chapter xlii

in the _Book of the Dead_, show the identity of Toom and Fohat. The former represents a man standing erect with the hieroglyph of the _breaths_ in his hands. The latter says:

I open to the chief of An (Heliopolis). I am Toom. I cross the water spilt by Thot‐Hapi, the lord of the horizon, and am the divider of the earth [Fohat divides Space and, with his Sons, the Earth into seven zones]....

I cross the heavens; I am the two Lions. I am Ra, I am Aam, I eat my heir.(1155).... I glide on the soil of the field of Aanroo,(1156) given me by the master of limitless eternity. I am a germ of eternity. I am Toom, to whom eternity is accorded.

The very words used by Fohat in the XIth Book, and the very titles given him. In the Egyptian Papyri the whole Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine is found scattered about in isolated sentences, even in the _Book of the Dead_. Number seven is quite as much insisted upon and emphasized therein as in the _Book of Dzyan_. “The Great Water [the Deep or Chaos] is said to be seven cubits deep”—“cubits” standing here of course for divisions, zones, and principles. Therein, “in the great Mother, all the Gods, and the Seven Great Ones are born.” Both Fohat and Toom are addressed as the “Great Ones of the Seven Magic Forces,” who, “conquer the Serpent Apap” or Matter.(1157)

No student of Occultism, however, ought to be betrayed, by the usual phraseology used in the translations of Hermetic Works, into believing that the ancient Egyptians or Greeks spoke of, and referred, monk‐like, at every moment in conversation, to a Supreme Being, God, the “One Father and Creator of all,” etc., in the way found on every page of such translations. No such thing indeed; and those texts _are not the original Egyptian_ texts. They are Greek compilations, the earliest of which does not go beyond the early period of Neo‐Platonism. No Hermetic work written by Egyptians—as we may see by the _Book of the Dead_—would speak of the one universal God of the Monotheistic systems; the one _Absolute_ Cause of all, was as unnameable and unpronounceable in the mind of the ancient Philosopher of Egypt, as it is for ever _Unknowable_ in the conception of Mr. Herbert Spencer. As for the Egyptian in general, as M. Maspero well remarks, whenever he

Arrived at the notion of divine Unity, the God One was never “God” simply. M. Lepage‐Renouf very justly observed that the word Nouter, Nouti, “God” had never ceased to be _a generic name_ to become a personal one.

Every God was the “one living and unique God” with them. Their

Monotheism was purely geographical. If the Egyptian of Memphis proclaimed the Unity of Phtah to the exclusion of Ammon, the Thebeian Egyptian proclaimed the unity of Ammon to the exclusion of Phtah [as we now see done in India in the case of the Shaivas and the Vaishnavas]. Ra, the “One God” at Heliopolis is not the same as Osiris, the “One God” at Abydos, and can be worshipped side by side with him, without being absorbed by him. The one God is but the God of the nome or the city, Nouter Nouti, and does not exclude the existence of the one God of the neighbouring town or nome. In short, whenever we are speaking of Egyptian Monotheism, we ought to speak of the Gods One of Egypt, and not of the One God.(1158)

It is by this feature, preëminently Egyptian, that the authenticity of the various so‐called _Hermetic Books_, ought to be tested; and it is totally absent from the Greek fragments known under this name. This proves that a Greek Neo‐Platonic, or perhaps a Christian hand, had no small share in the editing of such works. Of course the fundamental Philosophy is there, and in many a place—intact. But the style has been altered and smoothed in a monotheistic direction, as much, if not more than that of the Hebrew Genesis in its Greek and Latin translations. They _may_ be _Hermetic_ works, but not works written by either of the two Hermes—or rather, by Thot Hermes, the directing Intelligence of the Universe(1159) or by Thot his terrestrial incarnation called Trismegistus, of the Rosetta stone.

But all is doubt, negation, iconoclasm and brutal indifference, in our age of a hundred “isms” and no religion. Every idol is broken save the Golden Calf.

Unfortunately, no nation or nations can escape their Karmic fate, any more than can units and individuals. History itself is dealt with by the so‐ called historians as unscrupulously as legendary lore. For this, Augustin Thierry has made the _amende honorable_, if one may believe his biographers. He deplored the erroneous principle that made all the _would‐ be_ historiographers lose their way, and each presume to correct tradition, “that _vox populi_ which nine times out of ten is _vox Dei_”; and he finally admitted that _in legend alone rests real history_; for he adds:

Legend is living tradition, and three times out of four it is truer than what we call History.(1160)

While Materialists deny everything in the Universe, save Matter, Archæologists are trying to dwarf Antiquity, and seek to destroy every claim of Ancient Wisdom by tampering with Chronology. Our present‐day Orientalists and historical writers are to Ancient History that which the white ants are to the buildings in India. More dangerous even than those Termites, the modern Archæologists—the “authorities” of the future in the matter of Universal History—are preparing for the history of past nations the fate of certain edifices in tropical countries. As said Michelet:

History will tumble down and break into atoms in the lap of the twentieth century, devoured to its foundations by her annalists.

Very soon, indeed, under their combined efforts, it will share the fate of those ruined cities in both Americas, which lie deeply buried under impassable virgin forests. Historical facts will remain concealed from view by the inextricable jungles of modern hypotheses, denials and scepticism. But very happily _actual_ History repeats herself, for she proceeds, like everything else, in cycles; and dead facts, and events deliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism, will ascend once more and reappear on the surface.

In Volume II, the very fact that a work with pretensions to Philosophy, which is also an exposition of the most abstruse problems, has to be commenced by tracing the evolution of mankind from what are regarded as supernatural beings—Spirits—will arouse the most malevolent criticism. Believers in, and the defenders of, the Secret Doctrine, however, will have to bear the accusation of madness _and worse_, as philosophically as for long years already the writer has done. Whenever a Theosophist is taxed with insanity, he ought to reply by quoting from Montesquieu’s _Lettres Persanes_:

By opening so freely their lunatic asylums to their supposed madmen, men only seek to assure each other that they are not themselves mad.

[Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected.]

FOOTNOTES

1 See _Theosophist_, June, 1883.

2 _Preface_ to the original edition.

3 _Dan_, in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics _Chhan_, is the general term for the esoteric schools and their literature. In the old books, the word _Janna_ is defined as “reforming one’s self by meditation and knowledge,” a second _inner_ birth. Hence _Dzan_, _Djan_ phonetically; the _Book of Dzyan_. See Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 129, note.

4 Mr. Beglor, the chief engineer at Buddhagâya, and a distinguished archæologist, was the first, we believe, to discover it.

5 See _Isis Unveiled_, Vol. II, p. 27.

6 _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 23.

7 _Ain í Akbari_, translated by Dr. Blochmann, quoted by Max Müller, _op. cit._

8 _Tao‐te‐King_, p. xxvii.

9 Max Müller, _op. cit._, p. 114.

10 Found out and proven only _now_, through the discoveries made by George Smith (see his _Chaldean Account of Genesis_), and which, thanks to this Armenian forger, have misled all the “civilized nations” for over 1,500 years into accepting Jewish derivations for direct _Divine_ Revelation.

11 _Egypt’s Place in History_, i. 200.

12 Spence Hardy, _The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists_, p. 66.

13 E. Schlagintweit, _Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 77.

14 Lassen (_Ind. Althersumkunde_, II, 1,072) shows a Buddhist monastery erected in the Kailâs. Range in 137 B.C.; and General Cunningham, one earlier than that.

15 Rev. J. Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 87.

16 See, for example, Max Müller’s _Lectures_.

17 _Op. cit._, p. 118.

18 _Op. cit._, p. 318.

19 _Asiatic Researches_, I, 272.

20 See Max Müller, _op. cit._, pp. 288 _et seq._ This relates to the clever forgery, on leaves inserted in old Purânic MSS., and written in correct and archaic Sanskrit, of all that the Pandits had heard from Colonel Wilford about Adam and Abraham, Noah and his three sons, etc., etc.

21 From a lecture by N. M. Prjevalsky.

22 Lün‐Yü (§ I a); Schott, _Chinesische Literatur_, p. 7; quoted by Max Müller.

23 _Life and Teachings of Confucius_, p. 96.

24 Op. cit., p. 257.

25 The name is used in the sense of the Greek word ἅνθρωπς.

26 Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Chananea, who died about A.D. 72, openly declared that he had performed “miracles” by means of the book _Sepher Jetzirah_, and challenged every sceptic. Franck, quoting from the Babylonian _Talmud_, names two other thaumaturgists, Rabbis Chanina and Oshoi. (See _Jerusalem Talmud_, _Sanhedrin_, c. 7, etc.; and Franck, _Die Kabbalah_, pp. 55, 56). Many of the mediæval Occultists, Alchemists, and Kabalists have made the same claim; and even the late modern Magus, Éliphas Lévi, publicly asserts it in his books on Magic.

27 It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that the term Divine Thought, like that of Universal Mind, must not be regarded as even vaguely shadowing forth an intellectual process akin to that exhibited by man. The “Unconscious,” according to von Hartmann, arrived at the vast creative, or rather evolutionary plan, “by a clairvoyant wisdom superior to all consciousness,” which in Vedântic language would mean absolute Wisdom. Only those who realize how far intuition soars above the tardy processes of ratiocinative thought can form the faintest conception of that absolute Wisdom which transcends the ideas of Time and Space. Mind, as we know it, is resolvable into states of consciousness, of varying duration, intensity, complexity, etc., all, in the ultimate, resting on sensation, which is again Mâyâ. Sensation, again, necessarily postulates limitation. The Personal God of orthodox Theism perceives, thinks, and is affected by emotion; he repents and feels “fierce anger.” But the notion of such mental states clearly involves the unthinkable postulate of the externality of the exciting stimuli, to say nothing of the impossibility of ascribing changelessness to a being whose emotions fluctuate with events in the worlds he presides over. The conceptions of a Personal God as changeless and infinite are thus unpsychological and, what is worse, unphilosophical.

28 Plato proves himself an Initiate, when saying in _Cratylus_ that θεός is derived from θέειν, to move, to run, for the first astronomers who observed the motions of the heavenly bodies called the planets θεοί, gods. Later the word produced another term, ἀλήθεια—the breath of God.

