of the entire volume of archaic primeval mysteries; Eastern Occultism alone being able to boast that it is in possession of the full secret, with its _seven_ keys. Comparisons will be instituted, and as much as possible will be explained in this work; the rest is left to the student’s personal intuition. In saying that Eastern Occultism has the secret, it is not as if a “complete” or even an approximate knowledge was claimed by the writer, which would be absurd. What I know, I give out; that which I cannot explain, the student must find out for himself.

But though we may suppose that the entire cycle of the universal Mystery Language will not be mastered for centuries to come, yet even the little which has hitherto been discovered in the _Bible_ by some scholars, is quite sufficient to demonstrate the claim—mathematically. As Judaism availed itself of two keys out of the seven, and as these two keys have now been re‐discovered, it becomes no longer a matter of individual speculation and hypothesis, least of all of “coincidence,” but one of a correct reading of the Biblical texts, just as anyone acquainted with arithmetic reads and verifies an addition sum. In fact, all we have said in _Isis Unveiled_ is now found corroborated in the _Egyptian Mystery_, or _The Source of Measures_, by such readings of the _Bible_ with the numerical and geometrical keys.

A few years longer, and this system will kill the dead‐letter reading of the _Bible_, as it will that of all the other exoteric faiths, by showing the dogmas in their real, naked meaning. And then this undeniable meaning, however incomplete, will unveil the mystery of Being, and will, moreover, entirely change the modern scientific systems of Anthropology, Ethnology and especially that of Chronology. The element of Phallicism, found in every God‐name and narrative in the _Old_, and to some degree in the _New_, _Testament_, may also in time considerably change modern materialistic views on Biology and Physiology.

Divested of their modern repulsive crudeness, such views of Nature and man will, on the authority of the celestial bodies and their mysteries, unveil the evolutions of the human mind and show how natural was such a course of thought. The so‐called phallic symbols have become offensive only because of the element of materiality and animality in them. In the beginning, such symbols were but natural, as they originated with the archaic races, which, issuing to their personal knowledge from an androgyne ancestry, were the first phenomenal manifestations in their own sight of the separation of the sexes and the ensuing mystery of creating in their turn. If later races, especially the “chosen people,” have degraded them, this does not affect the origin of the symbols. This little Semitic tribe—one of the smallest branchlets from the commingling of the fourth and fifth sub‐races, the Mongolo‐Turanian and the so‐called Indo‐European, after the sinking of the great Continent—could only accept its symbology in the spirit which was given to it by the nations from which it was derived. And, perchance, in the Mosaic beginnings, the symbology was not so crude as it became later under the handling of Ezra, who remodelled the whole _Pentateuch_. To take an instance, the glyph of Pharaoh’s daughter (the woman), the Nile (the Great Deep and Water), and the baby‐boy found floating therein in the ark of rushes, was not primarily composed for, or by, Moses. It was anticipated in the fragments found on the Babylonian tiles, in the story of King Sargon, who lived far earlier than Moses.

In his _Assyrian Antiquities_,(464) Mr. George Smith says: “In the palace of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik, I found another fragment of the curious history of Sargon ... published in my translation in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology_.”(465) The capital of Sargon the Babylonian Moses, “was the great city of Agadi, called by the Semites Akkad—mentioned in _Genesis_(466) as the capital of Nimrod.... Akkad lay near the City of Sippara on the Euphrates and North of Babylon.”(467) Another strange “coincidence” is found in the fact that the name of the neighbouring City of Sippara is the same as the name of the wife of Moses—Zipporah.(468) Of course the story is a clever addition by Ezra, _who could not have been ignorant of the original_. This curious story is found on fragments of tablets from Kouyunjik, and reads as follows:

1. Sargina, the powerful king, the king of Akkad am I.

2. My mother was a princess, my father I did not know; a brother of my father ruled over the country.

3. In the city of Azupiranu, which by the side of the river Euphrates is situated,

4. My mother, the princess, conceived me; in difficulty she brought me forth;

5. She placed me in an ark of rushes, with bitumen my exit she sealed up;

6. She launched me in the river, which did not drown me.

7. The river carried me, to Akki, the water‐carrier, it brought me.

8. Akki, the water‐carrier, in tenderness of bowels, lifted me.(469)

And now let us compare the _Bible_ narrative in _Exodus_:

And when she [Moses’ mother] could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.(470)

Mr. G. Smith then continues:

The story is supposed to have happened about 1600 B.C., rather earlier than the supposed age of Moses; and, as we know that the fame of Sargon reached Egypt, it is quite likely that this account had a connection with the events related in _Exodus_ II, for every

## action, when once performed, has a tendency to be repeated.

But now that Professor Sayce has had the courage to push back the dates of the Chaldean and Assyrian Kings by two thousand years more, Sargon must have preceded Moses by 2,000 years at the least. The confession is suggestive, but the figures lack a cypher or two.

