The Secret Doctrine

To calculate its age, however, as the pupil is asked to do in the Stanza, is rather difficult, since we are not given the figures of the Great Kalpa, and are not allowed to publish those of our small Yugas, except as to the approximate duration of these. “The older Wheels rotated for one Eternity and one‐half of an Eternity,” it says. We know that by “Eternity” the seventh part of 311,040,000,000,000 years, or an Age of Brahmâ is meant. But what of that? We also know that, to begin with, if we take for our basis the above figures, we have first of all to eliminate from the 100 Years of Brahmâ, or 311,040,000,000,000 years, two Years taken up by the Sandhyâs (Twilights), which leaves 98, as we have to bring it to the mystical combination 14 x 7. But we have no knowledge at what time precisely the evolution and formation of our little Earth began. Therefore, it is impossible to calculate its age, unless the time of its birth is given—which the Teachers refuse to do, so far. At the close of this Volume and in Volume II, however, some chronological hints will be given. We must remember, moreover, that the law of analogy holds good for the worlds, as it does for man; and that as “The One [Deity] becomes Two [Deva or Angel], and Two becomes Three [or Man],” etc., so we are taught that the Curds (World‐Stuff) become Wanderers (Comets); these become stars; and the stars (the centres of vortices), our sun and planets—to put it briefly. This cannot be so very unscientific, since Descartes also thought that “the planets rotate on their axes, because they were once lucid stars, the centres of vortices.”

(b) There are four grades of Initiation mentioned in exoteric works, which are known respectively in Sanskrit as Srotâpanna, Sakridâgâmin, Anâgâmin, and Arhan; the Four Paths to Nirvâna, in this our Fourth Round, bearing the same appellations. The Arhan, though he can see the Past, the Present and the Future, is not yet the highest Initiate; for the Adept himself, the initiated candidate, becomes Chelâ (Pupil) to a higher Initiate. Three higher grades have still to be conquered by the Arhan who would reach the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. There are those who have reached it even in this Fifth Race of ours, but the faculties necessary for the attainment of these higher grades will be fully developed, in the average ascetic, only at the end of this Root‐Race, and in the Sixth and Seventh. Thus, there will always be Initiates and the Profane until the end of this minor Manvantara, the present Life‐Cycle. The Arhats of the “Fire‐Mist,” of the Seventh Rung, are but one remove from the Root‐Base of their Hierarchy, the highest on Earth and our Terrestrial Chain. This “Root‐Base” has a name which can only be translated into English by several compound words—the “Ever‐Living‐Human‐Banyan.” This “Wondrous Being” descended from a “high region,” they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before the separation of sexes in the Third Race.

This Third Race is sometimes called collectively the “Sons of Passive Yoga,” i.e., it was produced unconsciously by the Second Race, which, as it was intellectually inactive, is supposed to have been constantly plunged in a kind of blank or abstract contemplation, as required by the conditions of the Yoga state. In the first or earlier portion of the existence of this Third Race, while it was yet in its state of purity, the “Sons of Wisdom,” who, as will be seen, incarnated in this Root‐Race, produced by Kriyâshakti a progeny, called the “Sons of Ad,” or of the “Fire‐Mist,” the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” etc. They were a conscious production, as a portion of the Race was already animated with the divine spark of spiritual, superior intelligence. This progeny was not a race. It was at first a Wondrous Being, called the “Initiator,” and after him a group of semi‐divine and semi‐human Beings. “Set apart” in archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyânis—“Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras”—to form the nursery for future human Adepts, on this Earth and during the present Cycle. These “Sons of Will and Yoga,” born, so to speak, in an immaculate way, remained, it is explained, entirely apart from the rest of mankind.

The “Being” just referred to, who has to remain nameless, is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane—the ever invisible, yet ever present) Personage, about whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he, again, who holds spiritual sway over the initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the “Nameless One” who has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the “Initiator,” called the “GREAT SACRIFICE.” For, sitting at the Threshold of LIGHT, he looks into it from within the Circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last Day of this Life‐Cycle. Why does the Solitary Watcher remain at his self‐chosen post? Why does he sit by the Fountain of Primeval Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer, for he has naught to learn which he does not know—aye, neither on this Earth, nor in its Heaven? Because the lonely, sore‐footed Pilgrims, on their journey back to their Home, are never sure, to the last moment, of not losing their way, in this limitless desert of Illusion and Matter called Earth‐Life. Because he would fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has sacrificed himself for the sake of Mankind, though but a few elect may profit by the GREAT SACRIFICE.

It is under the direct, silent guidance of this Mahâ‐Guru that all the other less divine Teachers and Instructors of Mankind became, from the first awakening of human consciousness, the guides of early Humanity. It is through these “Sons of God” that infant Humanity learned its first notions of all the arts and sciences, as well as of spiritual knowledge; and it is They who laid the first foundation‐stone of those ancient civilizations that so sorely puzzle our modern generation of students and scholars.

Let those who doubt this statement, explain, on any other equally reasonable grounds, the mystery of the extraordinary knowledge possessed by the Ancients—who, some pretend, developed from lower and animal‐like savages, the “cave‐men” of the palæolithic age! Let them turn, for instance, to such works as those of Vitruvius Pollio of the Augustan age, on architecture, in which all the rules of proportion are those anciently taught at Initiations, if they would acquaint themselves with this truly divine art, and understand the deep esoteric significance hidden in every rule and law of proportion. No man descended from a palæolithic cave‐ dweller could ever evolve such a science unaided, even in millenniums of thought and intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those incarnated Rishis and Devas of the Third Root Race who handed on their knowledge, from one generation to another, to Egypt and to Greece with her now lost canon of proportion; just as the disciples of the Initiates of the Fourth, the Atlanteans, handed it over to their Cyclopes, the “Sons of Cycles” or of the “Infinite,” from whom the name passed to the still later generations of Gnostic priests.

It is owing to the divine perfection of these architectural proportions that the Ancients could build these wonders of all the subsequent ages, their Fanes, Pyramids, Cave‐Temples, Cromlechs, Cairns, Altars, proving they had the powers of machinery and a knowledge of mechanics to which modern skill is like a child’s play, and which that skill refers to itself as the “works of hundred‐handed giants.”(330) Modern architects may not have altogether neglected these rules, but they have superadded enough empirical innovations to destroy the just proportions. It is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of construction of the Grecian temples erected to the immortal Gods; and the ten books of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio on Architecture, of one, in short, who was an Initiate, can only be studied esoterically. The Druidical Circles, the Dolmens, the Temples of India, Egypt and Greece, the Towers, and the 127 towns in Europe which were found “Cyclopean in origin” by the French Institute, are all the work of initiated Priest‐Architects, the descendants of those first taught by the “Sons of God,” and justly called the “Builders.” This is what appreciative posterity says of these descendants:

They used neither mortar nor cement, nor steel, nor iron to cut the stones with; and yet they were so artificially wrought that in many places the joints are hardly seen, though many of the stones, as in Peru, are 38 feet long, 18 feet broad, and 6 feet thick, and in the walls of the fortress of Cuzco there are stones of a still greater size.(331) Again: The well of Syene, made 5,400 years ago, when that spot was exactly under the tropic, which it has now ceased to be, was ... so constructed, that at noon, at the precise moment of the solar solstice, the entire disk of the sun was seen reflected on its surface—a work which the united skill of all the astronomers in Europe would not now be able to effect.(332) Although these matters were barely hinted at in Isis Unveiled, it will be well to remind the reader of what was said there(333) concerning a certain Sacred Island in Central Asia, and to refer him for further details to the Section, entitled “The Sons of God and the Sacred Island,” attached to Stanza IX of Volume II. A few more explanations, however, though thrown out in a fragmentary form, may help the student to obtain a glimpse into the present mystery.

To state at least one detail concerning these mysterious “Sons of God” in plain words: it is from them, these Brahmaputras, that the high Dvijas, the initiated Brâhmans of old, claimed descent, while the modern Brâhman would have the lower castes believe literally that they (the Brâhmans) issued direct from the mouth of Brahmâ. Such is the Esoteric teaching; and it adds moreover that, although those descended (spiritually, of course) from the “Sons of Will and Yoga” became in time divided into opposite sexes, as their “Kriyâshakti” progenitors did themselves later on; yet even their degenerate descendants have, down to the present day, retained a veneration and respect for the creative function, and still regard it in the light of a religious ceremony, whereas the more civilized nations consider it as a mere animal function. Compare the Western views and practice in these matters with the Institutions of Manu, in regard to the laws of Grihastha, or married life. The true Brâhman is, thus, indeed “he whose seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the Moon‐plant (Soma),” and who is a “Trisuparna,” for he has understood the secret of the Vedas.

And, to this day, such Brâhmans know that, during the early beginnings of this Race, psychic and physical intellect being dormant and consciousness still undeveloped, its spiritual conceptions were quite unconnected with its physical surroundings; that divine man dwelt in his animal—though externally human—form; that, if there was instinct in him, no self‐ consciousness came to enlighten the darkness of the latent Fifth Principle. When the Lords of Wisdom, moved by the law of evolution, infused into him the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it awoke to life and activity was a sense of solidarity, of one‐ness with his spiritual creators. As the child’s first feeling is for its mother and nurse, so the first aspirations of the awakening consciousness in primitive man were for those whose element he felt within himself, and who were yet outside, and independent of him. Devotion arose out of that feeling, and became the first and foremost motor in his nature; for it is the only one which is natural in his heart, which is innate in him, and which we find alike in the human babe and the young of the animal. This feeling of irrepressible, instinctive aspiration in primitive man is beautifully, and one may say intuitionally, described by Carlyle, who exclaims:

The great antique heart—how like a child’s in its simplicity, like a man’s in its earnest solemnity and depth! Heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth; making all the earth a mystic temple to him, the earth’s business all a kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover, doing God’s messages among men.... Wonder, miracle, encompass the man; he lives in an element of miracle.(334)... A great law of duty, high as these two infinitudes (heaven and hell), dwarfing all else, annihilating all else—it was a reality, and it is one: the garment only of it is dead; the essence of it lives through all times and all eternity! It lives undeniably, and has settled in all its ineradicable strength and power in the Asiatic Âryan heart, from the Third Race direct, through its first Mind‐born Sons, the fruits of Kriyâshakti. As time rolled on, the holy caste of Initiates produced, but rarely, from age to age, such perfect creatures; beings apart, inwardly, though the same as those who produced them, outwardly. In the infancy of the Third primitive Race:

A creature of a more exalted kind Was wanting yet, and therefore was designed; Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast, For empire formed and fit to rule the rest.

It was called into being, a ready and perfect vehicle for the incarnating denizens of higher spheres, who took forthwith their abodes in these forms, born of Spiritual Will and the natural divine power in man. It was a child of pure spirit, mentally unalloyed with any tincture of earthly element. Its physical frame alone was of time and of life, for it drew its intelligence direct from above. It was the Living Tree of Divine Wisdom; and may therefore be likened to the Mundane Tree of the Norse Legends, which cannot wither and die until the last battle of life shall be fought, while its roots are all the time gnawed by the dragon Nidhogg. For even so, the first and holy Son of Kriyâshakti had his body gnawed by the tooth of time, but the roots of his inner being remained for ever undecaying and strong, because they grew and expanded in heaven, and not on earth. He was the first of the First, and he was the Seed of all the others. There were other Sons of Kriyâshakti produced by a second spiritual effort, but the first one has remained to this day the Seed of Divine Knowledge, the One and the Supreme among the terrestrial “Sons of Wisdom.” Of this subject we can say no more, except to add that in every age—aye, even in our own—there have been great intellects who have understood the problem correctly.