29 Nominalists, arguing with Berkeley that “it is impossible ... to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving” (_Principles of Human Knowledge_, Introd., par. 10), may put the question, What is that body, the producer of that motion? Is it a substance? Then you are believers in a Personal God? etc., etc. This will be answered farther on, in a further part of this work; meanwhile, we claim our rights of Conceptionalists as against Roscelini’s materialistic views of Realism and Nominalism. “Has science,” says one of its ablest advocates, Edward Clodd, “revealed anything that weakens or opposes itself to the ancient words in which the essence of all religion, past, present, and to come, is given; to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly before thy God?” And we agree, provided we connote by the word God, not the crude anthropomorphism which is still the backbone of our current theology, but the symbolic conception of that which is the Life and Motion of the Universe, to know which in the physical order is to know time past, present, and to come, in the existence of successions of phenomena; to know which, in the moral, is to know what has been, is, and will be, within human consciousness. (See _Science and the Emotions_, a Discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, London, December 27th, 1885.)

30 _Isis Unveiled_, II, 264‐5.

31 Rig Veda.

32 We are told by the Western mathematicians and some American Kabalists, that in the _Kabalah_ also “the value of the Jehovah name is that of the diameter of a circle.” Add to this the fact that Jehovah is the third of the Sephiroth, Binah, a feminine word, and you have the key to the mystery. By certain Kabalistic transformations this name, which is androgynous in the first chapters of _Genesis_, becomes in its transformations entirely masculine, Cainite and phallic. The choosing of a deity among the pagan gods and making of it a special national God, to call upon it as the “One Living God,” the “God of Gods,” and then proclaiming this worship monotheistic, does not change it into the One Principle whose “Unity admits not of multiplication, change, or form,” especially in the case of a priapic deity, as Jehovah is now demonstrated to be.

33 See that suggestive work, _The Source of Measures_, where the author explains the real meaning of the word _Sacr’_ from which “sacred,” “sacrament,” are derived, words which have now become synonyms of holiness, though purely phallic!

34 _Mândûkya Upanishad_, I. 28.

35 _Bodhimür_, Book II.

36 See the _Vedânta Sâra_, by Major G. A. Jacob; and also _The Aphorisms of Shândilya_, translated by Cowell, p. 42.

37 _Aitareya Upanishad._

38 Nevertheless, prejudiced and rather fanatical Christian Orientalists would like to prove this to be pure Atheism. For proof of this, compare Major Jacob’s _Vedânta Sâra_. Yet, the whole of antiquity echoes the thought:

Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse est Immortali ævo summa cum pace fruatur—

as Lucretius has it—a purely Vedântic conception.

39 The very names of the two chief deities, Brahmâ and Vishnu, ought to have long ago suggested their esoteric meanings. Brahman, or Brahm, is derived by some from the root _brih_, to grow or to expand (see _Calcutta Review_, vol. lxvi., p. 14); Vishnu, from the root _vish_, to pervade, to enter into the nature of the essence; Brahmâ‐Vishnu thus being infinite Space, of which the Gods, the Rishis, the Manus, and all in this Universe are simply the Potencies (Vibhûtayah).

40 See Manu’s account of Brahmâ separating his body into male and female, the latter the female Vâch, in whom he creates Virâj, and compare this with the esotericism of Chapters II, III, and IV of _Genesis_.

41 Occultism is indeed “in the air” at the close of this our century. Among many other works recently published, we would recommend especially to students of theoretical Occultism who would not venture beyond the realm of our special human plane, _New Aspects of Life and Religion_, by Henry Pratt, M.D. It is full of esoteric dogmas and philosophy, the latter, however, in the concluding chapters, rather limited by what seems to be a spirit of conditioned positivism. Nevertheless, what is said of Space as “the Unknown First Cause,” merits quotation.

“This unknown something, thus recognized as, and identified with, the primary embodiment of Simple Unity, is invisible and impalpable [as _abstract_ space, granted]: and because invisible and impalpable, therefore incognizable. And this incognizability has led to the error of supposing it to be a simple void, a mere receptive capacity. But, even viewed as an absolute void, space must be admitted to be either self‐existent, infinite, and eternal, or to have had a first cause outside, behind, and beyond itself.

“And yet could such a cause be found and defined, this would only lead to the transferring thereto of the attributes otherwise accruing to space, and thus merely throw the difficulty of origination a step farther back, without gaining additional light as to primary causation.” (_Op. cit._, p. 5.)

This is precisely what has been done by the believers in an anthropomorphic creator, an extra‐cosmic, instead of an intra‐cosmic God. Many of Dr. Pratt’s subjects—most of them we may say—are old Kabalistic ideas and theories which he presents in quite a new garb—“New Aspects” of the Occult in Nature, indeed. Space, however, viewed as a Substantial Unity—the living Source of Life—is, as the Unknown Causeless Cause, the oldest dogma in Occultism, millenniums earlier than the Pater‐Æther of the Greeks and Latins. So are “Force and Matter, as Potencies of Space, inseparable, and the unknown revealers of the Unknown.” They are all found in Âryan philosophy personified as Vishvakarman, Indra, Vishnu, etc., etc. Still they are expressed very philosophically, and under many unusual aspects, in the work referred to.

42 In contradistinction to the manifested Universe of matter, the term Mûlaprakriti (from _mûla_, root, and prakriti, nature), or the unmanifested primordial Matter—called by Western Alchemists Adam’s Earth—is applied by the Vedântins to _Parabrahman_. Matter is dual in religious metaphysics, and in esoteric teachings septenary, like everything else in the Universe. As Mûlaprakriti, it is undifferentiated and eternal: as Vyakta, it becomes differentiated and conditioned, according to _Shvetâshvatara Upanishad_, I, 8, and _Devî Bhâgavata Purâna_. The author of the Four lectures on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, in speaking of Mûlaprakriti, says: “From its [the Logos’] objective standpoint, Parabrahman appears to it as Mûlaprakriti.... Of course this Mûlaprakriti is material to it, as any material object is material to us.... Parabrahman is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mûlaprakriti is a sort of veil thrown over it.” (_Theosophist_, VIII, 304.)

43 Esoteric Philosophy, regarding every finite thing as Mâyâ (or the illusion of ignorance), must necessarily view in the same light every intra‐cosmic planet and body, seeing that it is something organized, hence finite. The sentence, therefore, “it proceeds from without inwardly, etc.”, in its first clause, refers to the dawn of the Mahâmanvantara, or the great reëvolution after one of the complete periodical dissolutions of every compound form in Nature, from planet to molecule, into its ultimate essence or element; and in its second clause, to the partial or local Manvantara, which may be a solar or even a planetary one.

44 By Centre, a centre of energy or a cosmic focus is meant; when the so‐called “creation,” or formation, of a planet, is accomplished by that force which is designated by Occultists Life and by Science Energy, then the process takes place from within outwardly, every atom being said to contain in itself the creative energy of the divine Breath. And, whereas after an Absolute Pralaya, when the preëxisting material consists but of One Element, and Breath “is everywhere,” the latter acts from without inwardly; after a Minor Pralaya, when everything having remained _in statu quo_—in a refrigerated state, so to say, like the moon—then at the first flutter of Manvantara, the planet or planets begin their resurrection to life from within outwardly.

45 In the evolutionary cycles of ideas, it is curious to notice how ancient thought seems to be reflected in modern speculation. Had Mr. Herbert Spencer read and studied ancient Hindû philosophers when he wrote a certain passage in his _First Principles_ (p. 482)? Or is it an independent flash of inner perception that made him say half correctly, half incorrectly, “motion as well as matter, being fixed in quantity [?], it would seem that the change in the distribution of matter which motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever direction it is carried [?], the indestructible motion thereupon necessitates a reverse distribution. Apparently, the universally coëxistent forces of attraction and repulsion which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes—produce now an immeasurable period during which the attracting forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period, during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusion—alternate eras of evolution and dissolution.”

46 Whatever the news of Physical Science upon the subject, Occult Science has been teaching for ages that Âkâsha (of which Ether is the grossest form), the Fifth universal cosmic Principle—to which corresponds and from which proceeds human Manas—is, cosmically, a radiant, cool, diathermanous plastic matter, creative in its physical nature, correlative in its grossest aspects and portions, immutable in its higher principles. In the creative condition it is called the Sub‐Root; and in conjunction with radiant heat, it recalls “dead worlds to life.” In its higher aspect it is the Soul of the World; in its lower—the Destroyer.

47 _Hypoth._, 1675.

48 The “First” presupposes necessarily something which is the “first brought forth,” “the first in time, space, and rank”—and therefore finite and conditioned. The “first” _cannot be Absolute_ for it is a manifestation. Therefore, Eastern Occultism calls the Abstract All the One Causeless Cause, the Rootless Root, and limits the “First Cause” to the Logos, in the sense that Plato gives to this term.

49 See T. Subba Row’s four able lectures on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, in _The Theosophist_, Feb. 1887.

50 Called by Christian theology, Archangels, Seraphs, etc., etc.

51 “Pilgrim” is the appellation given to our Monad (the Two in one) during its cycle of incarnations. It is the only immortal and eternal Principle in us, being an indivisible part of the integral whole—the Universal Spirit, from which it emanates, and into which it is absorbed at the end of the cycle. When it is said to emanate from the One Spirit, an awkward and incorrect expression has to be used for lack of appropriate words in English. The Vedântins call it Sûtrâtmâ (Thread‐Soul), but their explanation differs somewhat from that of the Occultists; to explain which difference, however, is left to the Vedântins themselves.

52 It is not the physical organisms that remain _in statu quo_, least of all their psychic principles, during the great Cosmic or even Solar Pralayas, but only their âkâshic or astral “photographs.” But during the Minor Pralayas, once overtaken by the “Night,” the planets remain intact, though dead, just as a huge animal, caught and embedded in the polar ice, remains the same for ages.

53 Thus Spencer, who, nevertheless, like Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, only reflects an aspect of the old esoteric philosophers, and hence lands his readers on the bleak shore of Agnostic despair—reverently formulates the grand mystery; “that which persists unchanging in quantity, but ever changing in form, under these sensible appearances which the Universe presents to us, is an unknown and unknowable power, which we are obliged to recognize as without limit in Space and without beginning or end in Time.” It is only daring Theology—never Science or Philosophy—which seeks to gauge the Infinite and unveil the Fathomless and Unknowable.

54 Space.

55 It is stated in Book II, ch. viii, of _Vishnu Purâna_: “By immortality is meant existence to the end of the Kalpa”; and Wilson, the translator, remarks in a foot‐note: “This, according to the _Vedas_, is all that is to be understood of the immortality [or eternity] of the gods; they perish at the end of universal dissolution [or Pralaya].” And Esoteric Philosophy says: “They ‘perish’ not, but are _reäbsorbed_.”

56 Celestial Beings.

57 And hence to manifest it.

58 Nirvâna. Nippang in Chinese; Neibban in Burmese; Moksha in India.

59 Nidâna and Mâyâ. The “Twelve” Nidânas (in Tibetan Ten‐brel Chug‐nyi) are the chief causes of existence, effects generated by a concatenation of causes produced.