Now, what is the logical inference? Most assuredly, that which gives us the right to say that the story told of Moses by Ezra had been learned by him while at Babylon, and that he applied the allegory told of Sargon to the Jewish lawgiver. In short, that _Exodus_ was never written by Moses, but was re‐fabricated from old materials by Ezra.

And if so, then why should not other symbols and glyphs far more crude in their phallic element have been added by this adept in the later Chaldean and Sabæan phallic worship? We are taught that the primeval faith of the Israelites was quite different from that which was developed centuries later by the Talmudists, and before them by David and Hezekiah.

All this, notwithstanding the exoteric element, as now found in the two _Testaments_, is quite sufficient to class the _Bible_ among esoteric works, and to connect its secret system with Indian, Chaldean, and Egyptian symbolism. The whole cycle of Biblical glyphs and numbers, as suggested by astronomical observations—Astronomy and Theology being closely connected—is found in Indian exoteric, as well as esoteric, systems. These figures and their symbols, the signs of the Zodiac, the planets, their aspects and nodes—the last term having now passed even into our modern Botany—are known in Astronomy as Sextiles, Quartiles and so on, and have been used for ages and æons by the archaic nations, and in one sense have the same meaning as the Hebrew numerals. The earliest forms of elementary geometry must have certainly been suggested by the observation of the heavenly bodies and their groupings. Hence, the most archaic symbols in Eastern Esotericism are a circle, a point, a triangle, a square, a pentagon, and a hexagon, and other plane figures with various sides and angles. This shows the knowledge and use of geometrical symbology to be as old as the world.

Starting from this, it becomes easy to understand how Nature herself, even without the help of their divine instructors, could have taught primeval mankind the first principles of a numerical and geometrical symbol‐ language.(471) Hence we find numbers and figures used as an expression and a record of thought in every archaic symbolical Scripture. They are ever the same, with certain variations only, arising from the first figures. Thus the evolution and correlation of the mysteries of Kosmos, of its growth and development—spiritual and physical, abstract and concrete—were first recorded in geometrical changes of shape. Every Cosmogony began with a circle, a point, a triangle and a square, up to number 9, when it was synthesized by the first line and a circle—the Pythagorean mystic Decad, the sum of all, involving and expressing the mysteries of the entire Kosmos; mysteries recorded a hundred times more fully in the Hindû system than elsewhere, for him who can understand its mystic language. The numbers 3 and 4, in their combination 7, and also 5, 6, 9, and 10, are the very corner‐stones of Occult Cosmogonies. This Decad and its thousand combinations are found in every portion of the globe. One recognizes it in the caves and rock‐cut temples of Hindûstan and Central Asia; in the Pyramids and Lithoi of Egypt and America; in the Catacombs of Ozimandyas; in the mounds of the snow‐capped Caucasian fastnesses; in the ruins of Palenque; in Easter Island; everywhere whither the foot of ancient man has ever journeyed. The 3 and the 4, the triangle and the square, or the universal male and female glyphs, showing the first aspect of the evolving deity, are stamped for ever in the Southern Cross in the Heavens, as in the Egyptian Crux Ansata. As well expressed by the author of _The Source of Measures_:

The Cube unfolded is in display a cross of the Tau, or Egyptian form, or of the Christian cross‐form.... A circle attached to the first, gives the Ansated Cross ... numbers 3 and 4, counted on the cross, showing a form of the [Hebrew] golden candlestick [in the Holy of Holies], and of the 3 + 4 = 7, and 6 + 1 = 7, days in the _circle of the week_, as 7 lights of the sun. So also as the week of 7 lights gave origin to the _month_ and _year_, so it is the _time‐marker of birth_.... The cross‐form being shown, then, by the connected use of the form 113:355, the symbol is completed by the _attachment of a man to the cross_.(472) This kind of measure was made to coördinate with the idea of the _origin_ of human life, and hence the _phallic form_.

The Stanzas show the cross and these numbers playing a prominent part in archaic Cosmogony. Meanwhile we may profit by the evidence collected by the same author, in the section which he rightly calls the “Primordial Vestiges of these Symbols,” to show the identity of symbols and their esoteric meaning all over the globe.

Under the general view taken of the nature of the number‐forms ... it becomes a matter of research of the utmost interest as to when and where their existence and their use first became known. Has it been a matter of revelation in what we know as the historic age—a cycle exceedingly modern when the age of the human race is contemplated? It seems, in fact, as to the date of its possession by man, to have been farther removed, in the past, from the old Egyptians than are the old Egyptians from us.