But how comes our physical body to the state of perfection it is now found in? Through millions of years of evolution, of course, yet never through, or from, animals, as taught by Materialism. For, as Carlyle says: ... The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself “I,”—ah, what words have we for such things?—is a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed? The “breath of Heaven,” or rather the breath of Life, called in the Bible Nephesh, is in every animal, in every animate speck and in every mineral atom. But none of these has, like man, the consciousness of the nature of that “Highest Being,”(335) as none has that divine harmony in its form, which man possesses. It is, as Novalis said, and no one since has said it better, as repeated by Carlyle:

There is but one temple in the Universe, and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than that high form.... We touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a human body! This sounds like a mere flourish of rhetoric; but it is not so. If well meditated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression ... of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles—the great inscrutable Mystery....(336)

1. BEHOLD THE BEGINNING OF SENTIENT FORMLESS LIFE (a). FIRST, THE DIVINE(337) (b), THE ONE FROM THE MOTHER‐SPIRIT;(338) THEN, THE SPIRITUAL(339) (c); (340)THE THREE FROM THE ONE (d), THE FOUR FROM THE ONE (e), AND THE FIVE (f), FROM WHICH THE THREE, THE FIVE AND THE SEVEN (g). THESE ARE THE THREE‐FOLD AND THE FOUR‐FOLD DOWNWARD; THE MIND‐BORN SONS OF THE FIRST LORD,(341) THE SHINING SEVEN.(342) IT IS THEY WHO ARE THOU, I, HE, O LANOO; THEY WHO WATCH OVER THEE AND THY MOTHER, BHÛMI.(343) (a) The Hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided esoterically into Seven (four and three), within the Twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve signs of the Zodiac; the Seven of the manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the Seven Planets. All these are subdivided into numberless Groups of divine spiritual, semi‐spiritual, and ethereal Beings. The chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary, or the “four bodies and the three faculties,” exoterically, of Brahmâ and the Panchâsya, the five Brahmâs, or the five Dhyâni‐Buddhas in the Buddhist system.

The highest Group is composed of the Divine Flames, so called, also spoken of as the “Fiery Lions” and the “Lions of Life,” whose esotericism is securely hidden in the zodiacal sign of Leo. It is the nucleole of the superior Divine World. They are the Formless Fiery Breaths, identical in one aspect with the upper Sephirothal Triad, which is placed by the Kabalists in the Archetypal World. The same Hierarchy, with the same numbers, is found in the Japanese system, in the “Beginnings,” as taught by both the Shinto and the Buddhist sects. In this system, Anthropogenesis precedes Cosmogenesis, as the divine merges into the human, and creates—midway in its descent into matter—the visible Universe; the legendary personages, remarks reverentially Omoie, “having to be understood as the stereotyped embodiment of the higher [secret] doctrine, and its sublime truths.” To state this old system at full length would occupy too much of our space; a few words on it, however, cannot be out of place. The following is a short synopsis of this Anthropo‐Cosmogenesis, and shows how closely the most separated nations echoed one and the same archaic teaching.

When all was as yet Chaos (Kon‐ton), three spiritual Beings appeared on the stage of future creation: (1) Ame no ani naka nushi no Kami, “Divine Monarch of the Central Heaven”; (2) Taka mi onosubi no Kami, “Exalted, Imperial Divine Offspring of Heaven and Earth”; and (3) Kamu mi musubi no Kami, “Offspring of the Gods,” simply. These were without form or substance—our Arûpa Triad—as neither the celestial nor the terrestrial substance had yet differentiated, “nor had the essence of things been formed.”

(b) In the Zohar—which, as now arranged and reëdited by Moses de Leon, with the help of Syrian and Chaldean Christian Gnostics, in the XIIIth century, and corrected and revised still later by many Christian hands, is only a little less exoteric than the Bible itself—this “Divine [Vehicle]” no longer appears as it does in the Chaldean Book of Numbers. True enough, Ain Suph, the Absolute Endless No‐thing, uses also the form of the One, the manifested “Heavenly Man” (the First Cause), as its Chariot (Mercabah, in Hebrew; Vâhana, in Sanskrit) or Vehicle, to descend into, and manifest itself in, the phenomenal world. But the Kabalists neither make it plain how the Absolute can use anything, or exercise any attribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is devoid of attributes; nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause (Plato’s Logos), the original and eternal Idea, that manifests through Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos, so to speak. In the Book of Numbers, it is explained that Ain (En, or Aiôr) is the only self‐existent, whereas its “Depth,” the Bythos of the Gnostics, called Propatôr, is only periodical. The latter is Brahmâ, as differentiated from Brahman or Parabrahman. It is the Depth, the Source of Light, or Propatôr, which is the Unmanifested Logos, or the abstract Idea, and not Ain Suph, whose Ray uses Adam Kadmon—“male and female”—or the Manifested Logos, the objective Universe, as a Chariot, through which to manifest. But in the Zohar we read the following incongruity: “Senior occultatus est, et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus.”(344) This is a fallacy, since Microprosopus, or the Microcosm, can only exist during its manifestations, and is destroyed during the Mahâpralayas. Rosenroth’s Kabbala is no guide, but very often a puzzle.

The First Order are the Divine. As in the Japanese system, in the Egyptian, and every old cosmogony—at this divine Flame, the “One,” are lit the Three descending Groups. Having their potential being in the higher Group, they now become distinct and separate Entities. These are called the Virgins of Life, the Great Illusion, etc., etc., and collectively the six‐pointed star. The latter, in almost every religion, is the symbol of the Logos as the first emanation. It is the sign of Vishnu in India, the Chakra, or Wheel; and the glyph of the Tetragrammaton, “He of the Four Letters,” in the Kabalah, or metaphorically the “Limbs of Microprosopus,” which are ten and six respectively.

The later Kabalists, however, especially the Christian Mystics, have played sad havoc with this magnificent symbol. Indeed, the Microprosopus—who is, philosophically speaking, quite distinct from the unmanifested eternal Logos, “one with the Father”—has finally been brought, by centuries of incessant efforts of sophistry and of paradoxes, to be considered as one with Jehovah, or the one living God (!), whereas Jehovah is no better than Binah, a female Sephira. This fact cannot be too frequently impressed upon the reader. For the “Ten Limbs” of the Heavenly Man are the ten Sephiroth; but the first Heavenly Man is the unmanifested Spirit of the Universe, and ought never to be degraded into Microprosopus, the Lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of man on the terrestrial plane. The Microprosopus is, as just said, the Logos manifested, and of such there are many. Of this, however, later on. The six‐pointed star refers to the six Forces or Powers of Nature, the six planes, principles, etc., etc., all synthesized by the seventh, or the central point in the star. All these, the upper and lower Hierarchies included, emanate from the Heavenly or Celestial Virgin, the Great Mother in all religions, the Androgyne, the Sephira Adam Kadmon. Sephira is the Crown, Kether, in the abstract principle only, as a mathematical x, the unknown quantity. On the plane of differentiated nature, she is the female counterpart of Adam Kadmon, the first Androgyne. The Kabalah teaches that the words “Fiat Lux”(345) referred to the formation and evolution of the Sephiroth, and not to light as opposed to darkness. Rabbi Simeon says:

O companions, companions, man as an emanation was both man and woman, Adam Kadmon verily, and this is the sense of the words, “Let there be Light, and there was Light.” And this is the two‐ fold man.(346) In its Unity, Primordial Light is the seventh, or highest, principle, Daiviprakriti, the Light of the Unmanifested Logos. But in its differentiation, it becomes Fohat, or the “Seven Sons.” The former is symbolized by the central point in the Double Triangle; the latter by the Hexagon itself, or the “Six Limbs” of Microprosopus, the Seventh being Malkuth, the “Bride” of the Christian Kabalists, or our Earth. Hence the expressions: _The first after the One is Divine Fire; the second, Fire and Ether; the third is composed of Fire, Ether and Water; the fourth of Fire, Ether, Water, and Air. The One is not concerned with Man‐bearing Globes, but with the inner, invisible Spheres. The First‐Born are the_ LIFE, the Heart and Pulse of the Universe; the Second are its MIND or Consciousness. These Elements of Fire, Air, etc., are not our compound elements; and this “Consciousness” has no relation to our consciousness. The Consciousness of the “One Manifested,” if not absolute, is still unconditioned. Mahat, the Universal Mind, is the first production of the Brahmâ‐Creator, but also of Pradhâna, Undifferentiated Matter.

(c) The Second Order of Celestial Beings, those of Fire and Ether, corresponding to Spirit and Soul, or Âtmâ‐Buddhi, whose names are legion, are still formless, but more definitely “substantial.” They are the first differentiation in the Secondary Evolution or “Creation”—a misleading word. As the name shows, they are the Prototypes of the incarnating Jîvas or Monads, and are composed of the Fiery Spirit of Life. It is through these that passes, like a pure solar beam, the Ray which is furnished by them with its future Vehicle, the Divine Soul, Buddhi. These are directly concerned with the Hosts of the higher World of our System. From these Two‐fold Units emanate the “Three‐fold.”

In the cosmogony of Japan, when, out of the chaotic mass, an egg‐like nucleus appears, having within itself the germ and potency of all universal as well as of all terrestrial life, it is the Three‐fold just named, which differentiate. The male ethereal principle (Yo) ascends, and the female grosser or more material principle (In) is precipitated into the universe of substance, when a separation occurs between the celestial and the terrestrial. From this, the female, the Mother, the first rudimentary objective being is born. It is ethereal, without form or sex, and yet it is from it and the Mother that the Seven Divine Spirits are born, from whom will emanate the seven “creations”; just as in the Codex Nazaræus from Karabtanos and the Mother Spiritus the seven “evilly disposed” (material) spirits are born. It would be too long to give here the Japanese names, but in translation they stand in this order: (1.) The “Invisible Celibate,” which is the Creative Logos of the non‐ creating “Father,” or the creative potentiality of the latter made manifest. (2.) The “Spirit [or God] of the rayless Depths [Chaos],” which becomes differentiated matter, or the world‐stuff; also the mineral realm. (3.) The “Spirit of the Vegetable Kingdom,” of the “Abundant Vegetation.”

(4.) The “Spirit of the Earth” and “the Spirit of the Sands”; a Being of dual nature, the former containing the potentiality of the male element, the latter that of the female element. These two were one, as yet unconscious of being two. In this duality were contained (a) Isu no gai no Kami, the male, dark and muscular Being; and (b) Eku gai no Kami, the female, fair and weaker or more delicate Being. Then: (5 and 6.) The Spirits who were androgynous or dual‐sexed. (7.) The Seventh Spirit, the last emanated from the “Mother,” appears as the first divine human form distinctly male and female. It was the seventh “creation,” as in the Purânas, wherein man is the seventh creation of Brahmâ. These, Tsanagi‐Tsanami, descended into the Universe by the Celestial Bridge, the Milky Way, and “Tsanagi, perceiving far below a chaotic mass of cloud and water, thrust his jewelled spear into the depths, and dry land appeared. Then the two separated to explore Onokoro, the newly‐ created island‐world.” (Omoie.) Such are the Japanese exoteric fables, the rind that conceals the kernel of the same one truth of the Secret Doctrine. (d) The Third Order correspond to Âtmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas, Spirit, Soul and Intellect; and are called the “Triads.”