60 See Wassilief, _Der Buddhismus_, pp. 97‐128.

61 The term “Wheel” is the symbolical expression for a world or globe, which shows that the ancients were aware that our Earth was a revolving globe, not a motionless square as some Christian Fathers taught. The “Great Wheel” is the whole duration of our Cycle of Being, or Mahâkalpa, _i.e._, the whole revolution of our special Chain of seven Globes or Spheres from beginning to end; the “Small Wheels” meaning the Rounds, of which there are also seven.

62 Absolute Perfection, Paranirvâna, which is Yong‐Grub.

63 See Dzungarian _Mani Kumbum_, the “Book of the 10,000 Precepts.” Also consult Wassilief’s _Der Buddhismus_, pp. 327 and 357, etc.

64 In clearer words: One has to acquire true Self‐Consciousness in order to understand Samvriti, or the “origin of delusion.” Paramârtha is the synonym of the term Svasamvedanâ, or the “reflection which analyses itself.” There is a difference in the interpretation of the meaning of Paramârtha between the Yogâchâryas and the Madhyamikas, neither of whom, however, explain the real and true esoteric sense of the expression.

65 In India it is called the “Eye of Shiva,” but beyond the Great Range it is known in Esoteric phraseology as “Dangma’s Opened Eye.” Dangma means a purified soul, one who has become a Jîvanmukta, the highest Adept, or rather a Mahâtmâ so‐called. His “Opened Eye” is the inner spiritual eye of the seer; and the faculty which manifests through it, is not clairvoyance as ordinarily understood, _i.e._, the power of seeing at a distance, but rather the faculty of spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable. This faculty is intimately connected with the “third eye,” which mythological tradition ascribes to certain races of men.

66 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. 21.

67 And yet, one, _claiming authority_, namely, Sir Monier Williams, Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, has just denied the fact. This is what he taught his audience, on June the 4th, 1888, in his annual address before the Victoria Institute of Great Britain: “Originally, Buddhism set its face against all solitary asceticism ... to attain sublime heights of knowledge. It had no occult, no esoteric system of doctrine ... withheld from ordinary men” (!!). And, again: “... When Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and lower form of Yoga seems to have been little known.” And then, contradicting himself, the learned lecturer forthwith informs his audience that “we learn from _Lalita‐Vistara_ that various forms of bodily torture, self‐maceration, and austerity were common in Gautama’s time.” (!!) But the lecturer seems quite unaware that this kind of torture and self‐maceration is precisely the lower form of Yoga, _Hatha_ Yoga, which was “little known” and yet so “common” in Gautama’s time.

68 It is even argued that all the Six Darshanas, or Schools of Philosophy, show traces of Buddha’s influence, being either taken from Buddhism or due to Greek teaching! (See Weber, Max Müller, etc.) We labour under the impression that Colebrooke, “the highest authority” in such matters, had long ago settled the question by showing that “the Hindûs were in this instance the teachers, not the learners.”

69 Soul, as the basis of all, Anima Mundi.

70 Absolute Being and Consciousness, which are Absolute Non‐Being and Unconsciousness.

71 “Paramârthasatya” is self‐consciousness; Svasamvedanâ, or self‐ analyzing reflection—from _parama_, above everything, and _artha_, comprehension; _satya_ meaning absolute true being, or _esse_. In Tibetan Paramârthasatya is Dondampaidenpa. The opposite of this absolute reality, or actuality, is Samvritisatya—the relative truth only—Samvriti meaning “false conception” and being the origin of Illusion, Mâyâ; in Tibetan Kundzabchidenpa, “illusion‐creating appearance.”

72 _Aphorisms of the Bodhisattvas._

73 Âryâsanga was a pre‐Christian Adept and founder of a Buddhist esoteric school, though Csoma de Körös places him, for some reasons of his own, in the seventh century A.D. There was another Aryâsanga, who lived during the first centuries of our era, and the Hungarian scholar most probably confuses the two.

74 _Vâyu Purâna_.

75 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson, I. 20.

76 Finite self‐consciousness, I mean. For how can the _Absolute_ attain this otherwise than simply as an _aspect_, the highest of which aspects known to us is human consciousness?

77 See Schwegler’s _Handbook of the History of Philosophy_, in Sterling’s translation, p. 28.

78 Vajrapâni or Vajradhara means the diamond‐holder; in Tibetan Dorjesempa, _sempa_ meaning the soul; its adamantine quality referring to its indestructibility in the hereafter. The explanation with regard to the Anupâdaka given in the _Kâla Chakra_, the first in the Gyut division of the _Kanjur_, is half esoteric. It has misled the Orientalists into erroneous speculations with respect to the Dhyâni‐Buddhas and their earthly correspondencies, the Mânushi‐ Buddhas. The real tenet is hinted at in a subsequent volume, and will be more fully explained in its proper place.

79 To quote Hegel again, who with Schelling practically accepted the Pantheistic conception of periodical Avatâras (special incarnations of the World‐Spirit in Man, as seen in the case of all the great religious reformers): “The essence of man is spirit ... only by stripping himself of his finiteness and surrendering himself to pure self‐consciousness does he attain the truth. Christ‐man, as man in whom the Unity of God‐man [identity of the individual with the universal Consciousness as taught by the Vedântins and some Advaitees] appeared, has, in his death and history generally, himself presented the eternal history of Spirit—a history which every man has to accomplish in himself, in order to exist as Spirit.”—_Philosophy of History_, Sibree’s English Translation, p. 340.

80 Chohanic, Dhyâni‐Buddhic.

81 Rûpa.

82 Arûpa.

83 “Mother of the Gods,” Aditi, or Cosmic Space. In the _Zohar_, she is called Sephira, the Mother of the Sephiroth, and Shekinah in her primordial form, _in abscondita_.

84 Hence Non‐Being is “Absolute Being,” in Esoteric Philosophy. In the tenets of the latter even Âdi‐Buddha (the First or Primeval Wisdom) is, while manifested, in one sense an Illusion, Mâyâ, since all the gods, including Brahmâ, have to die at the end of the Age of Brahmâ; the abstraction called Parabrahman—whether we call it Ain Suph, or with Herbert Spencer the Unknowable—alone being the One Absolute Reality. The One Secondless Existence is Advaita, “Without a Second,” and all the rest is Mâyâ, so teaches the Advaita Philosophy.

85 Motion.

86 Wilson, I. iv.

87 Mother‐Lotus.

88 An unpoetical term, yet still very graphic.

89 Gross, _The Heathen Religion_, p. 195.

90 _Precepts for Yoga_.

91 A Vedântin of the Visishthadvaita Philosophy would say that, though the only independent Reality, Parabrahman is inseparable from His Trinity. That He is three, “Parabrahman, Chit, and Achit,” the last two being dependent Realities unable to exist separately; or, to make it clearer, Parabrahman is the Substance—changeless, eternal, and incognizable—and Chit (Âtmâ) and Achit (Anâtmâ) and its qualities, as form and colour are the qualities of any object. The two are the garment, or body, or rather aspect (sharîra) of Parabrahman. But an Occultist would find much to say against this claim, and so would the Advaiti Vedântin.

92 _Sc._, Sons.

93 Simultaneously.

94 Moves.

95 Periodical.

96 Wilson, _Vishnu Purâna_, I. 40.

97 Triangle.

98 Quaternary.

99 Hiranyagarbha.

100 The three hypostases of Brahmâ, or Vishnu, the three Avasthâs.

101 Number, truly; but never Motion. It is Motion which begets the Logos, the Word, in Occultism.

102 The “fourteen precious things.” The narrative or allegory is found in the _Shatapatha Brâmanah_ and others. The Japanese Secret Science of the Buddhist Mystics, the Yamabooshi, has “seven precious things.” We will speak of them, hereafter.

103 “The original for Understanding is Sattva, which Shankara renders Antaskarana. ‘Refined,’ he says, ‘by sacrifices and other sanctifying operations.’ In the _Katha_, at p. 148, Sattva is rendered by Shankara to mean Buddhi—a common use of the word.” (_Bhagavadgîtâ_, etc., translated by Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A.; edited by Max Müller, p. 193.) Whatever meaning various schools may give the term, Sattva is the name given among Occult students of the Âryâsanga School to the dual Monad, or Âtmâ‐Buddhi, and Âtmâ‐Buddhi on this plane corresponds to Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti on the higher plane.

104 Amrita.

105 Cory’s _Ancient Fragments_, p. 314.

106 On Rosenkranz.

107 i. 2.

108 _John_, i. 4.

109 Lanoo is a student, a Chelâ who studies practical Esotericism.

110 “Whom thou knowest now as Kwan‐Shai‐Yin.”—_Comment._

111 Eka is One; Chatur, Four; Tri, Three; and Sapta, Seven.

112 “Tridasha,” or Thirty, three times ten, alludes to the Vedic deities in round numbers, or more accurately 33—a sacred number. They are the 12 Âdityas, the 8 Vasus, the 11 Rudras, and the 2 Ashvins—the twin sons of the Sun and Sky. This is the root‐number of the Hindû Pantheon, which enumerates 33 crores, or three hundred and thirty millions of gods and goddesses.

113 Stars.

114 The Upper Space.

115 Element.

116 The Gnostic Sophia, “Wisdom,” who is the “Mother” of the Ogdoad (Aditi, in a certain sense, with her eight sons), is the Holy Ghost and the Creator of all, as in the ancient systems. The “Father” is a far later invention. The earliest manifested Logos was female everywhere—the mother of the seven planetary powers.

117 See _Chinese Buddhism_, by the Rev. Joseph Edkins, who always gives correct facts, although his conclusions are very frequently erroneous.

118 _Book of Sarparâjni_.

119 By “God, the Father,” the seventh principle in Man and Kosmos are here unmistakably meant, this principle being inseparable in its Esse and Nature from the seventh cosmic principle. In one sense it is the Logos of the Greeks and the Avalokiteshvara of the Esoteric “Buddhists.”

120 Fitzedward Hall’s edition, in the _Bibliotheca Indica_, p. 16.

121 _Anugîtâ_, ch. xxvi, K. T. Telang’s Translation, p. 333.

122 See Mariette’s _Abydos_, II. 63, and III. 413, 414, No. 1,122.

123 _Book of Dzyan_, III.

124 Od is the pure life‐giving Light, or magnetic fluid; Ob the messenger of death used by sorcerers, the nefarious evil fluid; Aour is the synthesis of the two, Astral Light proper. Can the Philologists tell why Od—a term used by Reichenbach to denominate the vital fluid—is also a Tibetan word meaning light, brightness, radiancy? It also means “sky” in an Occult sense. Whence the root of the word? But Âkâsha is not quite Ether, but far higher than that, as will be shown.