The Easter Isles in “_mid Pacific_” present the feature of the remaining peaks of the mountains of _a submerged continent_, for the reason that these peaks are thickly studded with cyclopean statues, remnants of the civilization of a dense and cultivated people, who must have, of necessity, occupied a widely extended area. On the backs of these images is to be found the “_ansated cross_” and the same modified to the outlines of the human form. A full description, with plate showing the land with the thickly planted statues, also with copies of the images, is to be found in the January number, 1870, of the _London Builder_....

In the _Naturalist_, published at Salem, Massachusetts, in one of the early numbers (about 36), is to be found a description of some very ancient and curious carving on the crest walls of the mountains of South America, older by far, it is averred, than the races now living. The strangeness of these tracings is in that they exhibit the outlines of a man stretched out on a cross,(473) by a series of drawings, by which from the form of a _man_ that of a _cross_ springs, but so done that the cross may be taken as the man, or the man as the cross....

It is known that tradition among the Aztecs has handed down a very perfect account of the _deluge_.... Baron Humboldt says that we are to look for the country of Aztalan, the original country of the Aztecs, as high up, at least, as the 42nd parallel north; whence journeying, they at last arrived in the vale of Mexico. In that vale the earthen mounds of the far north become the elegant stone pyramidal, and other structures, whose remains are now found. The correspondences between the Aztec remains and those of the Egyptians are well known.... Atwater, from examination of hundreds of them, is convinced that they had a knowledge of astronomy. As to one of the most perfect of the pyramidal structures among the Aztecs, Humboldt gives a description to the following effect:

“The form of this pyramid [of Papantla] which has _seven_ stories, is more tapering than any other monument of this kind yet discovered, but its height is not remarkable, being but 57 feet, its base but 25 feet on each side. However, it is remarkable on one account: it is built entirely of hewn stones, of an extraordinary size, and very beautifully shaped. _Three_ staircases lead to the top, the steps of which were decorated with hieroglyphical sculptures and small _niches_, arranged with great symmetry. The number of these niches seem to allude to the 318 _simple and compound signs of the days of their civil calendar_.”

318 is the Gnostic value of Christ, and the famous number of the trained or circumcized servants of Abram. When it is considered that 318 is an _abstract value_, and _universal_, as expressive of a diameter value to a circumference of _unity_, its use in the composition of a civil calendar becomes manifest.

Identical glyphs, numbers and esoteric symbols are found in Egypt, Peru, Mexico, Easter Island, India, Chaldæa, and Central Asia—Crucified Men, and symbols of the evolution of races from Gods—and yet behold Science repudiating the idea of a human race other than one made in _our_ image; Theology clinging to its 6,000 years of Creation; Anthropology teaching our descent from the ape; and the Clergy tracing it from Adam 4,004 years B.C.!!

Shall one, for fear of incurring the penalty of being called a superstitious fool, and even a liar, abstain from furnishing proofs—as good as any existent—only because that day, when all the Seven Keys shall be delivered unto Science, or rather the men of learning and research in the department of symbology, has not yet dawned? In the face of the crushing discoveries of Geology and Anthropology with regard to the antiquity of man, shall we—in order to avoid the usual penalty that awaits every one who strays outside the beaten paths of either Theology or Materialism—hold to the 6,000 years and “special creation” or accept in submissive admiration our genealogy and descent from the ape? Not so, as long as it is known that the Secret Records hold the said Seven Keys to the mystery of the genesis of man. Faulty, materialistic, and biassed as the scientific theories may be, they are a thousand times nearer the truth than the vagaries of Theology. The latter are in their death agony for every one but the most uncompromising bigot and fanatic. Or rather, some of its defenders must have lost their reason. For what can one think when, in the face of the dead‐letter absurdities of the _Bible_, these are still publicly supported, and as fiercely as ever, and one finds the Theologians maintaining that though “the Scriptures carefully refrain [?] from making any direct contribution to scientific knowledge, they have _never_ stumbled upon any statement _which will not abide the light of_ Advancing Science”!!!(474)

Hence we have no choice but either to blindly accept the deductions of Science, or to cut ourselves adrift from it, and withstand it fearlessly to its face, stating what the Secret Doctrine teaches us, and being fully prepared to bear the consequences.