(e) The Fourth Order are substantial Entities. This is the highest Group among the Rûpas (Atomic Forms). It is the nursery of the human, conscious, spiritual Souls. They are called the “Imperishable Jîvas,” and constitute, through the Order below their own, the first Group of the first Septenary Host—the great mystery of human, conscious and intellectual Being. For the latter is the field wherein lies concealed, in its privation, the Germ that will fall into generation. That Germ will become the spiritual potency in the physical cell, that guides the development of the embryo, and that is the cause of the hereditary transmission of faculties, and all the inherent qualities in man. The Darwinian theory, however, of the transmission of acquired faculties is neither taught nor accepted in Occultism. Evolution, in the latter, proceeds on quite other lines; the physical, according to Esoteric teaching, evolving gradually from the spiritual, mental, and psychic. This inner soul of the physical cell—the “spiritual plasm” that dominates the germinal plasm—is the key that must open one day the gates of the terra incognita of the Biologist, now called the dark mystery of Embryology. It is worthy of notice that Modern Chemistry, while rejecting, as a superstition of Occultism and Religion as well, the theory of substantial and invisible Beings, called Angels, Elementals, etc.—without, of course, having ever looked into the philosophy of these incorporeal Entities, or thought over them—should, owing to observation and discovery, have been unconsciously forced to recognize and adopt the same ratio of progression and order, in the evolution of chemical atoms, as Occultism does for both its Dhyânis and Atoms—analogy being its first law. As seen above, the very first Group of the Rûpa Angels is quaternary, an element being added to each in descending order. So also are the atoms, in the phraseology of Chemistry, monatomic, diatomic, triatomic, tetratomic, etc., progressing downwards.

Let it be remembered that the Fire, Water, and Air of Occultism, or the “Elements of Primary Creation” so‐called, are not the compound elements they are on earth, but noumenal homogeneous Elements—the Spirits of the former. Then follow the Septenary Groups or Hosts. Placed on parallel lines with the atoms in a diagram, the natures of these Beings would be seen to correspond, in their downward scale of progression, to composite elements in a mathematically identical manner as to analogy. This refers, of course, only to diagrams made by Occultists; for were the scale of Angelic Beings to be placed on parallel lines with the scale of the chemical atoms of Science—from the hypothetical Helium down to Uranium—they would of course be found to differ. For the latter have, as correspondents on the Astral Plane, only the four lowest orders—the three higher principles in the atom, or rather molecule, or chemical element, being perceptible to the initiated Dangma’s eye alone. But then, if Chemistry desired to find itself on the right path, it would have to correct its tabular arrangement by that of the Occultists—which it might refuse to do. In Esoteric Philosophy, every physical particle corresponds to, and depends on, its higher noumenon—the Being to whose essence it belongs; and, above as below, the Spiritual evolves from the Divine, the Psycho‐mental from the Spiritual—tainted from its lower plane by the Astral—the whole animate and (seemingly) inanimate Nature evolving on parallel lines, and drawing its attributes from above as well as below.

The number seven, as applied to the term Septenary Host, above mentioned, does not imply only seven Entities, but seven Groups or Hosts, as explained before. The highest Group, the Asuras born in Brahmâ’s first body, which turned into “Night,” are septenary, i.e., divided like the Pitris into seven Classes, three of which are bodiless (arûpa) and four with bodies.(347) They are in fact more truly our Pitris (Ancestors) than the Pitris who projected the first physical man.

(f) The Fifth Order is a very mysterious one, as it is connected with the microcosmic pentagon, the five‐pointed star, representing man. In India and Egypt, these Dhyânis were connected with the Crocodile, and their abode is in Capricornus. But these are convertible terms in Indian Astrology, for the tenth sign of the Zodiac, which is called Makara, is loosely translated “Crocodile.” The word itself is occultly interpreted in various ways, as will be shown further on. In Egypt, the Defunct—whose symbol is the pentagram, or the five‐pointed star, the points of which represent the limbs of a man—was shown emblematically transformed into a crocodile. Sebekh, or Sevekh (or “Seventh”), as Mr. Gerald Massey says, showing it to be the type of intelligence, is a dragon in reality, not a crocodile. He is the “Dragon of Wisdom,” or Manas, the Human Soul, Mind, the Intelligent Principle, called in our Esoteric Philosophy the Fifth Principle. Says the defunct “Osirified,” in the Book of the Dead, or Ritual, under the glyph of a mummiform God with a crocodile’s head: I am the crocodile presiding at the fear, I am the God‐crocodile, at the arrival of his Soul among men. I am the God‐crocodile brought for destruction.

An allusion to the destruction of divine spiritual purity when man acquires the knowledge of good and evil; also to the “fallen” Gods, or Angels of every theogony. I am the fish of the great Horus. [As Makara is the “Crocodile,” the Vehicle of Varuna.] I am merged in Sekhem.(348) This last sentence gives the corroboration, and repeats the doctrine of esoteric “Buddhism,” for it alludes directly to the Fifth Principle (Manas), or the most spiritual part of its essence rather, which merges into, is absorbed by, and made one with Âtmâ‐Buddhi, after the death of man. For Sekhem is the residence, or Loka, of the God Khem (Horus‐Osiris, or Father and Son); hence the Devachan of Âtmâ‐Buddhi. In the Book of the Dead, the Defunct is shown entering into Sekhem, with Horus‐Thot, and “emerging from it as pure spirit.” Thus the Defunct says: I see the forms of [myself, as various] men transforming eternally.... I know this [chapter]. He who knows it ... takes all kinds of living forms.(349) And addressing in magic formula that which is called, in Egyptian Esotericism, the “ancestral heart,” or the reïncarnating principle, the permanent Ego, the Defunct says:

O my heart, my ancestral heart, necessary for my transformations, ... do not separate thyself from me before the guardian of the scales. Thou art my personality within my breast, divine companion watching over my fleshes [bodies].(350) It is in Sekhem that lies concealed the “Mysterious Face,” or the real Man concealed under the false personality, the triple‐crocodile of Egypt, the symbol of the higher Trinity, or human Triad, Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas. One of the explanations of the real though hidden meaning of this Egyptian religious glyph is easy. The crocodile is the first to await and meet the devouring fires of the morning sun, and very soon came to personify the solar heat. When the sun arose, it was like the arrival on earth, and among men, of the “divine soul which informs the Gods.” Hence the strange symbolism. The mummy donned the head of a crocodile to show that it was a Soul arriving from the earth.

In all the ancient papyri, the crocodile is called Sebekh (Seventh); water also symbolizes the fifth principle esoterically; and, as already stated, Mr. Gerald Massey shows that the crocodile was the “seventh Soul, the supreme one of seven—the Seer unseen.” Even exoterically Sekhem is the residence of the God Khem, and Khem is Horus avenging the death of his father Osiris, hence punishing the sins of man, when he becomes a disembodied Soul. Thus the defunct Osirified became the God Khem, who “gleans the field of Aanroo”; that is, he gleans either his reward or punishment, for that field is the celestial locality (Devachan), where the Defunct is given wheat, the food of divine justice. The Fifth Group of Celestial Beings is supposed to contain in itself the dual attributes of both the spiritual and physical aspects of the Universe; the two poles, so to say, of Mahat, the Universal Intelligence, and the dual nature of man, the spiritual and the physical. Hence its number Five, doubled and made into Ten, connecting it with Makara, the tenth sign of the Zodiac.

(g) The Sixth and Seventh Orders partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They are conscious ethereal Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out, like the boughs of a tree, from the first central Group of the Four, and shoot out in their turn numberless side Groups, the lower of which are the Nature‐Spirits, or Elementals, of countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and unsubstantial—the ideal Thoughts of their creators—down to atomic, though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as the “spirits of atoms,” for they are the first remove (backwards) from the physical atom—sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the Doctrine teaches, there are no such privileged Beings in the Universe, whether in our own or in other Systems, in the outer or the inner Worlds,(351) as the Angels of the Western Religion and the Judean. A Dhyân Chohan has to become one; he cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane of life as a full‐blown Angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will find itself transferred, in the next Circle of Life, into higher superior Worlds, and will make room for a new Hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. Being is an endless cycle within the One Absolute Eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles finite and conditioned. Gods, created as such, would evince no personal merit in being Gods.

Such a class of Beings—perfect only by virtue of the special immaculate nature inherent in them—in the face of suffering and struggling humanity, and even of the lower creation, would be the symbol of an eternal injustice quite Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an anomaly and an impossibility in Nature. Therefore the “Four” and the “Three” have to incarnate as all other beings have. This Sixth Group, moreover, remains almost inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his highest and lowest principles, or his spirit and body; the five middle human principles being the very essence of those Dhyânis. Paracelsus calls them the Flagæ; the Christians, the Guardian Angels; the Occultists, the Ancestors, the Pitris. They are the Six‐fold Dhyân Chohans, having the six spiritual Elements in the composition of their bodies—in fact, men, minus the physical body.

Alone, the Divine Ray, the Âtman, proceeds directly from the One. When asked how this can be? How is it possible to conceive that these “Gods,” or Angels, can be at the same time their own emanations and their personal selves? Is it in the same sense as in the material world, where the son is, in one way, his father, being his blood, the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh? To this the Teachers answer: Verily it is so. But one has to go deep into the mystery of Being, before one can fully comprehend this truth. 2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM.(352) THROUGH THE COUNTLESS RAYS THE LIFE‐RAY, THE ONE, LIKE A THREAD THROUGH MANY BEADS.(353)

This shloka expresses the conception—a purely Vedântic one, as already explained elsewhere—of a Life‐Thread, Sûtrâtmâ, running through successive generations. How, then, can this be explained? By resorting to a simile, to a familiar illustration, though necessarily imperfect, as all our available analogies must be. Before resorting to it, however, I would ask, whether it seems unnatural, least of all “supernatural,” to any one of us, when we consider the process of the growth and development of a fœtus into a healthy baby weighing several pounds? Evolving from what? From the segmentation of an infinitesimally small ovum and a spermatozoön! And afterwards we see the baby develop into a six‐foot man! This refers to the atomic and physical expansion, from the microscopically small into something exceedingly large; from the unseen, to the naked eye, into the visible and objective. Science has provided for all this; and, I dare say, her theories, embryological, biological and physiological, are correct enough, so far as exact observation of the material goes. Nevertheless, the two chief difficulties of the science of Embryology—namely, what are the forces at work in the formation of the fœtus, and the cause of “hereditary transmission” of likeness, physical, moral or mental—have never been properly answered; nor will they ever be solved, till the day when Scientists condescend to accept the Occult theories. But if this physical phenomenon astonishes no one, except in so far as it puzzles the Embryologists, why should our intellectual and inner growth, the evolution of the Human‐Spiritual to the Divine‐Spiritual, be regarded as, or seem, more impossible than the other?