125 This is again similar to the doctrine of Fichte and German Pantheists. The former reveres Jesus as the great teacher who inculcated the unity of the spirit of man with the God‐Spirit or Universal Principle (the Advaita doctrine). It is difficult to find a single speculation in Western metaphysics which has not been anticipated by archaic Eastern philosophy. From Kant to Herbert Spencer, it is all a more or less distorted echo of the Dvaita, Advaita, and Vedântic doctrines generally.

126 Compare Dowson’s _Dictionary of Hindû Mythology_, p. 57.

127 Whether the genus of the bird be _cygnus_, _anser_, or _pelecanus_, it is no matter, as it is an aquatic bird floating or moving on the waters like the Spirit, and then issuing from those waters to give birth to other beings. The true significance of the symbol of the Eighteenth Degree of the Rosecroix is precisely this, though it was later on poetised into the motherly feeling of the pelican rending its bosom to feed its seven little ones with its blood.

128 The reason why Moses forbids eating the pelican and swan (_Deuteronomy_, xiv. 16, 17), classing the two among the unclean fowls, and permits eating “the bald locusts, beetles, and the grasshopper after his kind” (_Leviticus_ xi. 22.), is a purely physiological one, and has to do with mystic symbology only in so far as the word “unclean,” like every other word, ought not to be understood literally; for it is esoteric like all the rest, and may as well mean “holy” as not. It is a very suggestive blind in connection with certain superstitions—_e.g._, that of the Russian people, who will not use the pigeon for food; not because it is “unclean” but because the “Holy Ghost” is credited with having appeared under the form of a dove.

129 Chaos.

130 Not the Mediæval Alchemists, but the Magi and Fire‐Worshippers, from whom the Rosicrucians, or the Philosophers _per ignem_, the successors of the Theurgists, borrowed all their ideas concerning Fire, as a mystic and divine element.

131 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 146.

132 “Para” gives the force of beyond, outside.

133 Purusha.

134 Prakriti.

135 I, I. 7.

136 The Web.

137 The Father.

138 The Root of Matter.

139 The Elements, with their respective Powers, or Intelligences.

140 The Web.

141 _Popular Astronomy_, pp. 507, 508.

142 _American Journal of Science_, July, 1870.

143 Winchell, _World‐Life_, pp. 83‐5.

144 Of the Atoms.

145 The Universe.

146 Primeval Light.

147 This is said in view of the fact that the flame from a fire is inexhaustible, and that the lights of the whole Universe could be lit from one simple rush‐light without diminishing the flame.

148 Chap. viii., p. 80, Telang’s Translation.

149 _Deuteronomy_, iv 24.

150 _Thess._, i. 7, 8.

151 _Acts_, ii. 3.

152 _Rev._, xix. 13.

153 Telang’s Translation, _Sacred Books of the East_, viii. 278.

154 Dhyân Chohans.

155 Formless.

156 With Bodies.

157 Pitris.

158 The Four, represented in the Occult numerals by the Tetraktys, the Sacred or Perfect Square, is a Sacred Number with the Mystics of every nation and race. It has one and the same significance in Brâhmanism, Buddhism, in Kabalism and in the Egyptian, Chaldean and other numerical systems.

159 In the _Kabalah_, the same numbers, viz., 1065 are a value of Jehovah, since the numerical values of the three letters which compose his name—Jod, Vau and twice Hé—are respectively 10 (י), 6 (ו) and 5 (ה); or again thrice seven, 21. “Ten is the Mother of the Soul, for Life and Light are therein united,” says Hermes. “For number one is born of the Spirit and the number ten from Matter [Chaos, feminine]; the unity has made the ten, the ten the unity.” (_Book of the Keys_.) By means of Temura, the anagrammatical method of the _Kabalah_, and the knowledge of 1065 (21), a universal science may be obtained regarding Cosmos and its mysteries (Rabbi Yogel). The Rabbis regard the numbers 10, 6, and 5 as the most sacred of all.

160 The reader may be told that an American Kabalist has now discovered the same number for the Elohim. It came to the Jews from Chaldæa. See “Hebrew Metrology,” in _The Masonic Review_, July, 1885, McMillan Lodge, No. 141.

161 We find the same expression in Egypt. Mout signifies, for one thing, “Mother,” and shows the character assigned to her in the triad of that country. She was no less the mother than the wife of Ammon, one of the principal titles of the god being “the husband of his mother.” The goddess Mout, or Mût, is addressed as “Our Lady,” the “Queen of Heaven” and “of the Earth,” thus “sharing these titles with the other mother goddesses, Isis, Hathor, etc.” (Maspero).

162 The Sparks.

163 The permutation of Oeaohoo. The literal signification of the word is, among the Eastern Occultists of the North, a circular wind, whirlwind; but in this instance, it is a term to denote the ceaseless and eternal Cosmic Motion, or rather the Force that moves it, which Force is tacitly accepted as the Deity, but never named. It is the eternal Kârana, the ever‐acting Cause.

164 vi. 15. The _Anugîtâ_ forms part of the Ashvamedha Parvan of the _Mahâbhârata_. The translator of the _Bhagavadgîtâ_, edited by Max Müller, regards it as a continuation of the _Bhagavadgîtâ_. Its original is one of the oldest _Upanishads_.

165 This shows the modern metaphysicians, added to all past and present Hegels, Berkeleys, Schopenhauers, Hartmanns, Herbert Spencers, and even the modern Hylo‐Idealists to boot, no better than the pale copyists of hoary antiquity.

166 It is the knowledge of this law that permits and helps the Arhat to perform his Siddhis, or various phenomena, such as the disintegration of matter, the transport of objects from one place to another, etc.

167 These are ancient Commentaries attached with modern Glossaries to the Stanzas, for the Commentaries in their symbolical language are usually as difficult to understand as the Stanzas themselves.

168 In a polemical scientific work, _The Modern Genesis_ (p. 48), the Rev. W. B. Slaughter, criticizing the position assumed by the astronomers, says: “It is to be regretted that the advocates of this [nebular] theory have not entered more largely into the discussion of it [the beginning of rotation] No one condescends to give us the _rationale_ of it. How does the process of cooling and contracting the mass impart to it a rotatory motion?” (Quoted by Winchell, _World‐Life_, p. 94.) It is not materialistic Science that can ever solve it. “_Motion is eternal in the unmanifested, and periodical in the manifest_,” says an Occult teaching. It is “_when heat caused by the descent of Flame into primordial matter causes its particles to move, which motion becomes the Whirlwind_.” A drop of liquid assumes a spheroidal form owing to its atoms moving around themselves in their ultimate, unresolvable, and noumenal essence; unresolvable for Physical Science, at any rate. The question is amply treated later on.

169 The x, the unknown quantity.

170 Which makes Ten, or the perfect number, applied to the “Creator,” the name given to the totality of the Creators blended by the Monotheists into One, as the “Elohim,” Adam Kadmon or Sephira, the Crown—are the androgyne synthesis of the ten Sephiroth, who stand for the symbol of the manifested Universe in the popularized _Kabalah_. The Esoteric Kabalists, however, following the Eastern Occultists, divide the upper Sephirothal triangle (or Sephira, Chokmah and Binah) from the rest, which leaves seven Sephiroth. As for Svabhâvat, the Orientalists explain the term as meaning the universal plastic matter diffused through space, with, perhaps, half an eye to the Ether of Science. But the Occultists identify it with “Father‐Mother” on the mystic plane.

171 Arûpa.

172 Boundless Circle.

173 Subjective, Formless.

174 Bhâskara.

175 This refers to the Abstract Thought and concrete Voice, or the manifestation thereof, the effect of the Cause. Adam Kadmon, or Tetragrammaton, is the Logos in the _Kabalah_. Therefore this Triad answers in the latter to the highest Triangle of Kether, Chokmah and Binah, the last a female potency, and at the same time the male Jehovah, as partaking of the nature of Chokmah, or the male Wisdom.

176 The Secret Doctrine teaches that the Sun is a central star and not a planet. Yet the ancients knew of and worshipped seven great gods, excluding the Sun and Earth. Which was that “Mystery God” they set apart? Of course not Uranus, only discovered by Herschel in 1781. But could it not be known by another name? Says Ragon: “Occult Sciences having discovered through astronomical calculations that the number of the planets must be seven, the ancients were led to introduce the Sun into the scale of the celestial harmonies, and make him occupy the vacant place. Thus, every time they perceived an influence that pertained to none of the six planets known, they attributed it to the Sun.... The error seems important, but was not so in practical results, if the astrologers replaced Uranus by the Sun, which ... is a central Star relatively motionless, turning only on its axis and regulating time and measure; and which cannot be turned aside from its true functions.” (_Maçonnerie Occulte_, p. 447.) The nomenclature of the days of the week is also faulty. “The Sun‐day ought to be Uranus‐day (Urani dies, Urandi),” adds the learned writer.

177 Planetary System.

178 “The Sun rotates on its axis always in the same direction in which the planets revolve in their respective orbits,” astronomy teaches us.

179 See _Anugîtâ_, Telang, x. 9; and _Aitareya Brâhmana_, Haug, p. 1.

180 This essence of cometary matter, Occult Science teaches, is totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which Modern Science is acquainted. It is homogeneous in its primitive form beyond the Solar Systems, and differentiates entirely once it crosses the boundaries of our Earth’s region; vitiated by the atmospheres of the planets and the already compound matter of the interplanetary stuff, it is heterogeneous only in our manifested world.

181 Manas—the Mind‐Principle, or the Human Soul.

182 Buddhi—the Divine Soul.

183 See _Correlation of Physical Forces_, 1843, p. 81; and _Address to the British Association_, 1866.

184 Very similar ideas were those of W. Mattieu Williams, in _The Fuel of the Sun_; of Dr. C. William Siemens, _On the Conservation of Solar Energy_ (_Nature_, XXV, 440‐444, March 9, 1882); and also of Dr. P. Martin Duncan in an _Address_, as the President of the Geological Society, London, May, 1877. See _World‐Life_, by Alexander Winchell, LL.D., p. 53, _et seq_.

185 When we speak of Neptune, it is not as an Occultist but as a European. The true Eastern Occultist will maintain that, whereas there are many yet undiscovered planets in our system, Neptune does not really belong to it, in spite of its _apparent_ connection with our Sun and the influence of the latter upon it. This connection is mâyâvic, imaginary, they say.

186 Word, Voice and Spirit.

187 These are the four “Immortals,” which are mentioned in the _Atharva Veda_ as the “Watchers” or Guardians of the four quarters of the sky. (See Ch. lxxvi., 1‐4, _et seq_.)