But let us see whether Science, in its materialistic speculations, and even Theology, in its death‐rattle and supreme struggle to reconcile the 6,000 years since Adam with Sir Charles Lyell’s _Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man_, do not themselves unconsciously give us a helping hand. Ethnology, on the confession of some of its most learned votaries, finds it already impossible to account for the varieties in the human race, unless the hypothesis of the _creation of several Adams_ be accepted. They speak of “a white Adam and a black Adam, a red Adam and a yellow Adam.”(475) Were they Hindûs enumerating the rebirths of Vâmadeva, from the _Linga Purâna_, they could say little more. For, enumerating the repeated births of Shiva, they show him in one Kalpa of a _white_ complexion, in another of a _black_ colour, in still another of a _red_ colour, after which the Kumâra becomes “four youths of a _yellow_ colour.” This strange “coincidence,” as Mr. Proctor would say, speaks only in favour of scientific intuition, as Shiva‐Kumâra simply represents, allegorically, the human Races during the genesis of man. But it has led to another intuitional phenomenon—in the theological ranks this time. The unknown author of _Primeval Man_, in a desperate effort to screen the Divine Revelation from the merciless and eloquent discoveries of Geology and Anthropology, remarking that “it would be unfortunate if the defenders of the _Bible_ should be driven into the position of either surrendering the inspiration of Scripture, or denying the conclusions of Geologists”—finds a compromise. Nay, he devotes a thick volume to proving this fact: “Adam was not the _first man_(476) created upon this earth.” The exhumed relics of pre‐Adamic man, “instead of shaking our confidence in Scripture, supply additional proof of its veracity.”(477) How so? In the simplest way imaginable; for the author argues that, henceforth “we [the clergy] are enabled to leave scientific men to pursue their studies without attempting to coërce them by the fear of heresy.” This must be a relief indeed to Messrs. Huxley, Tyndall, and Sir Charles Lyell!

The Bible narrative _does not commence with creation_, as is commonly supposed, but with the formation of Adam and Eve, _millions of years after_ our planet had been created. Its previous history, so far as Scripture is concerned, is yet unwritten.... There may have been not one, but twenty different races upon the earth before the time of Adam, just as there may be twenty different races of men on other worlds.(478)

Who, then, or what were those races, since the author still maintains that Adam is _the first man of our race_? It was the Satanic Race and Races! “Satan [was] never in heaven, Angels and men [being] one species.” It was the pre‐Adamic race of “Angels that sinned.” Satan was the “first prince of this world,” we read. Having died in consequence of his rebellion, he remained on earth as a _disembodied Spirit_, and tempted Adam and Eve.

The earlier ages of the Satanic race, and more especially _during the life‐time of Satan_ [!!!], may have been a period of patriarchal civilization and comparative repose—a time of Tubal‐ Cains and Jubals, when both sciences and arts attempted to strike their roots into the accursed ground.... What a subject for an epic!... There are inevitable incidents which must have occurred. We see before us ... the gay primeval lover wooing his blushing bride at dewy eve under the Danish oaks, that then grew where now no oaks will grow ... the grey primeval patriarch ... the primeval offspring innocently gambolling by his side.... A thousand such pictures rise before us!(479)

The retrospective glance at this Satanic “blushing bride,” in the days of Satan’s innocence, does not lose in poetry as it gains in originality. Quite the reverse. The modern Christian bride—who does not often blush now‐a‐days before her gay modern lovers—might even derive a moral lesson from this daughter of Satan, created in the exuberant fancy of her first human biographer. These pictures—and to appreciate them at their true value they must be examined in the volume that describes them—are all suggested with a view to reconcile the infallibility of revealed Scripture with Sir Charles Lyell’s _Antiquity of Man_, and other damaging scientific works. But this does not prevent truth and fact appearing at the foundation of these vagaries, which the author has not dared to sign with his own, or even a borrowed, name. For, his pre‐Adamic Races—not Satanic but simply Atlantean, and the Hermaphrodites before the latter—are mentioned in the _Bible_, if read esoterically, as they are in the Secret Doctrine. The Seven Keys open the mysteries, past and future, of the seven great Root‐Races, and of the seven Kalpas. Though the genesis of man, and even the geology, of Esotericism will surely be rejected by Science, just as much as the Satanic and pre‐Adamic Races, yet if the Scientists, having no other way out of their difficulties, are compelled to choose between the two, we feel certain that—Scripture notwithstanding—once the Mystery Language is approximately mastered, it is the archaic teaching that will be accepted.

Section III. Primordial Substance and Divine Thought.

As it would seem irrational to affirm that we already know all existing causes, permission must be given to assume, if need be, _an entirely new agent_.

Assuming, what is not strictly accurate as yet, that the undulatory hypothesis accounts for all the facts, we are called on to decide whether the existence of an undulating ether is thereby proved. _We cannot positively affirm that no other supposition will explain the facts._ Newton’s corpuscular hypothesis is admitted to have broken down on interference; and there is, at the present day, no rival. Still, it is extremely desirable in all such hypotheses to find some collateral confirmation, some evidence _aliunde_, of _the supposed Ether_.... Some hypotheses consist of assumptions as to the minute structure and operations of bodies. From the nature of the case, these assumptions can never be proved by direct means. Their only merit is _their suitability to express the phenomena_. They are _representative fictions_.