The Materialists and the Evolutionists of the Darwinian school would be ill‐advised to accept the newly worked‐out theories of Professor Weissmann, the author of Beiträge zur Descendenzlehre, with regard to one of the two mysteries of Embryology, as above specified, which he seems to think he has solved; for, when it is fully solved, Science will have stepped into the domain of the truly Occult, and passed for ever out of the realm of transformation, as taught by Darwin. The two theories are irreconcilable, from the standpoint of Materialism. Regarded from that of the Occultists, however, the new theory solves all these mysteries. Those who are not acquainted with the discovery of Professor Weissmann—at one time a fervent Darwinist—ought to hasten to repair the deficiency. The German embryologist‐philosopher—stepping over the heads of the Greek Hippocrates and Aristotle, right back into the teachings of the old Âryans—shows one infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in the formation of an organism, alone and unaided determining, by means of constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future man, or animal, in its physical, mental and psychic characteristics. It is this cell which impresses on the face and form of the new individual the features of the parents, or of some distant ancestor; it is this cell, again, which transmits to him the intellectual and mental idiosyncracies of his sires, and so on. This Plasm is the immortal portion of our bodies, developing by means of a process of successive assimilations.

Darwin’s theory, viewing the embryological cell as the essence or extract from all other cells, is set aside; it is incapable of accounting for hereditary transmission. There are but two ways of explaining the mystery of heredity: either the substance of the germinal cell is endowed with the faculty of crossing the whole cycle of transformations that lead to the construction of a separate organism, and then to the reproduction of identical germinal cells; or, _these germinal cells do not have their genesis at all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral germinal cell passed from father to son through long generations_. It is the latter hypothesis that Weissmann has adopted and worked upon, and it is to this cell that he traces the immortal portion of man. So far, so good; and when this almost correct theory is accepted, how will Biologists explain the first appearance of this everlasting cell? Unless man “grew” like the immortal “Topsy,” and was not born at all, but fell from the clouds, how was that embryological cell generated in him?

Complete the Physical Plasm, mentioned above, the “Germinal Cell” of man with all its material potentialities, with the “Spiritual Plasm,” so to say, or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of the Six‐ principled Dhyâni—and you have the secret, if you are spiritual enough to understand it. Now to the promised simile. _When the seed of the animal man is cast into the soil of the animal woman, that seed cannot germinate unless it has been fructified by the five virtues [the fluid of, or the emanation from, the principles] of the Six‐fold Heavenly Man. Wherefore the Microcosm is represented as a Pentagon, within the Hexagon Star, the Macrocosm._(354) _The functions of Jiva on this Earth are of a five‐fold character. In the mineral atom, it is connected with the lowest principles of the Spirits of the Earth (the Six‐fold Dhyânis); in the vegetable particle, with their __ second—the Prâna (Life); in the animal, with all these plus the third and the fourth; in man, the germ must receive the fruitage of all the five. Otherwise he will be born no higher than an animal_.(355)

Thus in man alone the Jîva is complete. As to his seventh principle, it is but one of the Beams of the Universal Sun, for each rational creature receives the temporary loan only of that which has to return to its source. As to his physical body, it is shaped by the lowest terrestrial Lives, through physical, chemical and physiological evolution; “the Blessed Ones have nought to do with the purgations of matter,” says the Kabalah in the Chaldean Book of Numbers.

It comes to this: Mankind, in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the offspring of the Elohim of Life, or Pitris; in its qualitative and physical aspect, it is the direct progeny of the “Ancestors,” the lowest Dhyânis, or Spirits of the Earth; for its moral, psychic and spiritual nature, it is indebted to a Group of divine Beings, the name and characteristics of which will be given in Volume II. Collectively, men are the handiwork of Hosts of various Spirits; distributively, the tabernacles of those Hosts; and occasionally and individually, the vehicles of some of them. In our present all‐material Fifth Race, the earthly Spirit of the Fourth is still strong in us; but we are approaching the time when the pendulum of evolution will direct its swing decidedly upwards, bringing Humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive Third Root‐Race in spirituality. During its childhood, mankind was wholly composed of that Angelic Host, who were the indwelling Spirits that animated the monstrous and gigantic tabernacles of clay of the Fourth Race, built by and composed of countless myriads of Lives, as our bodies are also now. This sentence will be explained later on in the present Commentary. Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body, and see in them only occasional and abnormal visitors, to which diseases are attributed. Occultism—which discerns a Life in every atom and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire or water—affirms that our whole body is built of such Lives; the smallest bacterium under the microscope being to them in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria.

The “tabernacles” mentioned above have improved in texture and symmetry of form, growing and developing with the Globe that bears them; but the physical improvement has taken place at the expense of the spiritual Inner Man and of Nature. The three middle principles, in earth and man, became with every Race more material; the Soul stepping back to make room for the Physical Intellect; the essence of the Elements becoming the material and composite elements now known.

Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the “Lord God”; but he is the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the singular number and masculine gender. The first Dhyânis, commissioned to “create” man in their image, could only throw off their Shadows, as a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many. Nor can it be said that the “Lord God breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life,” unless that God is identified with the “One Life,” omnipresent though invisible, and unless the same operation is attributed to “God” on behalf of every “Living Soul,” which is the Vital Soul (Nephesh), and not the Divine Spirit (Ruach) which ensures to man alone a divine degree of immortality, that no animal, as such, could ever attain in this cycle of incarnation. It is owing to the inadequate distinctions made by the Jews, and now by our Western metaphysicians, who are unable to understand, and hence to accept, more than a triune man—Spirit, Soul, Body—that the “Breath of Life” has been confused with the immortal “Spirit.” This applies also directly to the Protestant theologians, who in translating a certain verse in the Fourth Gospel(356) have entirely perverted its meaning. This mistranslation runs, “the wind bloweth where it listeth,” instead of “the spirit goeth where it willeth,” as in the original, and also in the translation of the Greek Eastern Church.

The learned and very philosophical author of New Aspects of Life would impress upon his reader that the Nephesh Chiah (Living Soul), according to the Hebrews: Proceeded from, or was produced by, the infusion of the Spirit or Breath of Life into the quickening body of man, and was to supersede and take the place of that Spirit in the thus constituted Self, so that the Spirit passed into, was lost sight of, and disappeared in the Living Soul.

The human body, he thinks, ought to be viewed as a matrix in which, and from which, the Soul, which he seems to place higher than the Spirit, is developed. Considered functionally and from the standpoint of activity, the Soul stands undeniably higher, in this finite and conditioned world of Mâyâ. The Soul, he says, “is ultimately produced from the animated body of man.” Thus the author identifies “Spirit” (Âtmâ) with the “Breath of Life” simply. The Eastern Occultists will demur to this statement, for it is based on the erroneous conception that Prâna and Âtmâ, or Jîvâtmâ, are one and the same thing. The author supports the argument, by showing that with the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and even Latins, Ruach, Pneuma and Spiritus meant Wind—with the Jews undeniably, and with the Greeks and Romans very probably; the Greek word Anemos (Wind) and the Latin Animus (Soul) having a suspicious relation.

This is very far fetched. But a legitimate battle‐field for deciding this question is hardly to be found, since Dr. Pratt seems to be a practical, matter‐of‐fact metaphysician, a kind of Kabalist‐Positivist, whereas the Eastern metaphysicians, especially the Vedântins, are all Idealists. The Occultists also are of the extreme Esoteric Vedântin school, and though they call the One Life (Parabrahman) the Great Breath and the Whirlwind, they disconnect the seventh principle entirely from matter, and deny that it has any relation to, or connection with it.

Thus the philosophy of man’s psychic, spiritual and mental relations with his physical functions is in almost inextricable confusion. Neither the old Âryan nor the Egyptian psychology is now properly understood; nor can they be assimilated, without accepting the Esoteric septenary, or, at any rate, the Vedântic quinquepartite division of the human inner principles. Failing which, it will be for ever impossible to understand the metaphysical and purely psychic, and even physiological, relations between the Dhyân Chohans, or Angels, on the one plane, and Humanity on the other. No Eastern (Âryan) Esoteric works are so far published, but we possess the Egyptian papyri, which speak clearly of the seven principles, or the “Seven Souls of Man.” The Book of the Dead gives a complete list of the “transformations” that every Defunct undergoes, while divesting himself, one by one, of all these principles—materialized for the sake of clearness into ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who try to show that the Ancient Egyptians did not teach Reïncarnation, that the “Soul” (the Ego or Self) of the Defunct is said to be living in Eternity: it is immortal, “coëval with, and disappearing with, the Solar Boat,” that is, for the Cycle of Necessity. This “Soul” emerges from the Tiaou, the Realm of the Cause of Life, and joins the living on Earth by day, to return to Tiaou every night. This expresses the periodical existences of the Ego.(357)

The Shadow, the Astral Form, is annihilated, “devoured by the Uræus,”(358) the Manes will be annihilated; the two Twins (the Fourth and Fifth Principles) will be scattered; but the Soul‐Bird, “the Divine Swallow, and the Uræus of Flame” (Manas and Âtmâ‐Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for they are their mother’s husbands. Another suggestive analogy between the Âryan, or Brâhmanical, and the Egyptian Esotericism. The former call the Pitris the “Lunar Ancestors” of men, and the Egyptians make of the Moon‐God, Taht‐Esmun, the first human ancestor. This Moon‐God “expressed the Seven nature‐powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls, of which he was the manifestor as the Eighth One. [Hence the eighth sphere.]... The seven rays of the Chaldean ... Heptakis or Iao, on the Gnostic stones, indicate the same septenary of souls.... The first form of the mystical Seven was seen to be figured in heaven, by the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven Elemental Powers.”(359) As well known to every Hindû, this same constellation represents in India the Seven Rishis, and is called Riksha, and Chitrashikandinas.

Like alone produces like. The Earth gives Man his body, the Gods (Dhyânis) give him his five inner principles, the psychic Shadow, of which these Gods are often the animating principle. Spirit (Âtman) is one, and indiscrete. It is not in the Tiaou.

For what is the Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the Book of the Dead contains a mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night‐Sun, the inferior hemisphere, or the infernal region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the concealed side of the Moon. The human being, in their Esotericism, came out from the Moon—a triple mystery, astronomical, physiological and psychical, at once; he crossed the whole cycle of existence, and then returned to his birth‐place, before issuing from it again. Thus the Defunct is shown arriving in the West, receiving his judgment before Osiris, resurrecting as the God Horus, and circling round the sidereal heavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having crossed the Noot, the Celestial Abyss, returning once more to Tiaou; an assimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life and reproduction, inhabits the Moon. Plutarch(360) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called “The Ingress of Osiris into the Moon.” In the Ritual,(361) life is promised after death; and the renovation of life is placed under the patronage of Osiris‐Lunus, because the Moon was the symbol of life‐ renewals or reïncarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying, and reäppearance every month. In the Dankmoe,(362) it is said: “O Osiris‐ Lunus, that renews to thee thy renewal.” And Sabekh says to Seti I:(363) “Thou renewest thyself as the God Lunus, when a babe.” It is still better explained in a Louvre papyrus:(364) “Couplings and conceptions abound when he [Osiris‐Lunus] is seen in heaven on that day.” Says Osiris: “O sole radiant beam of the Moon! I issue from the circulating multitudes [of stars].... Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris N. I will issue by day to do what I have to do amongst the living”(365)—i.e., to produce conceptions.