188 _Conflict between Religion and Science_, pp. 132 and 133.

189 _Principles of Science_, II. 455.

190 _Les Mystères de l’Horoscope_, Ely Star, p. xi.

191 _Psalms_, civ. 4.

192 The difference between the Builders, the Planetary Spirits, and the Lipika must not be lost sight of. (See Shlokas 5 and 6 of this Commentary.)

193 That is, he is under the influence of their guiding thought.

194 Cosmic mists.

195 The World to be.

196 Atoms.

197 See A. P. Sinnett’s _Esoteric Buddhism_, 5th annotated edition, pp. 171‐173.

198 The first and greatest Tibetan Reformer who founded the “Yellow‐ Caps,” Gelukpas. He was born in the year 1355 A.D., in the district of Amdo, and was the Avatâra of Amitâbha, the celestial name of Gautama Buddha.

199 T. Subba Row seems to identify him with, and to call him, the Logos. (See his _Lectures on the Bhagavadgîtâ_, in the _Theosophist_, vol. ix.)

200 Helmholtz, _Faraday Lecture_, 1881.

201 It is well known that sand, when placed on a metal plate in vibration, assumes a series of regular figures of various descriptions. Can Science give a _complete_ explanation of this fact?

202 See _The Masonic Cyclopædia_, Mackenzie; and _The Pythagorean Triangle_, Oliver.

203 Ormazd is the Logos, the “First Born,” and the Sun.

204 _Against Apion_, I, 25.

205 See _Isis Unveiled_, II., 430‐438.

206 See Dowson’s _Hindû Classical Dictionary_.

207 The mineral atoms.

208 Gaseous clouds.

209 See _Kabbalah Denudata_, “De Anima,” p. 113.

210 “The doctrine of the rotation of the earth about an axis was taught by the Pythagorean Hicetas, probably as early as 500 B.C. It was also taught by his pupil Ecphantus, and by Heraclides, a pupil of Plato. The immobility of the sun and the orbital rotation of the earth were shown by Aristarchus of Samos as early as 281 B.C. to be suppositions accordant with facts of observation. The heliocentric theory was also taught about 150 B.C., by Seleucus of Seleucia on the Tigris. [It was taught 500 B.C. by Pythagoras.—H.P.B.] It is said also that Archimedes, in a work entitled _Psammites_, inculcated the heliocentric theory. The sphericity of the earth was distinctly taught by Aristotle, who appealed for proof to the figure of the earth’s shadow on the moon in eclipses. (Aristotle, _De Cælo_, lib. II., cap, XIV.) The same idea was defended by Pliny. (_Nat. Hist._, II., 65.) These views seem to have been lost from knowledge for more than a thousand years....” (Winchell, _World‐ Life_, 551‐2.)

211 _On Vortex Atoms_.

212 _Op. cit._, 567.

213 Abridged from _Principia Rerum Naturalium_.

214 The Lipika.

215 That is: the First is now the Second World.

216 The Formless Universe of Thought.

217 The Shadowy World of Primal Form, or the Intellectual.

218 In the _Rig Veda_, we find the names Brahmanaspati and Brihaspati alternating with, and equivalent to, each other. Also see _Brihadâranyaka Upanishad_; Brihaspati is a deity called the “Father of the Gods.”

219 _Logic_, II. 125.

220 Having already taken the first three.

221 Hosts.

222 The four Aspects are the body, its life or vitality, and the “double” of the body—the triad which disappears with the death of the person—and the Kâma Rûpa which disintegrates in Kâma Loka.

223 _On Amos_, iv.

224 _Theol. Cir._, I. vii.

225 See _The Occult World_, pp. 89, 90.

226 Thus the sentence, “Natura Elementorum obtinet revelationem Dei” (Clemens, _Stromata_, IV. 6), is applicable to both or neither. Consult the _Zends_, II. 228, and Plutarch _De Iside_, as compared by Layard, _Académie des Inscriptions_, 1854, Vol. XV.

227 _Exodus_ xxvi, xxvii.

228 _Antiquities_, I. VIII, ch. xxii.

229 _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 216.

230 “Man” was here substituted for “Dragon.” Compare the Ophite Spirits. The Angels recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, who correspond to these “Faces,” were with the Ophites: Dragon—Raphael; Lion—Michael; Bull, or Ox—Uriel; and Eagle—Gabriel. The four keep company with the four Evangelists, and preface the Gospels.

231 _Ezekiel_, i.

232 The Jews, save the Kabalists, having no names for East, West, South, and North, expressed the idea by words signifying before, behind, right and left, and very often confounded the terms exoterically, thus making the blinds in the _Bible_ more confused and difficult to interpret. Add to this the fact that out of the forty‐seven translators of King James’ Bible “only three understood Hebrew, and of these two died before the Psalms were translated” (_Royal Masonic Cyclopædia_), and one may easily understand what reliance can be placed on the English version of the _Bible_. In this work the Douay Roman Catholic version is generally followed.

233 The vertical line or the figure 1.

234 Circle.

235 Also for those who, etc.

236 The Formless World and the World of Forms.

237 _Theosophist_, Feb., 1877, p. 303.

238 These voluntary reïncarnations are referred to in our Doctrine as Nirmânakâyas—the surviving spiritual principles of men.

239 Sûkshma Sharîra, “dream‐like” illusive body, with which are clothed the inferior Dhyânis of the celestial Hierarchy.

240 Compare this Esoteric tenet with the Gnostic doctrine found in _Pistis‐Sophia_ (Knowledge‐Wisdom), in which treatise Sophia (Achamôth) is shown lost in the waters of Chaos (Matter), on her way to the Supreme Light, and Christos delivering and helping her on the right Path. Note well, that “Christos” with the Gnostics meant the Impersonal Principle, the Âtman of the Universe, and the Âtmâ within every man’s soul—and not Jesus; though in the old Coptic MS., in the British Museum, “Christos” is replaced by “Jesus” and other terms.

241 _A Catechism of the Visishthadvaita Philosophy_, by N. Bhâshiyacharya, F.T.S., late Pandit of the Adyar Library.

242 _Träume eines Geistersehers_, quoted by C. C. Massey, in his preface to Von Hartmann’s _Spiritismus_.

243 _Le Livre des Morts_, Paul Pierret, Chap. xvii. p. 61.

244 See also for other data on this peculiar expression, the Day of “Come To Us,” _The Funerary Ritual of the Egyptians_, by Viscount de Rougé.

245 Chaos.

246 Our Universe.

247 _The Theosophist_, Feb., 1887, p. 305.

248 _Op. cit._, p. 306.

249 Madhya is said of something whose commencement and end are unknown, and Para means infinite. These expressions all relate to infinitude and to division of time.

250 _Op. cit._, p. 307.

251 From the Sanskrit _Laya_, the point of matter where every differentiation has ceased.

252 _Five Years of Theosophy_, Art., “Personal and Impersonal God,” p. 200.

253 Elements.

254 Fraction.

255 Presidential Address before the Royal Society of Chemists, March, 1888.

256 P. 242.

257 Worlds.

258 A period of 311,040,000,000,000 years, according to Brâhmanical calculations.

259 See the _Scientific Arena_, a monthly journal devoted to current philosophical teaching and its bearing upon the religious thought of the age. New York: A. Wilford Hall, Ph.D., LL.D., Editor, July, August, and September, 1886.

260 Such, we believe, is the name applied to what he also calls “Etheric Centres,” by J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia, the inventor of the famous “Motor”—destined, as his admirers have hoped, to revolutionize the motor power of the world.

261 The moon is _dead_ only so far as regards her _inner_ principles—_i.e._, _psychically_ and _spiritually_, however absurd the statement may seem. Physically, she is only as a semi‐paralysed body may be. She is aptly referred to in Occultism as the “Insane Mother,” the great sidereal _lunatic_.

262 Occultists, however, having the most perfect faith in their own exact records, astronomical and mathematical, calculate the age of humanity, and assert that men (as separate sexes) have existed in this Round just 18,618,727 years, as the Brâhmanical teachings and even some Hindû calendars declare.

263 The commentaries on the Stanzas are resumed on p. 213.

264 In _Esoteric Buddhism_ and _Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_.

265 Many more planets are enumerated in the Secret Books than in modern astronomical works.

266 p. 48.

267 See, in _Esoteric Buddhism_, “The Constitution of Man,” and the “Planetary Chain.”

268 Winchell’s _World‐Life_.

269 P. 113 (5th edition).

270 pp. 185‐6.

271 Kosha is “sheath” literally, the sheath of every principle.

272 Sthûla‐upâdhi, or basis of the principle.

273 Life.

274 The Astral Body, or Linga Sharîra.

275 Buddhi.

276 See Diagram II, p. 195.

277 Extract from the Teacher’s letters on various topics.

278 We are not concerned with the other Globes in this work except incidentally.

279 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 136.

280 _Lucifer_, May, 1888.

281 _Esoteric Buddhism_ (5th ed.), p. 46.

282 _Op. cit._, p. 49.

283 _Op. cit._, p. 140.

284 p. 177 _supra_.

285 Occultism divides the periods of Rest (Pralaya) into several kinds: there is the _Individual_ Pralaya of each Globe, as humanity and life pass on to the next—seven minor Pralayas in each Round; the _Planetary_ Pralaya, when seven Rounds are completed; the _Solar_ Pralaya, when the whole system is at an end; and finally the _Universal_ Pralaya, Mahâ or Brahmâ Pralaya, at the close of the Age of Brahmâ. These are the chief Pralayas or “destruction periods.” There are many other minor ones, but with these we are not concerned at present.

286 Pp. 48, 49.

287 _Ibid._

288 “Physical” here means differentiated for cosmical purposes and work; that “physical side,” nevertheless, if objective to the apperception of beings from other planes, is yet quite subjective to us on our plane.

289 Pp. 276 _et seq_.

290 _Ibid._

291 See diagram, _op. cit._, p. 277.

292 _Op. cit._, pp. 273‐4.

293 _Op. cit._, p. 274‐5.

294 II. 278‐9.

295 P. 48.

296 The _Natures_ of the seven Hierarchies or Classes of Pitris and Dhyân Chohans which compose our nature and bodies are here meant.

297 Round, or revolution of Life and Being round the seven smaller Wheels.

298 Thirds.

299 Race.

300 P. 235.

301 _Rev._, xii. 7‐9.

302 See Vol. II, Shloka 17.

303 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 299, 300. Compare also Dunlap, _Sôd: the Son of the Man_, pp. 51 _et seq._

304 On the authority of Irenæus, of Justin Martyr and of the _Codex_ itself, Dunlap shows that the Nazarenes regarded “Spirit” as a _female and evil_ Power, in its connection with our Earth.