_Logic_, by ALEXANDER BAIN, L.L.D., Part II, p. 133.

Ether—this hypothetical Proteus, one of the “representative fictions” of Modern Science, which, nevertheless, was so long accepted—is one of the lower “principles” of what we call Primordial Substance (Âkâsha, in Sanskrit), one of the dreams of old, which has now again become the dream of Modern Science. It is the greatest, as it is the boldest, of the surviving speculations of ancient philosophers. For the Occultists, however, both Ether and the Primordial Substance are realities. To put it plainly, Ether is the Astral Light, and the Primordial Substance is Âkâsha, the Upâdhi of Divine Thought.

In modern language, the latter would be better named Cosmic Ideation, Spirit; the former, Cosmic Substance, Matter. These, the Alpha and the Omega of Being, are but the two _facets_ of the one Absolute Existence. The latter was never addressed, or even mentioned, by any name in antiquity, except in allegory. In the oldest Âryan race, the Hindû, the worship of the intellectual classes at no time ever consisted in an adoration of marvellous form and art, however fervent, as with the Greeks; an adoration, which led later on to anthropomorphism. But while the Greek philosopher adored form, and the Hindû sage alone “perceived the true relation of earthly beauty and eternal truth”—the uneducated of every nation understood neither, at any time.

They do not understand it even now. The evolution of the God‐idea proceeds apace with man’s own intellectual evolution. So true is it that the noblest ideal to which the religious spirit of one age can soar, will appear but a gross caricature to the philosophic mind in a succeeding epoch! The philosophers themselves had to be _initiated into perceptive mysteries_, before they could grasp the correct idea of the Ancients in relation to this most metaphysical subject. Otherwise—outside such Initiation—for every thinker there will be a “thus far shalt thou go and no farther” mapped out by his intellectual capacity, as clearly and as unmistakably as there is one for the progress of any nation or race in its cycle by the law of Karma. Outside of Initiation, the ideals of contemporary religious thought must always have their wings clipped, and remain unable to soar higher; for idealistic, as well as realistic, thinkers, and even free‐thinkers, are but the outcome and the natural product of their respective environments and periods. The ideals of each are but the necessary results of their temperaments, and the outcome of that phase of intellectual progress to which a nation, in its collectivity, has attained. Hence, as already remarked, the highest flights of modern Western metaphysics have fallen far short of the truth. Much of current Agnostic speculation on the existence of the “First Cause” is little better than veiled Materialism—the terminology alone being different. Even so great a thinker as Mr. Herbert Spencer speaks of the “Unknowable” occasionally in terms that demonstrate the lethal influence of materialistic thought, which, like the deadly Sirocco, has withered and blighted all current ontological speculation.

For instance, when he terms the “First Cause” the “Unknowable,” a “power _manifesting_ through phenomena,” and “an infinite eternal _energy_,” it is clear that he has grasped solely the _physical_ aspect of the Mystery of Being—the Energies of Cosmic Substance only. The coeternal aspect of the One Reality, Cosmic Ideation, is absolutely omitted from consideration, and as to its Noumenon, it seems non‐existent in the mind of the great thinker. Without doubt, this one‐sided mode of dealing with the problem is due largely to the pernicious Western practice of subordinating Consciousness to Matter, or regarding it as a “bye‐product” of molecular motion.

From the early ages of the Fourth Race, when Spirit alone was worshipped and the Mystery was made manifest, down to the last palmy days of Grecian art, at the dawn of Christianity, the Hellenes alone had dared publicly to raise an altar to the “Unknown God.” Whatever St. Paul may have had in his profound mind, when declaring to the Athenians that this “Unknown,” which they ignorantly worshipped, was the true God announced by himself—that Deity _was not_ “Jehovah,” nor was he “the maker of the world and all things.” For it is not the “God of Israel” but the “Unknown” of the ancient and modern Pantheist that “dwelleth not in temples _made with hands_.”(480)