Osiris was “God manifest in generation,” because the ancients knew, far better than the moderns, the real occult influences of the lunar body upon the mysteries of conception. In the oldest systems we find the Moon always male. Thus Soma, with the Hindûs, is a kind of sidereal Don Juan, a “King,” and the father, albeit illegitimate, of Budha—Wisdom. This relates to Occult Knowledge, a wisdom gathered through a thorough acquaintance with lunar mysteries, including those of sexual generation. And later, when the Moon became connected with the female Goddesses, with Diana, Isis, Artemis, Juno, etc., this connection was also due to a thorough knowledge of physiology and female nature, physical as much as psychic.

If, instead of being taught in Sunday Schools useless lessons from the Bible, the armies of the ragged and poor were taught Astrology—so far, at any rate, as the occult properties of the Moon and its hidden influences on generation are concerned—then, there would be little need to fear increase of the population, or to resort to the questionable literature of the Malthusians for its arrest. For it is the Moon and her conjunctions that regulate conceptions, and every Astrologer in India knows it. During the previous Races, and at least at the beginning of the present one, those who indulged in marital relations during certain lunar phases that made those relations sterile, were regarded as sorcerers and sinners. But now even these sins of old, which arose from the abuse of Occult knowledge, would appear preferable to the crimes of to‐day, which are perpetrated because of the complete ignorance of such Occult influences.

But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only visible and, by their effects, so to say, tangible, psychic and physiological deities—the Father and the Son—while Space or Air in general, or that expanse of heaven called Noot by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or Breath of the two. The Father and Son were interchangeable in their functions, and worked together harmoniously in their effects upon terrestrial nature and humanity; hence they were regarded as one, though two as personified Entities. They were both males, and both had their distinct though collaborative work in the causative generation of humanity. So much from the astronomical and cosmic standpoints, viewed and expressed in symbolical language, which became in our last races theological and dogmatic. But behind this veil of cosmic and astrological symbols, there were the occult mysteries of anthropography and the primeval genesis of man. And in this, no knowledge of symbols, or even the key to the post‐ diluvian symbolical language of the Jews, will or can help, save only with reference to that which has been laid down in national scriptures for exoteric uses; the sum of which, however cleverly veiled, was but the smallest portion of the real primitive history of each people, and often, moreover, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, related merely to the terrestrial human, and not to the divine life of that nation. That psychic and spiritual element belonged to the MYSTERIES and INITIATION. There were things never recorded in scrolls, but which, as in Central Asia, were engraved on rocks and in subterranean crypts.

Nevertheless, there was a time when the whole world was “of one lip and of one knowledge,” and man knew more of his origin than he does now; and thus knew that the Sun and Moon, however large a part they may play in the constitution, growth and development of the human body, were not the direct causative agents of his appearance on Earth; for these agents, in truth, are the living and intelligent Powers which the Occultists call Dhyân Chohans. As to this, a very learned admirer of the Jewish Esotericism tells us that: The Kabalah says expressly that Elohim is a “general abstraction”; what we call in mathematics “a constant coëfficient,” or a “general function,” entering into all construction, not particular; that is, by the general ratio 1 to 31415, the [Astro‐Dhyânic and] Elohistic figures.

To this the Eastern Occultist replies: Quite so; they are an abstraction to our physical senses. To our spiritual perceptions, however, and to our inner spiritual eye, the Elohim, or Dhyânis, are no more an abstraction than our soul and spirit are to us. Reject the one and you reject the other, since that which is the surviving Entity in us, is partly the direct emanation from, and partly those celestial Entities themselves. One thing is certain; the Jews were perfectly acquainted with sorcery and various maleficent forces: but, with the exception of some of their great prophets and seers like Daniel and Ezekiel—Enoch belonging to a far distant race, as a generic character, and not to any nation but to all—they knew little of, nor would they deal with, the real divine Occultism; their national character being averse to anything which had no direct bearing upon their own ethnical, tribal and individual benefits—witness their own prophets, and the curses thundered by them against the “stiff‐necked race.” But even the Kabalah plainly shows the direct relation between the Sephiroth, or Elohim, and men.

Therefore, when it is proved to us that the Kabalistic identification of Jehovah with Binah, a female Sephira, has still another, a sub‐occult, meaning in it, then and then only will Occultists be ready to pass the palm of perfection to the Kabalist. Until then, it is asserted that, as Jehovah, in the abstract sense of a “one living God,” is a single number, a metaphysical figment, and a reality only when put in his proper place as an emanation and a Sephira—we have a right to maintain that the Zohar, as witnessed by the Book of Numbers, at any rate, gave out originally, before the Christian Kabalists had disfigured it, and still gives out, the same doctrine that we do; that is, it makes Man emanate, not from one Celestial Man, but from a Septenary Group of Celestial Men, or Angels, just as in Pymander, the Thought Divine. 3. WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO, THE THREE‐FOLD APPEARS (a). THE THREE ARE(366) ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, O LANOO, THE HEART OF THE MAN‐PLANT, CALLED SAPTAPARNA (b).

(a) “When the One becomes Two, the Three‐fold appears”: to wit, when the One Eternal drops its reflection into the region of Manifestation, that reflection, the Ray, differentiates the Water of Space; or, in the words of the Book of the Dead: “Chaos ceases, through the effulgence of the Ray of Primordial Light dissipating total darkness, by the help of the great magic power of the Word of the [Central] Sun.” Chaos becomes male‐ female, and Water, incubated by Light, and the Three‐fold Being issues as its “First‐born.” “Ra [or Osiris‐Ptah] creates his own Limbs [like Brahmâ], by creating the Gods destined to personify his phases,” during the Cycle.(367) The Egyptian Ra, issuing from the Deep, is the Divine Universal Soul in its manifested aspect, and so is Nârâyana, the Purusha, “concealed in Âkâsha, and present in Ether.”

This is the metaphysical explanation, and refers to the very beginning of Evolution, or, as we would rather say, of Theogony. The meaning of the Stanza, when explained from another standpoint in its reference to the mystery of man and his origin, is still more difficult to comprehend. In order to form a clear conception of what is meant by the One becoming Two, and then being transformed into the Three‐fold, the student has to make himself thoroughly acquainted with what we call Rounds. If he refers to Esoteric Buddhism—the first attempt to sketch out an approximate outline of archaic cosmogony—he will find that by a Round is meant the serial evolution of nascent material Nature, of the seven Globes of our Chain,(368) with their mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; man being included in the latter and standing at the head of it, during the whole period of a Life‐Cycle, which latter would be called by the Brâhmans a “Day of Brahmâ.” It is, in short, one revolution of the “Wheel” (our Planetary Chain), which is composed of seven Globes, or seven separate “Wheels,” in another sense this time. When evolution has run downward into matter from Globe A to Globe G, it is one Round. In the middle of the fourth revolution, which is our present Round, “Evolution has reached its acme of physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical man, and, from this point, begins its work spirit‐ward.” All this needs little repetition, as it is well explained in Esoteric Buddhism. That which was hardly touched upon, however, and of which the little that was said has misled many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a little more light may now be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more comprehensible, as the process will be fully explained only in its legitimate place, in Volume II.

Now every Round, on the descending scale, is but a repetition in a more concrete form of the Round which preceded it, just as every Globe, down to our Fourth Sphere the actual Earth, is a grosser and more material copy of the more shadowy Sphere which precedes it, each in order, on the three higher planes.(369) On its way upwards, on the ascending arc, Evolution spiritualizes and etherealizes, so to speak, the general nature of all, bringing it on to a level with the plane on which the twin Globe on the opposite arc is placed; the result being, that when the seventh Globe is reached, in whatever Round, the nature of everything that is evolving returns to the condition it was in at its starting point—plus, every time, a new and superior degree in the states of consciousness. Thus it becomes clear that the “origin of man,” so‐called, in this our present Round, or Life‐Cycle, on this Planet, must occupy the same place in the same order—save details based on local conditions and time—as in the preceding Round. Again, it must be explained and remembered that, as the work of each Round is said to be apportioned to a different Group of so‐ called Creators, or Architects, so is that of every Globe; that is, it is under the supervision and guidance of special Builders and Watchers—the various Dhyân Chohans.

“Creators” is an incorrect word to use, as no other religion, not even the sect of the Visishthadvaitîs in India, one which anthropomorphizes even Parabrahman, believes in creation ex nihilo, as Christians and Jews do, but only in evolution out of preëxisting materials.

The Group of the Hierarchy which is commissioned to “create” men is a special Group, then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this Cycle, just as a higher and still more spiritual Group evolved him in the Third Round. But as it is the Sixth, on the downward scale of Spirituality—the last and Seventh being the Terrestrial Spirits (Elementals), which gradually form, build and condense his physical body—this Sixth Group evolves no more than the future man’s shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible, transparent copy of themselves. It becomes the task of the Fifth Hierarchy—the mysterious Beings that preside over the constellation Capricornus, Makara, or “Crocodile,” in India and in Egypt—to inform the empty and ethereal animal form, and make of it the Rational Man. This is one of those subjects upon which very little may be said to the general public. It is a Mystery truly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of intellectual and conscious Spiritual Beings in the Universe, and to limit full Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a “function of the brain.” Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated bodily in man, since his first appearance, and who, for all that, still exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space.

To put it more clearly, such an invisible Entity may be bodily present on earth without, however, abandoning its status and functions in the supersensuous regions. If this needs explanation, we can do no better than remind the reader of like cases in so‐called “Spiritualism”; though such cases are very rare, at least as regards the nature of the Entity incarnating, or taking temporary possession of a medium. For the so‐called “spirits” that may occasionally possess themselves of the bodies of mediums are not the Monads, or Higher Principles, of disembodied Personalities. Such “spirits” can only be either Elementaries, or—Nirmânakâyas. Just as certain persons, whether by virtue of a peculiar organization, or through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can be seen in their “double” in one place, while their body is many miles away; so the same thing can occur in the case of superior Beings.

Man, philosophically considered, is, in his outward form, simply an animal, hardly more perfect than his pithecoid‐like ancestor of the Third Round. He is a living Body, not a living Being, since the realization of existence, the “Ego Sum,” necessitates self‐consciousness, and an animal can only have direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well understood by the ancients, that even the Kabalists made of soul and body two Lives, independent of each other. In the New Aspects of Life, the author states the Kabalistic teaching:

They held that, functionally, Spirit and Matter, of corresponding opacity and density, tended to coalesce; and that the resultant created Spirits, in the disembodied state, were constituted on a scale in which the differing opacities and transparencies of elemental or uncreated Spirit were reproduced. And that these Spirits, in the disembodied state, attracted, appropriated, digested and assimilated elemental Spirit and elemental Matter whose condition was conformed to their own.... They therefore taught that there was a wide difference in the conditions of created Spirits; and that, in the intimate association between the Spirit‐world and the world of Matter, the more opaque Spirits, in the disembodied state, were drawn towards the more dense parts of the material world, and therefore tended towards the centre of the Earth, where they found the conditions most suited to their state; while the more transparent Spirits passed into the surrounding aura of the planet, the most rarefied finding their home in its satellite.(370)

This relates exclusively to our Elemental Spirits, and has naught to do with either the Planetary, Sidereal, Cosmic or Inter‐Etheric Intelligent Forces, or “Angels” as they are termed by the Roman Church. The Jewish Kabalists, especially the practical Occultists who dealt with Ceremonial Magic, busied themselves solely with the Spirits of the Planets and the “Elementals” so‐called. Therefore the above covers only a portion of the Esoteric teaching. The Soul, whose body‐vehicle is the astral, ethereo‐substantial envelope, could die and man be still living on earth. That is to say, the Soul could free itself from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons, such as insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc. The possibility of the “Soul”—that is, the eternal Spiritual Ego—dwelling in the unseen worlds, while its body goes on living on Earth, is a preeminently Occult doctrine, especially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. Many are the soulless men among us, for the occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists as well as in persons “who advance in holiness and never turn back.”