305 Fetahil is identical with the host of the Pitris, who “created man” as a “shell” only. He was, with the Nazarenes, the King of Light, and the Creator; but in this instance he is the unlucky Prometheus, who fails to get hold of the Living Fire necessary for the formation of the Divine Soul, as he is ignorant of the secret name, the ineffable or incommunicable name of the Kabalists.

306 The spirit of Matter and Concupiscence; Kâma Rûpa _minus_ Manas, Mind.

307 _Codex Nazaræus_, ii. 233.

308 This Mano of the Nazarenes strangely resembles the Hindû Manu, the Heavenly Man of the _Rig Veda_.

309 “I am the true _Vine_, and my father is the husbandman.” (_John_, xv. 1.)

310 With the Gnostics, Christ, as well as Michael who is identical with him in some respects, was the “Chief of the Æons.”

311 _Codex Nazaræus_, i. 135.

312 See the Cosmogony of Pherecydes.

313 I. 301, note.

314 They are found, however, in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_.

315 _Op. cit._, II. 183 _et seq._

316 For the difference between _nous_, the higher divine Wisdom, and psyche, the lower and terrestrial, see _St. James_, iii. 15‐17.

317 Jehovah’s connection with the Moon in the _Kabalah_ is well known to students.

318 For the Nazarenes, see _Isis Unveiled_, II. 131 and 132. The true followers of the true Christos were all Nazarenes and _Christians_, and were the opponents of the later Christians.

319 See the diagram of the Lunar Chain of seven worlds, p. 195, where, as in our own or any other Chain, the upper worlds are spiritual, while the lowest, whether Moon, Earth, or any other planet, is dark with matter.

320 The whole Kosmos. The reader is reminded that in the Stanzas Kosmos often means only our own Solar System, not the Infinite Universe.

321 This is purely astronomical.

322 For a clearer explanation of the above, see “Saptaparna” in the Index.

323 _Op. cit._, III. 346.

324 _Book of Dzyan_.

325 See _Index_, at the words “Evolution,” “Darwin,” “Kapila,” “Battle of Life,” etc.

326 _Isis Unveiled_, II. 260.

327 _Vishnu Purâna_.

328 Chain.

329 Earth.

330 Kenealy, _Book of God_, p. 118.

331 Acosta, vi. 14.

332 Kenealy, _Ibid._

333 I, 587‐93.

334 That which was _natural_ in the sight of primitive man, has only now become _miracle_ to us; and that which was to him a miracle, could never be expressed in our language.

335 There is no nation in the world in which the feeling of devotion, or of religious mysticism, is more developed and prominent than in the Hindû people. See what Max Müller says of this idiosyncrasy and national feature in his works. This is a direct inheritance from the primitive _conscious_ men of the Third Race.

336 _Lectures on Heroes_.

337 Vehicle.

338 Âtman.

339 Âtmâ‐Buddhi, Spirit‐Soul. This relates to the cosmic principles.

340 Again.

341 Avalokiteshvara.

342 Builders. The seven creative Rishis, now connected with the constellation of the Great Bear.

343 Earth.

344 Rosenroth, _Liber Mysterii_ IV. 1.

345 _Genesis_ i.

346 _Auszüge aus dem Zohar_, pp. 13‐15.

347 See _Vishnu Purâna_, Book I.

348 Ch. lxxxviii.

349 Ch. lxiv. 29, 30.

350 _Ibid._, 34, 35.

351 A World, when called a “higher World,” is not higher by reason of its location, but because it is superior in quality or essence. Yet such a World is generally understood by the profane as “Heaven,” and located above our heads.

352 Of Form, the Sthûla Sharîra, External Body.

353 Pearls.

354 Ἄνθρωπος, a work on Occult Embryology, Book I.

355 Namely, a congenital idiot.

356 _John_ iii, 8.

357 Ch. cxlviii.

358 _Ibid._, cxlix. 51.

359 _The Seven Souls of Man_, p. 2; a Lecture by Gerald Massey.

360 _De Iside et Osiride_, xliii.

361 Ch. xli.

362 iv. 5.

363 Mariette’s _Abydos_, plate 51.

364 P. Pierret, _Études Égyptologiques_.

365 _Ritual_, ch. ii.

366 Linked into.

367 _Op. cit._, xvii. 4.

368 Several inimical critics are anxious to prove that no Seven Principles of Man, or Septenary Constitution of our Chain, were taught in our earlier volumes, _Isis Unveiled_. Though in that work the doctrine could only be hinted at, there are many passages, nevertheless, in which the Septenary Constitution of both Man and the Chain is openly mentioned. Speaking of the Elohim (II. 420), it is said: “They remain over the seventh heaven (or spiritual world), for it is they who, according to the Kabalists, formed in succession the six material worlds, or rather, attempts at worlds, that preceded our own, which, they say, is the seventh.” Our Globe, in the diagram representing the Chain, is, of course, the seventh and lowest; though, as the evolution on these Globes is cyclic, it is the fourth, on the descending arc of matter. And again (II. 367) it is written: “In the Egyptian notions, _as in those of all other faiths founded on philosophy_, man was not merely ... a union of soul and body; he was a trinity, when spirit was added to it. Besides, that doctrine made him consist of ... body, ... astral form, or shadow, ... animal soul, ... the higher soul, and ... terrestrial intelligence ... [and] a sixth principle, etc., etc.”—the seventh—SPIRIT. So clearly are these principles mentioned, that even in the _Index_ (II. 683), one finds “Six Principles of Man,” the seventh being, in strict truth, the synthesis of the six, and _not_ a principle but a ray of the Absolute ALL.

369 See Diagram III, p. 221.

370 pp. 340‐351, “Genesis of the Soul.”

371 _De Mysteriis_, ii. 3.

372 _Asiatic Researches_, xi. 99, 100.

373 Ch. xxxii. 9.

374 Their Upper Triad.

375 Bhûmi or Prithivî.

376 _Book of the Dead_, i. 7. Compare also _Mysteries of Rostan_.

377 Kingdom.

378 Kingdom.

379 The first Shadow of the Physical Man.

380 Man.

381 The Moon.

382 See _Mantuan Codex_.

383 The formation of the “Living Soul,” or Man, would render the idea more clearly. A “Living Soul” is a synonym of Man in the _Bible_. These are our seven “Principles.”

384 _Ha Idra Zuta Kadisha_, xxii. 746.

385 xviii. 12.

386 _Hebrews_, iv.

387 Cruden, _sub voce_.

388 _Book of Numbers_, 1. viii. 3.

389 p. 389.

390 Plate VII. p. 37.

391 Esotericism teaches the same. But Manas is not Nephesh; nor is the latter the Astral, but the Fourth Principle, and also the Second, Prâna, for Nephesh is the “Breath of Life” in man, as in beast or insect; of physical, material life, which has no spirituality in it.

392 Éliphas Lévi, whether purposely or otherwise, has confused the numbers: with us his No. 2 is No. 1 (Spirit); and by making of Nephesh both the Plastic Mediator and Life, he thus makes in reality only six principles, because he repeats the first two.

393 _Zohar_, “Idra Suta,” Book iii., p. 292b.

394 1. 302.

395 Read, in _Isis Unveiled_ (ii. 297‐303), the doctrine of the _Codex Nazaræus_. Every tenet of our teaching is found there under a different form and allegory.

396 _Manu_, Bk. I.

397 The word “Sin” is curious, but has a particular Occult relation to the Moon, besides being its Chaldean equivalent.

398 Professor Zöllner’s theory has been more than welcomed by several Scientists, who are also Spiritualists; Professors Butlerof and Wagner, of St. Petersburg, for instance.

399 “The giving reality to abstractions is the error of Realism. Space and Time are frequently viewed as separated from all the concrete experiences of the mind, instead of being generalizations of these in certain aspects.” (Bain, _Logic_, Part II. p. 389.)

400 _The Mysteries of Magic_, by A. E. Waite.

401 Wilson, I. 23, 24.

402 _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 169.

403 In the Sânkhya philosophy, the seven Prakritis, or “productive productions,” are Mahat, Ahamkâra, and the _five_ Tanmâtras. See _Sânkhya Kârikâ_, III., and the Commentary thereon.

404 See _Linga Purâna_, Prior Section, lxx. 12 _et seq._; and _Vâyu Purâna_, ch. iv., but especially the former _Purâna_—Prior Section, viii. 67‐74.

405 _Vishnu Purâna_, Book vi., ch. iv. No use to say so to the Hindûs, who know their _Purânas_ by heart, but very useful to remind our Orientalists and those Westerns who regard Wilson’s translations as authoritative, that, in his English translation of the _Vishnu Purâna_, he is guilty of the most ludicrous contradictions and errors. So on this identical subject of the seven Prakritis, or the seven zones of Brahmâ’s Egg, the two accounts differ totally. In Vol. i. p. 40, the Egg is said to be externally invested by seven envelopes. Wilson comments: “by Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and Ahamkâra”—which last word does not exist in the Sanskrit texts. And in Vol. v. p. 198, of the same _Purâna_, it is written: “in this manner were the seven forms of nature (Prakriti) reckoned from Mahat to Earth” (?). Between Mahat, or Mahâ‐Buddhi, and “Water, etc.”, the difference is very considerable.

406 According to the great metaphysician Hegel also. For him Nature was a _perpetual becoming_. A purely Esoteric conception. Creation or Origin, in the Christian sense of the term, is absolutely unthinkable. As the above‐quoted thinker said: “God (the Universal Spirit) _objectivizes himself as Nature_, and again rises out of it.”

407 _Book of Dzyan_, Comm. III, par. 18.

408 P. 19.

409 Primitive, or First Man.

410 Reïncarnation.

411 Vehicle.

412 See, for example, _Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the Quichés_, by Augustus le Plongeon, who shows the identity between the Egyptian rites and beliefs and those of the people he describes. The ancient hieratic alphabets of the Mayas and the Egyptians are almost identical.

413 In _The Theosophist_, 1881.

414 T. Subba Row, _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 154.

415 Also called the “Sons of Wisdom” and of the “Fire‐Mist,” and the “Brothers of the Sun,” in the Chinese records. Si‐dzang (Tibet) is mentioned, in the MSS. of the sacred library of the province of Fo‐ Kien, as the great seat of Occult learning from time immemorial, ages before Buddha. The Emperor Yu, the “Great” (2,207 B.C.), a pious Mystic and great Adept, is said to have obtained his Knowledge from the “Great Teachers of the Snowy Range” in Si‐dzang.