Divine Thought cannot be defined, nor can its meaning be explained, except by the numberless manifestations of Cosmic Substance, in which the former is _sensed_ spiritually by those who can do so. To say this, after having defined it as the Unknown Deity, abstract, impersonal, sexless, which must be placed at the root of every Cosmogony and its subsequent evolution, is equivalent to saying nothing at all. It is like attempting a transcendental equation of conditions, having in hand for deducing the true value of its terms only a number of _unknown_ quantities. Its place is found in the old primitive symbolic charts, in which, as already shown, it is represented by a boundless darkness, on the ground of which appears the first central point in white—thus symbolizing coëval and coëternal Spirit‐Matter making its appearance in the phenomenal world, before its first differentiation. When “the One becomes Two,” it may then be referred to as Spirit _and_ Matter. To “Spirit” is referable every manifestation of Consciousness, reflective or direct, and of “unconscious purposiveness”—to adopt a modern expression used in Western _philosophy_, so‐called—as evidenced in the Vital Principle, and Nature’s submission to the majestic sequence of immutable Law. “Matter” must be regarded as objectivity in its purest abstraction, the self‐existing basis, whose septenary manvantaric differentiations constitute the objective reality underlying the phenomena of each phase of conscious existence. During the period of Universal Pralaya, Cosmic Ideation is non‐existent; and the variously differentiated states of Cosmic Substance are resolved back again into the primary state of abstract potential objectivity.

Manvantaric impulse commences with the reäwakening of Cosmic Ideation, the Universal Mind, concurrently with, and parallel to, the primary emergence of Cosmic Substance—the latter being the manvantaric vehicle of the former—from its undifferentiated pralayic state. Then, Absolute Wisdom mirrors itself in its Ideation; which, by a transcendental process, superior to and incomprehensible by human Consciousness, results in Cosmic Energy, Fohat. Thrilling through the bosom of inert Substance, Fohat impels it to activity, and guides its primary differentiations on all the seven planes of Cosmic Consciousness. There are thus Seven Protyles—as they are now called, whereas Âryan antiquity named them the Seven Prakritis, or Natures—serving, severally, as the _relatively_ homogeneous bases, which in the course of the increasing heterogeneity, in the evolution of the Universe, differentiate into the marvellous complexity presented by phenomena on the planes of perception. The term “relatively” is used designedly, because the very existence of such a process, resulting in the primary segregations of undifferentiated Cosmic Substance into its septenary bases of evolution, compels us to regard the Protyle of each plane as only a _mediate_ phase assumed by Substance in its passage from abstract, into full objectivity. The term Protyle is due to Mr. Crookes, the eminent Chemist, who has given that name to _pre‐matter_, if one may so call primordial and purely homogeneous substance, suspected, if not actually yet found, by Science in the ultimate composition of the atom. But the incipient segregation of primordial matter into atoms and molecules takes its rise subsequent to the evolution of our Seven Protyles. It is the last of these that Mr. Crookes is in search of, having recently detected the possibility of its existence on our plane.

Cosmic Ideation is said to be non‐existent during pralayic periods, for the simple reason that there is no one, and nothing, to perceive its effects. There can be no manifestation of consciousness, semi‐ consciousness, or even “unconscious purposiveness,” except through a vehicle of Matter; that is to say, on this our plane, wherein human consciousness, _in its normal state_, cannot soar beyond what is known as transcendental metaphysics, it is only through some molecular aggregation, or fabric, that Spirit wells up in a stream of individual or sub‐conscious subjectivity. And as Matter existing apart from perception is a mere abstraction, both of these aspects of the Absolute—Cosmic Substance and Cosmic Ideation—are mutually interdependent. In strict accuracy, to avoid confusion and misconception, the term “Matter” ought to be applied to the aggregate of objects of possible perception, and the term “Substance” to Noumena; for inasmuch as the phenomena of _our_ plane are the creations of the perceiving Ego—the modifications of its own subjectivity—all the “states of matter representing the aggregate of perceived objects” can have but a relative and purely phenomenal existence for the children of our plane. As the modern Idealists would say, the coöperation of Subject and Object results in the sense‐object, or phenomenon.

But this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that it is the same on all other planes; that the coöperation of the two, on the planes of their septenary differentiation, results in a septenary aggregate of phenomena which are likewise non‐existent _per se_, though concrete realities for the Entities of whose experience they form a part, in the same manner as the rocks and rivers around us are real from the stand‐ point of a Physicist, though unreal illusions of sense from that of the Metaphysician. It would be an error to say, or even conceive, such a thing. From the stand‐point of the highest metaphysics, the whole Universe, Gods included, is an Illusion (Mâyâ). But the illusion of him who is in himself an illusion differs on every plane of consciousness; and we have no more right to dogmatize about the possible nature of the perceptive faculties of an Ego on, say, the sixth plane, than we have to identify our perceptions with, or make them a standard for, those of an ant, in _its_ mode of consciousness. Cosmic Ideation focussed in a Principle, or Upâdhi (Basis), results as the consciousness of the individual Ego. Its manifestation varies with the degree of the Upâdhi. For instance, through that known as Manas, it wells up as Mind‐ Consciousness; through the more finely differentiated fabric (sixth state of matter) of Buddhi—resting on the experience of Manas as its Basis—as a stream of Spiritual Intuition.