Therefore, that which living men (Initiates) can do, the Dhyânis, who have no physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This was the belief of the antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual society in “Spiritualism,” as well as in the Greek and Roman Churches, which teach the ubiquity of their Angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their Amshaspends as dual entities (Ferouers), applying this duality—in Esoteric philosophy, at any rate—to all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the numberless worlds in space, which are visible to our eye. In a note of Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean Oracles, we have ample evidence of the universality of this doctrine, for he says: “In these Oracles, the seven Cosmocratores of the World [‘the World‐Pillars’], mentioned likewise by St. Paul, are double; one set being commissioned to rule the superior worlds, the spiritual and the sidereal, and the other to guide and watch over the worlds of matter.” Such is also the opinion of Jamblichus, who makes an evident distinction between the Archangels and the Archontes.(371)

The above may be applied, of course, to the distinction made between the degrees or orders of Spiritual Beings, and it is in this sense that the Roman Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the difference; for while the Archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, she denounces their “Doubles” as Devils. But the word Ferouer is not to be understood in this sense, for it means simply the reverse or the opposite side of some attribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says that the “Demon is the inverse of God”—evil, the reverse of the medal—he does not mean two separate actualities, but two aspects or facets of the same Unity. But the best man living, side by side with an Archangel—as described in Theology—would appear a fiend. Hence a certain reason in depreciating a lower “Double,” immersed far deeper in matter than its original. But still there is as little cause to regard them as Devils, and this is precisely what the Roman Catholics maintain against all reason and logic.

This identity between the Spirit and its material “Double”—in man it is the reverse—explains still better the confusion, already alluded to in this work, in the names and individualities, as well as in the numbers, of the Rishis and Prajâpatis; especially of those of the Satya Yuga and the Mahâbhâratan Period. It also throws additional light on what the Secret Doctrine teaches with regard to the Root‐ and the Seed‐Manus. Not only these Progenitors of our mankind, but every human being, we are taught, has his prototype in the Spiritual Spheres, which prototype is the highest essence of his Seventh Principle. Thus the seven Manus become fourteen, the Root‐Manu being the Prime Cause, and the Seed‐Manu its Effect; and from the Satya Yuga (the first stage) to the Heroic Period, these Manus or Rishis become twenty‐one in number.

(b) The concluding sentence of this shloka shows how archaic is the belief and the doctrine that man is seven‐fold in his constitution. The “Thread” of Being, which animates man, and passes through all his Personalities, or Rebirths on this Earth—an allusion to Sûtrâtmâ—the Thread on which moreover all his “Spirits” are strung, is spun from the essence of the Three‐fold, the Four‐fold and the Five‐fold which contain all the preceding. Panchâshikha, agreeably to Padma Purâna,(372) is one of the seven Kumâras who go to Shveta Dvîpa to worship Vishnu. We shall see, further on, what connection there is between the “celibate” and chaste Sons of Brahmâ, who refuse “to multiply,” and terrestrial mortals. Meanwhile, it is evident that the “Man‐Plant, Saptaparna,” thus refers to the seven principles, and that man is compared to this seven‐leaved plant, which is so sacred among Buddhists. The Egyptian allegory, in the Book of the Dead, that relates to the “reward of the Soul,” is as suggestive of our septenary doctrine as it is poetical. The Deceased is allotted a piece of land in the field of Aanroo, wherein the Manes, the deified shades of the dead, glean, as the harvest they have sown by their actions in life, the corn seven cubits high, which grows in a territory divided into seven and fourteen portions. This corn is the food on which they will live and prosper, or that will kill them, in Amenti, the realm of which the Aanroo‐ field is a domain. For, as said in the hymn,(373) the Deceased is either destroyed therein, or becomes pure spirit for the Eternity, in consequence of the “seven times seventy‐seven lives” passed, or to be passed, on Earth. The idea of the corn reaped as the “fruit of our actions” is very graphic.

4. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES, THE THREE‐TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR WICKS (a)... THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE THREE‐TONGUED FLAME,(374) SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN, THEIR FLAME; THE BEAMS AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON, REFLECTED IN THE RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF THE EARTH(375) (b). (a) The “Three‐tongued Flame that never dies” is the immortal spiritual Triad, the Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas, or rather the fruitage of the last, assimilated by the first two after every terrestrial life. The “Four Wicks,” that go out and are extinguished, are the Quaternary, the four lower principles, including the body. “I am the Three‐wicked Flame and my Wicks are immortal,” says the Defunct. “I enter into the domain of Sekhem [the God whose hand sows the seed of action produced by the disembodied soul], and I enter the region of the Flames who have destroyed their adversaries [i.e., got rid of the sin‐ creating Four Wicks].”(376) “The Three‐tongued Flame of the Four Wicks” corresponds to the four Unities and the three Binaries of the Sephirothal tree.

(b) Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean, above which one and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent Personalities—the illusive envelopes of the immortal Monad‐Ego—twinkle and dance on the waves of Mâyâ. They appear and, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon‐beams, last only so long as the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the “Running Waves” of Life, the period of a Manvantara; and then they disappear, the “Beams”—symbols of our eternal Spiritual Egos—alone surviving, remerged in, and being, as they were before, one with the Mother‐Source. 5. THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MÂYÂ (a). IT STOPS IN THE FIRST,(377) AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND,(378) AND BEHOLD—A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN FORMS AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL(379) (b). FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF THESE, MANU,(380) THE THINKER, IS FORMED. WHO FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES, AND THE ONE LIFE (c). WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVE‐FOLD LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY? FISH, SIN AND SOMA(381) (d).

(a) The phrase, “through the Seven Worlds of Mâyâ,” refers here to the seven Globes of the Planetary Chain and the seven Rounds, or the forty‐ nine stations of active existence that are before the “Spark,” or Monad, at the beginning of every Great Life‐Cycle, or Manvantara. The “Thread of Fohat” is the Thread of Life before referred to. This relates to the greatest problem of philosophy—the physical and substantial nature of Life, the independent nature of which is denied by Modern Science, because that Science is unable to comprehend it. The reïncarnationists and believers in Karma alone dimly perceive, that the whole secret of Life is in the unbroken series of its manifestations, whether in, or apart from, the physical body. Because even if: Life, like a dome of many‐coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity— yet it is itself part and parcel of that Eternity; for Life alone can understand Life.

What is that “Spark” which “hangs from the Flame”? It is Jîva, the Monad in conjunction with Manas, or rather its aroma—that which remains from each Personality, when worthy, and hangs from Âtmâ‐Buddhi, the Flame, by the Thread of Life. In whatever way it is interpreted, and into whatever number of principles the human being is divided, it may be easily shown that this doctrine is supported by all the ancient religions, from the Vedic to the Egyptian, from the Zoroastrian to the Jewish. In the case of the last‐mentioned, the Kabalistic works offer abundant proof of this statement. The entire system of the Kabalistic numerals is based on the divine Septenary hanging from the Triad, thus forming the Decad, and its permutations 7, 5, 4, and 3, which, finally, all merge into the One itself; an endless and boundless Circle. As says the Zohar: The Deity [the ever invisible Presence] manifests itself through the ten Sephiroth, which are its radiating witnesses. The Deity is like the sea from which outflows a stream called Wisdom, the waters of which fall into a lake named Intelligence. From the basin, like seven channels, issue the Seven Sephiroth.... For ten equal seven: the Decad contains four Unities and three Binaries. The Ten Sephiroth correspond to the Limbs of Man.

When I [the Elohim] framed Adam Kadmon, the Spirit of the Eternal shot out of his Body, like a sheet of lightning that radiated at once on the billows of the seven millions of skies, and my ten Splendours were his Limbs. But neither the Head nor the Shoulders of Adam Kadmon can be seen; therefore we read in the Siphra Dtzenioutha, the “Book of the Concealed Mystery”: In the beginning of Time, after the Elohim [the “Sons of Light and Life,” or the Builders] had shaped out of the eternal Essence the Heavens and the Earth, they formed the worlds six by six. The seventh being Malkuth, which is our Earth(382) on its plane, and the lowest on all the other planes of conscious existence. The Chaldean Book of Numbers contains a detailed explanation of all this. The first triad of the Body of Adam Kadmon [the three upper planes of the seven (383)] cannot be seen before the Soul stands in the presence of the Ancient of Days.

The Sephiroth of this upper Triad are: “1. Kether (the Crown), represented by the brow of Macroprosopus; 2. Chokmah (Wisdom, a male Principle), by his right shoulder; and 3. Binah (Intelligence, a female Principle), by the left shoulder.” Then come the seven Limbs, or Sephiroth, on the planes of manifestation; the totality of these four planes being represented by Microprosopus, the Lesser Face, or Tetragrammaton, the “four‐lettered” Mystery. “The seven manifested and the three concealed Limbs are the Body of the Deity.”