416 _Matt._ vi. 5, 6.

417 _The Virgin of the World_, pp. 134‐5.

418 _Paracelsus_, Franz Hartmann, M.D., p. 44.

419 This word is explained by Dr. Hartmann, from the original texts of Paracelsus before him, as follows. According to this great Rosicrucian; “Mysterium is everything out of which something may be developed, which is only germinally contained in it. A seed is the ‘Mysterium’ of a plant, an egg that of a living bird, etc.”

420 _Op. cit._, pp. 41, 42.

421 It is only the mediæval Kabalists who, following the Jewish and one or two Neo‐Platonists, applied the term Microcosm to man. Ancient philosophy called the Earth the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, and man the outcome of the two.

422 “This doctrine, preached 300 years ago,” remarks the translator, “is identical with the one that has revolutionized modern thought, after having been put into new shape and elaborated by Darwin. It is still more elaborated by Kapila in the Sânkhya philosophy.”

423 The Eastern Occultist says that they are guided and informed by Spiritual Beings, the Workmen in the invisible Worlds, and behind the veil of Occult Nature, or Nature _in abscondito_.

424 Wilson, I. ii., (Vol. I. 35).

425 A frequent expression in the said “Fragments,” to which we take exception. The _Universal Mind_ is not a _Being_ or “God.”

426 _The Virgin of the World_, p. 47. “Asclepios,” Pt. I.

427 _Divine Pymander_, ix. 64.

428 _The Virgin of the World_, p. 153.

429 _Op. cit._, pp. 139, 140. Fragments from the “Physical Eclogues” and “Florilegium” of Stobæus.

430 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. ii, Wilson, I. 13‐15.

431 _Op. cit._, pp. 135‐138.

432 This teaching does not refer to Prakriti‐Purusha beyond the boundaries of our small universe.

433 The ultimate quiescent state; the Nirvânic condition of the Seventh Principle.

434 The teaching is all given from our plane of consciousness.

435 Or the “dream of Science,” the primeval really homogeneous matter, which no mortal can make objective in this Race, or Round either.

436 “Vishnu, in the form of his active energy, neither ever rises nor sets, and is at once, the _seven‐fold sun_ and distinct from it,” says _Vishnu Purâna_, II. xi., (Wilson, II. 296).

437 “In the same manner as a man approaching a mirror placed upon a stand, beholds in it his own image, so the energy (or reflection) of Vishnu [the Sun] is never disjoined but remains ... in the Sun (as in a mirror), that is there stationed.” (_Ibid._, _loc. cit._)

438 Compare the Hermetic “Nature” “going down cyclically into matter when she meets the ‘Heavenly Man’.”

439 The writers of the above knew perfectly well the physical cause of the tides, of the waves, etc. It is the informing Spirit of the whole cosmic solar body that is meant here, and which is referred to whenever such expressions are used from the mystic point of view.

440 _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 110, 111, art., “The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac.”

441 See Stanzas III and IV, and the Commentaries thereupon, and especially compare the comments on Stanza IV, concerning the Lipika and the four Mahârâjahs, the agents of Karma.

442 And “Gods” or Dhyânis, too, not only the Genii or “guided Forces.”

443 The meaning of this is that as man is composed of all the Great Elements—Fire, Air, Water, Earth and Ether—the Elementals which respectively belong to these Elements feel attracted to man by reason of their coëssence. That Element which predominates in a certain constitution will be the ruling Element throughout life. For instance, if man has a preponderance of the earthly, gnomic Element, the Gnomes will lead him towards assimilating metals—money and wealth, and so on. “Animal man is the son of the animal elements out of which his Soul [life] was born, and animals are the mirrors of man,” says Paracelsus. (_De Fundamento Sapientiæ._) Paracelsus was cautious, and wanted the _Bible_ to agree with what he said, and therefore did not say all.

444 Cyclic progress in development.

445 The God in man and often the incarnation of a God, a highly Spiritual Dhyân Chohan in him, besides the presence of his own Seventh Principle.

446 Now, what “God” is meant here? Not God the “Father,” the anthropomorphic fiction; for that God is the Elohim collectively, and has no being apart from the Host. Besides, such a God is finite and imperfect. It is the high Initiates and Adepts who are meant here by the “few in number.” And it is precisely such men who believe in “Gods”, and know no “God” but one Universal unrelated and unconditioned Deity.

447 _The Virgin of the World_, pp. 104‐5, “The Definitions of Asclepios.”

448 P. 120.

449 _National Reformer_, January 9th, 1887. Article “Phreno‐Kosmo‐ Biology,” by Dr. Lewins.

450 This is Cyclic law; but this law itself is often defied by human stubbornness.

451 Vol. I. p. 256.

452 _Sepher Jetzirah._

453 As far as “Divine Revelation” is concerned, we agree. Not so with regard to “human history.” For there is “history” in most of the allegories and “myths” of India; and events, real actual events, are concealed under them.

454 When the “false theologies” disappear, then true prehistoric realities will be found, contained especially in the mythology of the Âryans and ancient Hindûs, and even the pre‐Homeric Hellenes.

455 See Section VII, “Deus Lunus.”

456 From an MS.

457 _Guide au Musée de Boulaq_, pp. 148, 149.

458 As we said in _Isis Unveiled_ (II. 438‐9): “To the present moment, in spite of all controversies and researches, History and Science remain as much as ever in the dark as to the origin of the Jews. They may as well be the exiled Chandâlas of old India, the ‘bricklayers’ mentioned by Veda‐Vyâsa and Manu, as the Phœnicians of Herodotus, or the Hyksos of Josephus, or the descendants of Pali shepherds, or a mixture of all these. The _Bible_ names the Tyrians as a kindred people and claims dominion over them.... Yet whatever they may have been, they became a hybrid people, not long after the time of Moses, for the _Bible_ shows them freely intermarrying not alone with the Canaanites, but with every other nation or race they came in contact with.”

459 _Knowledge_, Vol. I; see also Petrie’s letter to _The Academy_, Dec. 17, 1881.

460 _The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid_, p. 9.

461 _Op. cit._, I. 519.

462 _The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid_, p. 93.

463 vii. 13 _et seq._

464 P. 224.

465 Vol. I. Part I. 46.

466 x. 10.

467 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. 442‐3.

468 _Exodus_, 11. 21.

469 George Smith, _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, pp. 299, 300.

470 II. 3.

471 As a reminder how the _esoteric_ religion of Moses was crushed several times, and the worship of Jehovah, as reëstablished by David, put in its place, by Hezekiah for instance, compare _Isis Unveiled_ (II. 436‐42). Surely there must have been some very good reasons why the Sadducees, who furnished almost all the High Priests of Judæa, held to the Laws of Moses and spurned the alleged “Books of Moses,” the _Pentateuch_ of the Synagogue and the _Talmud_?

472 Once more, remember the Hindû Wittoba crucified in space; the significance of the “sacred sign,” the Svastika; Plato’s Decussated Man in Space, etc.

473 See farther on the description given of the early Âryan Initiation: of Vishvakarman crucifying the Sun, Vikarttana, shorn of his beams—on a cruciform lathe.

474 _Primeval Man Unveiled; or the Anthropology of the Bible_, by the author (unknown) of _The Stars and the Angels_, 1870, p. 14.

475 _Op. cit._, p. 195.

476 Especially in the face of the evidence furnished by the authorized _Bible_ itself in _Genesis_ (iv. 16, 17), which shows Cain going to the land of Nod and there marrying a wife.

477 _Ibid._, p. 194.

478 _Ibid._, p. 55.

479 _Ibid._, pp. 206‐7.

480 _Acts_, xvii. 23, 24.

481 _Taittirîyaka Upanishad_, Second Vallî, First Anuvâka.

482 _Ephesians_, vi, 12.

483 _Oracles of Zoroaster_, “Effatum,” xvi.

484 _Georgica_, Book II. 325.

485 _Isis Unveiled._

486 _Op. cit._, I. 5‐13, Burnell’s translation.

487 The ideal apex of the Pythagorean Triangle.

488 See A. Coke Burnell’s translation, edited by Ed. W. Hopkins, Ph. D.

489 Ahamkâra, as universal Self‐Consciousness, has a triple aspect, as has also Manas. For this “conception of I,” or the Ego, is either _sattva_, “pure quietude,” or appears as _rajas_, “active,” or remains _tamas_, “stagnant,” in darkness. It belongs to Heaven and Earth, and assumes the properties of Ether.

490 See _Sânkhya Kârikâ_ III, and Commentaries.

491 The word “eternity,” by which Christian theologians interpret the term “for ever and ever,” does not exist in the Hebrew tongue. “Oulam,” says Le Clerc, only imports a time when beginning or end is not known. It does not mean “infinite duration,” and the term “for ever,” in the _Old Testament_, only signifies a “long time.” Nor is the word “eternity” used in the Christian sense in the _Purânas_. For in _Vishnu Purâna_, it is clearly stated that by “eternity” and “immortality” only “existence to the end of the Kalpa” is meant. (Book II. chap. viii.)

492 Orphic Theogony is purely Oriental and Indian in its spirit. The successive transformations it has undergone, have now separated it widely from the spirit of ancient Cosmogony, as may be seen by comparing it even with Hesiod’s _Theogony_. Yet the truly Âryan Hindû spirit breaks forth everywhere in both the Hesiodic and Orphic systems. (See the remarkable work of James Darmesteter, “Cosmogonies Âryennes,” in his _Essais Orientaux_.) Thus the original Greek conception of Chaos is that of the Secret Wisdom Religion. In Hesiod, therefore, Chaos is infinite, boundless, endless and beginningless in duration, an abstraction and a visible presence at the same time, Space filled with darkness, which is primordial matter in its _pre‐cosmic_ state. For in its etymological sense, Chaos is Space, according to Aristotle, and Space is the ever Unseen and Unknowable Deity, in our philosophy.

493 The _manifested_ Spirit: Absolute, Divine Spirit is one with absolute Divine Substance; Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti are one in essence. Therefore, Cosmic Ideation and Cosmic Substance, in their primal character, are one also.

494 _Sepher Yetzirah_, Chap. I. Mishna ix.

495 _Ibid._ It is from “Arba” that Abram is derived.

496 _Zohar_, I. 2a.

497 _Sepher Yetzirah_, Mishna ix. 10.

498 _Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection_.

499 Plato, _Timæus_.

500 Suidas, _sub voc._ “Tyrrhenia.” See Cory’s _Ancient Fragments_, p. 309, 2nd ed.

501 The reader will understand that by “years” is meant “ages,” not mere periods of 13 lunar months each.

502 See the Greek translation by Philon Byblius.

503 Cory, _Op. cit._, p. 3.

504 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 342.