The pure Object apart from consciousness is unknown to us, while living on the plane of our three‐dimensional world, for we know only the mental states it excites in the perceiving Ego. And, so long as the contrast of Subject and Object endures—to wit, so long as we enjoy our five senses and no more, and do not know how to divorce our all‐perceiving Ego from the thraldom of these senses—so long will it be impossible for the _personal_ Ego to break through the barrier which separates it from a knowledge of “things in themselves,” or Substance.

That Ego, progressing in an arc of ascending subjectivity, must exhaust the experience of every plane. But not till the Unit is merged in the ALL, whether on this or any other plane, and Subject and Object alike vanish in the absolute negation of the Nirvânic State—negation, again, only _from our plane_—not until then, is scaled that peak of Omniscience, the Knowledge of Things‐in‐themselves, and the solution of the yet more awful riddle approached, before which even the highest Dhyân Chohan must bow in silence and ignorance—the Unspeakable Mystery of that which is called by the Vedântins, Parabrahman.

Therefore, such being the case, all those who have sought to give a name to the Incognizable Principle have simply degraded it. Even to speak of Cosmic Ideation—save in its _phenomenal_ aspect—is like trying to bottle up primordial Chaos, or to put a printed label on Eternity.

What, then, is the “Primordial Substance,” that mysterious object of which Alchemy was ever talking, and which was the subject of philosophical speculation in every age? What can it be finally, even in its _phenomenal_ pre‐differentiation? Even _that_ is the All of manifested Nature and—_nothing_ to our senses. It is mentioned under various names in every cosmogony, referred to in every philosophy, and shown to be, to this day, the ever grasp‐eluding Proteus in Nature. We touch and do not feel it; we look at it without seeing it; we breathe it and do not perceive it; we hear and smell it without the smallest cognition that it is there; for it is in every molecule of that which, in our illusion and ignorance, we regard as Matter in any of its states, or conceive as a feeling, a thought, an emotion. In short, it is the Upâdhi, or Vehicle, of every possible phenomenon, whether physical, mental, or psychic. In the opening sentences of _Genesis_, and in the Chaldean Cosmogony; in the _Purânas_ of India, and in the _Book of the Dead_ of Egypt; everywhere it opens the cycle of manifestation. It is termed Chaos, and the Face of the Waters, incubated by the Spirit, proceeding from the Unknown, whatever that Spirit’s name may be.

The authors of the Sacred Scriptures in India go deeper into the origin of the evolution of things than does Thales or Job, for they say:

From Intelligence [called Mahat, in the _Purânas_], associated with Ignorance [Îshvara, as a _personal_ deity], _attended by its projective power_, in which the quality of dulness [_tamas_, insensibility] predominates, proceeds _Ether_—from ether, air; from air, heat; from heat, water; and from water, earth with everything on it.

“From This, from this same Self, was the Ether produced,” says the _Veda_.(481)

It thus becomes evident that it is not _this_ Ether—sprung at the fourth remove from an _emanation_ of “Intelligence, associated with Ignorance”—which is the high Principle, the _deific_ Entity worshipped by the Greeks and Latins under the name of “Pater, Omnipotens Æther,” and “Magnus Æther,” in its collective aggregate. The septenary gradation, and the innumerable sub‐divisions and differences, made by the Ancients between the powers of Ether collectively—from its outward fringe of effects, with which our Science is so familiar, up to the “Imponderable Substance,” once admitted as the “Ether of Space,” but now about to be rejected—have been ever a vexing riddle for every branch of knowledge. The Mythologists and Symbologists of our day, confused by this incomprehensible glorification on the one hand, and degradation on the other, of the same deified Entity and in the same religious systems, are often driven to the most ludicrous mistakes. The Church, firm as a rock in each and all of her early errors of interpretation, has made of Ether the abode of her Satanic legions. The whole Hierarchy of the “Fallen” Angels is there; Cosmocratores, the “World Bearers,” according to Bossuet; Mundi Tenentes, the “World Holders,” as Tertullian calls them; Mundi Domini, “World Dominations,” or rather Dominators; the Curbati, or “Curved,” etc.; thus making of the stars and celestial orbs in their courses—Devils!

For it is thus that the Church has interpreted the verse: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.”(482) Further, St. Paul mentions the spiritual malices (“wickedness,” in English texts), in the Air—_spiritualia nequitiæ cœlestibus_—the Latin texts giving various names to these “malices,” the innocent “Elementals.” But the Church is right this time, though wrong in calling them all Devils. The Astral Light, or lower Ether, _is_ full of conscious, semi‐conscious and unconscious entities; only the church has less _power_ over them than over invisible microbes or mosquitoes.