Thus our Earth, Malkuth, is both the seventh and the fourth World; the former when counting from the first Globe above, the latter if reckoned by the planes. It is generated by the sixth Globe or Sephira, called Yezud, “Foundation,” or, as said in the Book of Numbers, “by Yezud, He [Adam Kadmon] fecundates the primitive Heva [Eve or our Earth].” Rendered in mystic language, this is the explanation why Malkuth, called the Inferior Mother, Matrona, Queen, and the Kingdom of the Foundation, is shown as the Bride of Tetragrammaton, or Microprosopus (the Second Logos), the Heavenly Man. When free from all impurity, she will become united with the Spiritual Logos, i.e., in the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round—after the regeneration, on the day of “Sabbath.” For the “Seventh Day” again has an occult significance undreamed of by our theologians. When Matronitha, the Mother, is separated and brought face to face with the King, in the excellence of the Sabbath, all things become one body.(384)

“Become one body” means, that all is reäbsorbed once more into the One Element, the spirits of men becoming Nirvânîs, and the elements of everything else becoming again what they were before—Protyle or Undifferentiated Substance. “Sabbath” means Rest, or Nirvâna. It is not the “seventh day” after six days, but a period the duration of which equals that of the seven “days,” or any period made up of seven parts. Thus a Pralaya is equal in duration to a Manvantara, or a Night of Brahmâ is equal to his Day. If the Christians will follow Jewish customs, they ought to adopt the spirit and not the dead letter thereof. They should work one week of seven days and rest seven days. That the word “Sabbath” had a mystic significance, is disclosed in the contempt shown by Jesus for the Sabbath day, and by what is said in Luke.(385) Sabbath is there taken for the whole week. See the Greek text where the week is called “Sabbath.” Literally, “I fast twice in the Sabbath.” Paul, an Initiate, knew it well when referring to the eternal rest and felicity in Heaven, as Sabbath:(386) “and their happiness will be eternal, for they will ever be [one] with the Lord, and will enjoy an eternal Sabbath.”(387)

The difference between the Kabalah and the archaic Esoteric Vidyâ—taking the Kabalah as contained in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, not as misrepresented by its now disfigured copy, the Kabalah of the Christian Mystics—is very small indeed, being confined to unimportant divergences of form and expression. Thus Eastern Occultism refers to our Earth as the Fourth World, the lowest of the Chain, above which run upward on both curves the six Globes, three on each side. The Zohar, on the other hand, calls the Earth the lower, or the seventh, adding that upon the six depend all things which are in it (Microprosopus). The “Smaller Face [smaller because manifested and finite] is formed of six Sephiroth,” says the same work. “Seven Kings come and die in the thrice‐destroyed World [Malkuth, our Earth, destroyed after each of the Three Rounds which it has gone through]. And their reign [that of the Seven Kings] will be broken up.”(388) This relates to the Seven Races, five of which have already appeared, and two more have still to appear in this Round. The Shinto allegorical accounts of cosmogony and the origin of man, in Japan, hint at the same belief. Captain C. Pfoundes, who studied the religion underlying the various sects of the land, for nearly nine years in the monasteries of Japan, says:

The Shinto idea of creation is as follows: Out of Chaos (Konton) the Earth (In) was the sediment precipitated, and the Heavens (Yo) the ethereal essences which ascended: Man (Jin) appeared between the two. The first man was called Kuni‐to ko tatchino‐mikoto, and five other names were given to him, and then the human race appeared, male and female. Isanagi and Isanami begat Tenshoko doijin, the first of the five Gods of the Earth. These “Gods” are simply our Five Races, Isanagi and Isanami being the two kinds of “Ancestors,” the two preceding Races which give birth to animal and to rational man.

It will be shown in Volume II, that the number seven, as well as the doctrine of the septenary constitution of man, was preëminent in all the secret systems. It plays as important a part in Western Kabalah as in Eastern Occultism. Éliphas Lévi calls the number seven “the key to the Mosaic creation and the symbols of every religion.” He shows the Kabalah faithfully following even the septenary division of man, for the diagram he gives in his Clef des Grands Mystères(389) is septenary. This may be seen at a glance, however cleverly the correct thought is veiled. One needs also only to look at the diagram, the “Formation of the Soul,” in Mathers’ Kabbalah Unveiled,(390) from the above mentioned, work of Lévi, to find the same, though with a different interpretation. Thus it stands with both the Kabalistic and Occult names attached: [Diagram IV]

Lévi calls Nephesh that which we name Manas, and vice versâ. Nephesh is the Breath of (animal) Life in man—the Breath of Life, instinctual in the animal; and Manas is the Third Soul—the human in its light side, and animal, in its connection with Samaël or Kâma. Nephesh is really the “Breath of (animal) Life” breathed into Adam, the Man of Dust; it is consequently the Vital Spark, the informing Element. Without Manas, the “Reasoning Soul,” or Mind, which in Lévi’s diagram is miscalled Nephesh, Âtmâ‐Buddhi is irrational on this plane and cannot act. It is Buddhi which is the Plastic Mediator; not Manas, the intelligent medium between the upper Triad and the lower Quaternary. But there are many such strange and curious transformations to be found in the Kabalistic works—a convincing proof that this literature has become a sad jumble. We do not accept the classification, except in this one particular, in order to show the points of agreement. We will now give in tabular form what the very cautious Éliphas Lévi says in explanation of his diagram, and what the Esoteric Doctrine teaches—and compare the two. Lévi, too, makes a distinction between Kabalistic and Occult Pneumatics.

Says Éliphas Lévi, the Kabalist: Say the Theosophists: KABALISTIC PNEUMATICS. ESOTERIC PNEUMATICS. 1. The Soul (or Ego) is a 1. The same; for it is clothed light; and this light is Âtmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas. triple. 2. Neshamah—pure Spirit. 2. The same(391). 3. Ruach—the Soul or Spirit. 3. Spiritual Soul. 4. Nephesh—Plastic 4. Mediator between Spirit and Mediator.(392) Man, the Seat of Reason, the Mind, in man. 5. The garment of the Soul is 5. Correct. the rind [body] of the Image [Astral Soul]. 6. The Image is double, because 6. Too uselessly apocalyptic. it reflects the good and the Why not say that the Astral bad. reflects the good as well as the bad man; man, who is ever tending to the upper Triad, or else disappears with the Quaternary. 7. [Image—Body.] 7. The Earthly Image.

OCCULT PNEUMATICS. OCCULT PNEUMATICS. (As given by Éliphas Lévi.) (As given by the Occultists.) 1. Nephesh is immortal, because 1. Manas is immortal, because it renews its life by the after every new incarnation it destruction of forms. [But adds to Âtmâ‐Buddhi something of Nephesh, the “Breath of Life,” itself; and thus, assimilating is a misnomer, and a useless itself to the Monad, shares its puzzle to the student.] immortality. 2. Ruach progresses by the 2. Buddhi becomes conscious by evolution of ideas (!?). the accretions it gets from Manas, on the death of man after every new incarnation. 3. Neshamah is progressive, 3. Âtmâ neither progresses, without oblivion and forgets, nor remembers. It does destruction. not belong to this plane; it is but the Ray of Light eternal which shines upon, and through, the darkness of matter—when the latter is willing. 4. The Soul has three dwellings. 4. The Soul—collectively, as the Upper Triad—lives on three planes, besides its fourth, the terrestrial sphere; and it is eternally on the highest of the three. 5. These dwellings are: the 5. These dwellings are: Earth Plane of Mortals; the Superior for the physical man, or Animal Eden; and the Inferior Eden. Soul; Kâma Loka (Hades, the Limbo) for the disembodied man, or his Shell; Devachan for the Higher Triad.

6. The Image [man] is a sphinx 6. Correct. that offers the riddle of birth. 7. The fatal Image [the Astral] 7. The Astral, through Kâma endows Nephesh with its (Desire), is ever drawing Manas aptitudes; but Ruach is able to down into the sphere of material substitute for it the Image passions and desires. But if the conquered in accordance with the better Man, or Manas, tries to inspirations of Neshamah. escape the fatal attraction, and turns its aspirations to Âtmâ (Neshamah), then Buddhi (Ruach) conquers, and carries Manas with it to the realm of eternal Spirit. It is very evident that the French Kabalist either did not sufficiently know the real tenet, or distorted it to suit himself and his objects. Thus he says again, treating upon the same subject, as follows; and we Occultists answer the late Kabalist and his admirers also as follows:

1. The Body is the mould of 1. The Body follows the whims, Nephesh; Nephesh the mould of good or bad, of Manas; Manas Ruach; Ruach the mould of the tries to follow the Light of garment of Neshamah. Buddhi, but often fails. Buddhi is the mould of the “garments” of Âtmâ; for Âtmâ is no body, or shape, or anything, and because Buddhi is only figuratively its Vehicle. 2. Light [the Soul] personifies 2. The Monad becomes a personal itself in clothing itself [with Ego when it incarnates; and a Body]; and personality endures something remains of that only when the garment is Personality through Manas, when perfect. the latter is perfect enough to assimilate Buddhi. 3. The Angels aspire to become 3. Correct. men; a Perfect Man, a Man‐God, is above all the Angels. 4. Every 14,000 years the soul 4. Within a period, a Great Age, rejuvenates, and rests in the or a Day of Brahmâ, 14 Manus jubilean sleep of oblivion. reign; after which comes Pralaya, when all the Souls (Egos) rest in Nirvâna. Such are the distorted copies of the Esoteric Doctrine in the Kabalah. But to return to Shloka 5 of Stanza VII.

(b) The well‐known Kabalistic aphorism runs: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; the beast, a man; a man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.” The “Spark” animates all the kingdoms, in turn, before it enters into and informs Divine Man, between whom and his predecessor animal man, there is all the difference in the world. Genesis begins its anthropology at the wrong end—evidently for a blind—and lands nowhere. The introductory chapters of Genesis were never meant to represent even a remote allegory of the creation of our Earth. They embrace a metaphysical conception of some indefinite period, in eternity, when successive attempts were being made by the law of evolution at the formation of universes. The idea is plainly stated in the Zohar: There were old Worlds, which perished as soon as they came into existence, were formless, and were called Sparks. Thus, the smith, when hammering the iron, lets the sparks fly in all directions. The Sparks are the primordial Worlds, which could not continue because the Sacred Aged (Sephira) had not as yet assumed its form (of androgyne, or opposite sexes) of King and Queen (Sephira and Kadmon), and the Master was not yet at his work.(393)

Had Genesis begun as it ought, one would have found in it, first, the Celestial Logos, the “Heavenly Man,” which evolves as a Compound Unit of Logoi, out of which, after their pralayic sleep—a sleep that gathers the Numbers scattered on the mâyâvic plane into One, as the separate globules of quicksilver on a plate blend into one mass—the Logoi appear in their totality as the first “Male and Female,” or Adam Kadmon, the “Fiat Lux” of the Bible, as we have already seen. But this transformation did not take place on our Earth, nor on any material plane, but in the Spacial Depths of the first differentiation of the eternal Root‐Matter. On our nascent Globe, things proceed differently. The Monad or Jîva, as said in Isis Unveiled,(394) is, first of all, shot down by the Law of Evolution into the lowest form of matter—the mineral. After a sevenfold gyration encased in the stone, or that which will become mineral and stone in the Fourth Round, it creeps out of it, say, as a lichen. Passing thence, through all the forms of vegetable matter, into what is termed animal matter, it has now reached the point at which it has become the germ, so to speak, of the animal, that will become the physical man. All this, up to the

Third Round, is formless, as matter, and senseless, as consciousness. For the Monad, or Jîva, per se, cannot be called even Spirit: it is a Ray, a Breath of the Absolute, or the ABSOLUTENESS rather; and the Absolute Homogeneity, having no relations with the conditioned and relative finiteness, is unconscious on our plane. Therefore, besides the material which will be needed for its future human form, the Monad requires (a) a spiritual model, or prototype, for that material to shape itself into; and (b) an intelligent consciousness, to guide its evolution and progress, neither of which is possessed by the homogeneous Monad, or by senseless though living matter. The Adam of dust requires the Soul of Life to be breathed into him: the two middle Principles, which are the sentient Life of the irrational animal and the Human Soul, for the former is irrational without the latter. It is only when, from a potential androgyne, man has become separated into male and female, that he will be endowed with this conscious, rational, individual Soul (Manas), “the principle, or the intelligence, of the Elohim,” to receive which, he has to eat of the fruit of Knowledge from the Tree of Good and Evil. How is he to obtain all this? The Occult Doctrine teaches that while the Monad is cycling on

downward into matter, these very Elohim, or Pitris—the lower Dhyân Chohans—are evolving, pari passu with it, on a higher and more spiritual plane, descending also relatively into matter, on their own plane of consciousness, when, after having reached a certain point, they will meet the incarnating senseless Monad, encased in the lowest matter, and blending the two potencies, Spirit and Matter, the union will produce that terrestrial symbol of the “Heavenly Man” in space—PERFECT MAN. In the Sânkhya Philosophy, Purusha (Spirit) is spoken of as something impotent unless it mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (Matter), which, left alone, is—senseless. But in the Secret Philosophy they are viewed as graduated. Spirit and Matter, though one and the same thing in their origin, when once they are on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them their evolutionary progress in contrary directions—Spirit falling gradually into Matter, and the latter ascending to its original condition, that of a pure spiritual Substance. Both are inseparable, yet ever separated. On the physical plane, two like poles will always repel each other, while the negative and the positive are mutually attracted; so do Spirit and Matter stand to each other—the two poles of the same homogeneous Substance, the Root‐Principle of the Universe.