505 Mithras was regarded among the Persians as the _theos ek petras_—the God from the rock.

506 Bordj is called a fire‐mountain, a volcano: therefore it contains fire, rock, earth and water; the male, or active, and the female, or passive, elements. The myth is suggestive.

507 _Op. cit._, I. 156.

508 Henry Pratt, M.D., _New Aspects of Life_.

509 _Siphrah Dtzenioutha_, i. 16.

510 Damascius, in his Theogony, calls it Dis, “the disposer of all things.” Cory, _Ancient Fragments_, p. 314.

511 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 341.

512 “Migration of Abraham,” 32.

513 With the Greeks, the River‐Gods, all of them the Sons of the Primeval Ocean—Chaos, in its masculine aspect—were the respective ancestors of the Hellenic races. For them the Ocean was the Father of the Gods; and thus in this connection they had anticipated the theories of Thales, as rightly observed by Aristotle. (_Metaph._ I. 3‐5.)

514 xxvi. 5.

515 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 133‐4.

516 The Spirit, or hidden voice of the Mantras; the active manifestation of the latent force, or Occult potency.

517 Orthography of the _Archaic Dictionary_.

518 We do not mean the current or accepted _Bible_, but the _real_ Jewish Scripture, now kabatistically explained.

519 See _Genesis_, ii. 4.

520 It is “unutterable” for the simple reason that it is non‐existent. It _never_ was either a _name_, or any _word_ at all, but an _idea_ that could not be expressed. A substitute was created for it in the century preceding our era.

521 The Cosmic Tabernacle of Moses, erected by him in the Desert, was _square_, representing the four Cardinal Points and the four Elements, as Josephus tells his readers. (_Antiq._ I. viii. ch. xxii.) The idea was taken from the pyramids in Egypt, and also in Tyre, where the pyramids became pillars. The Genii, or Angels, have their abodes in these four points respectively.

522 Isaac Myer’s _Qabbalah_, published 1888, p. 415.

523 As, for instance, in _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. I.

524 Plutarch, _De Iside et Osiride_, lvi.

525 _Spirit History of Man_, p. 88.

526 Movers, _Phoinizer_, 268.

527 Cory, _Ancient Fragments_, 240.

528 _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. I. Ch. iv., Fitzedward Hall’s rendering.

529 Just as Mûlaprakriti is known only to Îshvara, the Logos, as he is called by T. Subba Row.

530 Franck, _Die Kabbala_, 126.

531 Philo, _Quæst. et Solut._

532 Franck, _Op. cit._, 153.

533 The “Seven Angels of the Face,” with the Christians.

534 _Philosophumena_, vi. 42.

535 _The Kabbalah Unveiled_, 47.

536 _Qabbalah_, 233.

537 p. 79.

538 Arnobius, VI. xii.

539 We employ the term as one accepted and sanctioned by use, and therefore more comprehensible to the reader.

540 See Dunlap, _Sôd: the Mysteries of Adoni_, 23.

541 With the ancient Jews, as shown by Le Clerc, the word Oulom meant simply a time whose beginning or end was not known. The term “Eternity,” properly speaking, did not exist in the Hebrew tongue with the meaning applied by Vedântins to Parabrahman, for instance.

542 _Zohar_, Part I. fol. 20a.

543 In the Indian Pantheon the double‐sexed Logos is Brahmâ, the Creator, whose seven “Mind‐born” Sons are the primeval Rishis—the Builders.

544 Says Rabbi Simeon: “Oh, companions, companions, man as an emanation was both man and woman, as well on the side of the ‘Father’ as on the side of the ‘Mother.’ And this is the sense of the words: ‘And Elohim spake, Let there be Light, and it was Light’; ... and this is the _two‐fold man_.” (_Auszüge ans dem Sohar_, 13, 15.) Light, then, in _Genesis_, stood for the Androgyne Ray, or “Heavenly Man.”

545 _Zohar_, iii. 290.

546 _Op. cit._, ii. 261.

547 ix. 1.

548 _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, 62, 63.

549 The Seven Swans that are believed to descend from Heaven on Lake Mânsarovara, are in the popular fancy the Seven Rishis of the Great Bear, who assume that form to visit the locality where the _Vedas_ were written.

550 See Petronius, _Satyricon_, cxxxvi.

551 _Progress of Religious Ideas_, I. 17 _et seq._

552 iii. 165.

553 Ch. liv. 3.

554 Ch. xxii. 1.

555 Ch. xlii. 13.

556 Ch. liv. 1, 2; ch. lxxvii. i.

557 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. 39.

558 _Op. cit._, _ibid._

559 Ch. xvii. 50, 51.

560 Ch. xlii. 13.

561 Ch. lxxx. 9.

562 See Max Müller’s “Our Figures.”

563 A Kabalist would be rather inclined to believe that as the Arabic _cifron_ was taken from the Indian _sunyan_, nought, so the Jewish Kabalistic Sephiroth (_Sephrim_) were taken from the word _cipher_, not in the sense of emptiness, but in that of creation by number and degrees of evolution. And the Sephiroth are 10 or [circle split by vertical line].

564 See King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_, 370 (2nd ed.).

565 _De Vita Pithag._

566 The year of his birth is given as 608 B.C.

567 That is to say 332 B.C.

568 _Metaphysics_, vii., F.

569 _Euterpe_, 75, 76.

570 _De Cultu Egypt._

571 xxi. 5 _et seq._

572 II _Kings_, xviii. 4.

573 _Supra_, pp. 386, 387.

574 III. 124.

575 Movers, _Phoinizer_, 282.

576 See _Isis Unveiled_, I. 56.

577 Weber, _Akad‐Vorles_, 213, _et seq._

578 The Chinese seem to have thus anticipated Sir William Thomson’s theory that the first living germ had dropped to the earth from some passing comet. Query: Why should this be called _scientific_ and the Chinese idea a superstitious, foolish theory?

579 Compare Movers, _Phoinizer_, 268.

580 His triadic Goddesses are Sati and Anouki.

581 Ptah was originally the god of Death, of Destruction, like Shiva. He is a Solar God only by virtue of the Sun’s fire killing as well as vivifying. He was the national God of Memphis, the radiant and “fair‐faced” God.

582 _Book of Numbers._

583 Wilson, _Vishnu Purâna_, I. Pref. lxxxiv‐v.

584 There is a curious piece of information in the Buddhist esoteric traditions. The exoteric or allegorical biography of Gautama Buddha shows this great Sage dying of an indigestion of “pork and rice”; a very prosaic end, indeed, with little of the solemn element in it! This is explained as an allegorical reference to his having been born in the “Boar” or Varâha Kalpa, when Vishnu assumed the form of that animal to raise the Earth out of the “Waters of Space.” Now as the Brâhmans descend direct from Brahmâ and are, so to speak, identified with him; and as they are at the same time the mortal enemies of Buddha and Buddhism, we have this curious allegorical hint and combination. The Brâhmanism of the Boar or Varâha Kalpa has slaughtered the religion of Buddha in India, swept it from its face. Therefore Buddha, who is identified with his philosophy, is said to have died from the effects of eating of the flesh of a wild hog. The very idea of one who established the most rigorous vegetarianism and respect for animal life—even to refusing to eat eggs as being vehicles of latent life—dying of an indigestion of meat, is absurdly contradictory and has puzzled more than one Orientalist. But the present explanation, however, unveils the allegory, and makes clear all the rest. The Varâha, however, is no simple Boar, but seems to have meant at first some antediluvian lacustrine animal “delighting to sport in water.” (_Vâyu Purâna._)

585 According to Colonel Wilford, the conclusion of the “Great War” took place in 1370 B.C., (_Asiatic Researches_, xi. 116.); according to Bentley, 575 B.C.!! We may yet hope, before the end of this century, to see the Mahâbhâratan epic proclaimed identical with the wars of the great Napoleon.

586 See _Royal Asiat. Soc._ ix. 364.

587 Bk. vi. ch. iii.

588 In the Vedânta and Nyâya, Nimitta, from which Naimittika, is rendered as the Efficient Cause, when antithesized with Upâdâna, the Physical or Material Cause. In the Sânkhya, Pradhâna is a cause inferior to Brahmâ, or rather Brahmâ being himself a cause, is superior to Pradhâna. Hence “Incidental” is a wrong translation, and ought to be rendered, as shown by some scholars, “Ideal” Cause: even Real Cause would have been better.

589 XII. iv, 35.

590 _Vâyu Purâna._

591 Wilson, _Vishnu Purâna_, VI, iii.

592 The chief Kumâra, or Virgin‐God, a Dhyân Chohan who refuses to create. A prototype of St. Michael, who also refuses to do so.

593 See concluding lines in Section, “Chaos: Theos: Kosmos.”

594 _Ibid._, iv.

595 This prospect would hardly suit Christian theology, which prefers an eternal, everlasting Hell for its followers.

596 The term “Elements” must be here understood to mean not only the visible and physical elements, but also that which St. Paul calls Elements—the Spiritual, Intelligent Potencies—Angels and Demons in their manvantaric forms.

597 When this description is correctly understood by Orientalists, in its esoteric significance, then it will be found that this cosmic correlation of World‐Elements may explain the correlation of physical forces better than those now known. At any rate, Theosophists will perceive that Prakriti has _seven forms_, or principles, “reckoned from Mahat to Earth.” The “Waters” mean here the mystic “Mother”; the Womb of Abstract Nature, in which the Manifested Universe is conceived. The seven “zones” have reference to the Seven Divisions of that Universe, or the Noumena of the Forces that bring it into being. It is all allegorical.

598 _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. VI. Ch. iv., Wilson’s mistakes being corrected and the original terms put in brackets.

599 As it is the Mahâ, the Great, or so‐called Final, Pralaya which is here described, every thing is reäbsorbed into its original One Element; the “Gods themselves, Brahmâ and the rest” being said to die and disappear during that long “Night.”

600 The “Builders” of the Stanzas.

601 From the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_, c. i. § 16 _et seq._; as quoted in Myer’s _Qabbalah_, 232‐3.

602 Compare the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_.

603 Bk. I. Ch. iii.

604 pp. 219, 221.

605 See Jacolliot’s _Les Fils de Dieu_, and _L’Inde des Brahmes_, p. 230.

606 If this is not prophetic, what is?

607 Wilson, _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. IV. Ch. xxiv.

608 The _Matsya Purâna_ gives Katâpa.

609 _Vishnu Purâna_, _Ibid._

610 Max Müller translates the name as Morya, of the Morya dynasty, to which Chandragupta belonged. (See _History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature_). In _Matsya Purâna_,