The difference made between the seven states of Ether—itself one of the Seven Cosmic Principles, whereas the Æther of the ancients is Universal Fire—may be seen in the injunctions by Zoroaster and Psellus, respectively. The former said: “Consult it only when it is without form or figure”—_absque formâ et figurâ_—which means, without flames or burning coals. “When it has a form, _heed it not_”; teaches Psellus, “but when it is formless, obey it, for it is then _sacred fire_, and all it will reveal thee shall be true.”(483) This proves that Ether, itself an aspect of Âkâsha, has in its turn several aspects or “principles.”

All the ancient nations deified Æther in its imponderable aspect and potency. Virgil calls Jupiter, _Pater Omnipotens Æther_, and the “Great Æther.”(484) The Hindûs have also placed it among their deities, under the name of Âkâsha, the synthesis of Ether. And the author of the Homœomerian System of philosophy, Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ, firmly believed that the spiritual prototypes of all things, as well as their elements, were to be found in the boundless Æther, where they were generated, whence they evolved, and whither they returned—an Occult teaching.

It thus becomes clear that it is from Æther, in its highest synthetic aspect, once anthropomorphized, that sprang the first idea of a personal Creative Deity. With the philosophical Hindûs the Elements are _tâmasa_, _i.e._, “unenlightened by _intellect_, which they obscure.”

We have now to exhaust the question of the mystical meaning of Primordial Chaos and of the Root‐Principle, and show how they were connected in the ancient philosophies with Âkâsha, incorrectly translated Ether, and also with Mâyâ, Illusion, of which Îshvara is the male aspect. We shall speak further on of the Intelligent Principle, or rather of the invisible immaterial properties, in the visible and material elements, that “sprang from the Primordial Chaos.”

For “what is the primordial Chaos but Æther?”—it is asked, in _Isis Unveiled_. Not the _modern_ Ether; not such as is recognized now, but such as _was_ known to the ancient philosophers long before the time of Moses—Æther, with all its mysterious and occult properties, containing in itself the germs of universal creation. The Upper Æther, or Âkâsha, is the Celestial Virgin and Mother of every existing form and being, from whose bosom, as soon as “incubated” by the Divine Spirit, are called into existence Matter and Life, Force and Action. Æther is the Aditi of the Hindûs, and it is Âkâsha. Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and chemical action are so little understood even now, that fresh facts are constantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where ends the power of this protean giant—Æther; or whence its mysterious origin? Who, we mean, that denies the Spirit that works in it, and evolves out of it all visible forms?

It will be an easy task to show that the cosmogonical legends all over the world are based on a knowledge among the Ancients of those sciences, which have, in our days, allied themselves in support of the doctrine of evolution; and that further research may demonstrate that these Ancients were far better acquainted with the fact of evolution itself, embracing both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we are now.

With the old philosophers, evolution was a universal theorem, a doctrine embracing the _whole_, and an established principle; whereas our modern evolutionists are enabled to present us merely with speculative theoretics; with _particular_, if not wholly _negative_ theorems. It is idle for the representatives of our modern wisdom to close the debate and pretend that the question is settled, merely because the obscure phraseology of the Mosaic ... account clashes with the definite exegesis of “Exact Science.”(485)

If we turn to the _Ordinances of Manu_, we find the prototype of all these ideas. Mostly lost, to the Western world, in their original form, disfigured by later interpolations and additions, they have, nevertheless, preserved quite enough of their ancient spirit to show its character.

“Removing the darkness, the Self‐existent Lord [Vishnu, Nârâyana, etc.] became manifest; and, wishing to produce beings from his Essence, created, in the beginning, water alone. In that he cast seed. That became a Golden Egg.”

Whence this Self‐existent Lord? It is called This, and is spoken of as “Darkness, imperceptible, without definite qualities, undiscoverable, unknowable, as if wholly in sleep.” Having dwelt in that Egg for a whole Divine Year, he “who is called in the world Brahmâ,” splits that Egg in two, and from the upper portion he forms the heaven, from the lower the earth, and from the middle the sky and “the perpetual place of waters.”(486)

Directly following these verses, however, there is something more important for us, as it entirely corroborates our Esoteric teachings. From verse 14 to 36, evolution is given in the order described in the Esoteric Philosophy. This cannot be easily gainsaid. Even Medhâtithi, the son of Virasvâmin, and the author of the Commentary, the _Manubhâsya_, whose date, according to the western Orientalists, is 1,000 A.D., helps us with his remarks to the elucidation of the truth. He shows himself either unwilling to give out more, because he knew what had to be kept from the profane, or else he was really puzzled. Still, what he does give out makes the septenary principle in man and Nature plain enough.

Let us begin with