Therefore, when the hour strikes for Purusha to mount on Prakriti’s shoulders for the formation of the Perfect Man—rudimentary man of the first Two and a Half Races being only the first, gradually evolving into the most perfect, of mammals—the Celestial Ancestors (Entities from preceding Worlds, called in India the Shishta) step in on this our plane, and incarnate in the physical or animal man, as the Pitris had stepped in before them for the formation of the latter. Thus the two processes for the two “creations”—the animal and the divine man—differ greatly. The Pitris shoot out from their ethereal bodies still more ethereal and shadowy similitudes of themselves, or what we should now call “doubles,” or “astral forms,” in their own likeness.(395) This furnishes the Monad with its first dwelling, and blind matter with a model around and upon which to build henceforth. But Man is still incomplete. From Svâyambhuva Manu,(396) from whom descended the seven primitive Manus, or Prajâpatis, each of whom gave birth to a primitive Race of men, down to the Codex Nazaræus, in which Karabtanos, or Fetahil, blind concupiscent Matter, begets on his Mother, Spiritus, seven Figures, each of which stands as the progenitor of one of the primeval seven Races—this doctrine has left its impress on every archaic scripture.

“Who forms Manu [the Man] and who forms his body? The Life and the Lives. Sin(397) and the Moon.” Here Manu stands for the spiritual, heavenly Man, the real and non‐dying Ego in us, which is the direct emanation of the “One Life,” or the Absolute Deity. As to our outward physical bodies, the house of the tabernacle of the Soul, the Doctrine teaches a strange lesson; so strange that unless thoroughly explained, and as thoroughly comprehended, it is only the exact science of the future that is destined to fully vindicate the theory. It has been stated before now that Occultism does not accept anything inorganic in the Kosmos. The expression employed by Science, “inorganic substance,” means simply that the latent life, slumbering in the molecules of so‐called “inert matter,” is incognizable. ALL IS LIFE, and every atom of even mineral dust is a LIFE, though beyond our comprehension and perception, because it is outside the range of the laws known to those who reject Occultism. “The very atoms,” says Tyndall, “seem instinct with a desire for life.” Whence, then, we would ask, comes the tendency “to run into organic form”? Is it in any way explicable except according to the teachings of Occult Science?

_The Worlds, to the profane, are built up of the known Elements. To the conception of an Arhat, these Elements are themselves, collectively, a Divine Life; distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the numberless and countless crores of Lives. Fire alone is_ ONE, _on the plane of the One Reality: on that of manifested, hence illusive, Being, its particles are fiery Lives which live and have their being at the expense of every other Life that they consume. Therefore they are named the_ “DEVOURERS.” ... Every visible thing in this Universe was built by such LIVES, from conscious and divine primordial man down to the unconscious agents that construct matter.... From the ONE LIFE, _formless and uncreate, proceeds the Universe of Lives. First was manifested from the Deep [Chaos] cold luminous Fire [gaseous light?], which formed the Curds in Space [irresolvable nebulæ, perhaps?] ... These fought, and a great heat was developed by the encountering and collision, which produced rotation. Then came the first manifested_ MATERIAL _Fire, the hot Flames, the Wanderers in Heaven [Comets]. Heat generates moist vapour; that forms solid water [?]; then dry mist, then liquid mist, watery, that puts out the luminous brightness of the Pilgrims [Comets?], and forms solid watery Wheels_ [MATTER _Globes]. Bhümi [the Earth] appears with six sisters. These produce by their continuous motion the inferior fire, heat, and an aqueous mist, which yields the third World‐Element_—WATER; and from the breath of all [atmospheric] AIR is born. These four are the four Lives of the first four Periods [Rounds] of Manvantara. The three last will follow.

The Commentary first speaks of the “numberless and countless crores of Lives.” Is Pasteur, then, unconsciously taking the first step toward Occult Science, in declaring that, if he dared express his ideas fully upon this subject, he would say, that the organic cells are endowed with a vital potency that does not cease its activity with the cessation of a current of oxygen towards them, and does not, on that account, break off its relations with life itself, which is supported by the influence of that gas? “I would add,” continues Pasteur, “that the evolution of the germ is accomplished by means of complicated phenomena, among which we must class processes of fermentation”; and life, according to Claude Bernard and Pasteur, is nothing else than a process of fermentation. That there exist in Nature Beings, or Lives, that can live and thrive without air, even on our Globe, has been demonstrated by the same Scientists. Pasteur found that many of the lower lives, such as vibriones, and other microbes and bacteria, could exist without air, which, on the contrary, killed them. They derived the oxygen necessary for their multiplication from the various substances that surrounded them. He calls them ærobes, living on the tissues of our matter, when the latter has ceased to form a part of an integral and living whole (then called very unscientifically by Science “dead matter”), and anærobes. The one kind binds oxygen, and contributes greatly to the destruction of animal life and vegetable tissues, furnishing to the atmosphere materials which enter, later on, into the constitution of other organisms;

the other finally destroys, or rather annihilates, the so‐called organic substance; ultimate decay being impossible without their participation. Certain germ‐cells, such as those of yeast, develop and multiply in air, but when deprived of it, they will adapt themselves to life without air and become ferments, absorbing oxygen from substances coming in contact with them, and thereby ruining the latter. The cells in fruit, when lacking free oxygen, act as ferments and stimulate fermentation. “Therefore the vegetable cell, in this case, manifests its life as an anærobic being. Why, then, should an organic cell form, in this case, an exception?” asks Professor Bogolubof. Pasteur shows that in the substance of our tissues and organs, the cell, not finding sufficient oxygen for itself, stimulates fermentation in the same way as the fruit‐cell, and Claude Bernard thought that Pasteur’s idea of the formation of ferments found its application and corroboration in the fact that urea increases in the blood during strangulation. LIFE therefore is everywhere in the Universe, and, Occultism teaches us, it is also in the atom.

“Bhûmi appears with six sisters,” says the Commentary. It is a Vedic teaching that “there are three Earths, corresponding to three Heavens, and our Earth [the fourth] is called Bhûmi.” This is the explanation given by our exoteric Western Orientalists. But the esoteric meaning, and allusion to it in the Vedas, is that it refers to our Planetary Chain; “three Earths” on the descending arc, and “three Heavens,” which are three Earths or Globes also, only far more ethereal, on the ascending or spiritual arc. By the first three we descend into Matter, by the other three we ascend into Spirit; the lowest one, Bhûmi, our Earth, forming the turning point, so to say, and containing, potentially, as much of Spirit as it does of Matter. But we shall treat of this hereafter. The general teaching of the Commentary, then, is that every new Round develops one of the Compound Elements, as now known to Science, which rejects the primitive nomenclature, preferring to subdivide them into constituents. If Nature is the “Ever‐Becoming” on the manifested plane, then these Elements are to be regarded in the same light: they have to evolve, progress, and increase to the manvantaric end.

Thus the First Round, we are taught, developed but one Element, and a nature and humanity in what may be spoken of as one aspect of Nature—called by some, very unscientifically, though it may be so de facto, “one‐dimensional space.” The Second Round brought forth and developed two Elements, Fire and Earth; and its humanity, adapted to this condition of Nature, if we can give the name humanity to beings living under conditions now unknown to men, was—to use again a familiar phrase in a strictly figurative sense, the only way in which it can be used correctly—a “two‐dimensional” species.

The processes of natural development which we are now considering will at once elucidate and discredit the fashion of speculating on the attributes of two, three, and four or more dimensional space; but, in passing, it is worth while to point out the real significance of the sound, but incomplete, intuition that has prompted—among Spiritualists and Theosophists, and several great men of Science, for the matter of that(398)—the use of the modern expression, the “fourth dimension of space.” To begin with, the superficial absurdity of assuming that Space itself is measurable in any direction is of little consequence. The familiar phrase can only be an abbreviation of the fuller form—the “fourth dimension of matter, in Space.”(399) But even thus expanded, it is an unhappy phrase, because while it is perfectly true that the progress of evolution may be destined to introduce us to new characteristics of matter, those with which we are already familiar are really more numerous than the three dimensions. The qualities, or what is perhaps the best available term, the characteristics of matter, must clearly bear a direct relation always to the senses of man. Matter has extension, colour, motion (molecular motion), taste and smell, corresponding to the existing senses of man, and the next characteristic it develops—let us call it for the moment “Permeability”—will correspond to

the next sense of man, which we may call “Normal Clairvoyance.” Thus, when some bold thinkers have been thirsting for a fourth dimension, to explain the passage of matter through matter, and the production of knots upon an endless cord, they have been in want of a sixth characteristic of matter. The three dimensions belong really to only one attribute, or characteristic, of matter—extension; and popular common sense justly rebels against the idea that, under any condition of things, there can be more than three of such dimensions as length, breadth and thickness. These terms, and the term “dimension” itself, all belong to one plane of thought, to one stage of evolution, to one characteristic of matter. So long as there are foot‐rules within the resources of cosmos, to apply to matter, so long will they be able to measure it three ways and no more; just as, from the time the idea of measurement first occupied a place in the human understanding, it has been possible to apply measurement in three directions and no more. But these considerations do not in any way militate against the certainty that, in the progress of time, as the faculties of humanity are multiplied, so will the characteristics of matter be multiplied also. Meanwhile, the expression is far more incorrect than even the

familiar phrase of the sun’s “rising” or “setting.”

We now return to the consideration of material evolution through the Rounds. Matter in the Second Round, it has been stated, may be figuratively referred to as two‐dimensional. But here another caveat must be entered. This loose and figurative expression may be regarded—on one plane of thought, as we have just seen—as equivalent to the second characteristic of matter, corresponding to the second perceptive faculty or sense of man. But these two linked scales of evolution are concerned with the processes going on within the limits of a single Round. The succession of primary aspects of Nature, with which the succession of Rounds is concerned, has to do, as already indicated, with the development of the Elements—in the Occult sense—Fire, Air, Water, Earth. We are only in the Fourth Round, and our catalogue so far stops short. The order in which these Elements are mentioned, in the last sentence but one, is the correct one for Esoteric purposes and in the Secret Teachings. Milton was right when he spoke of the “Powers of Fire, Air, Water, Earth”; the Earth, such as we know it now, had no existence before the Fourth Round, hundreds of millions of years ago, the commencement of our geological Earth. The Globe, says the Commentary, was “fiery, cool and radiant, as its ethereal men and animals, during the First Round”—a contradiction or paradox in the opinion of our present Science—“luminous and more dense and heavy, during the Second Round; watery during the Third.” Thus are the Elements reversed.