The Secret Doctrine

In the Sepher Yetzirah, or “Number of Creation,” the whole process of evolution is given out in numbers. In its “thirty‐two Paths of Wisdom” the number 3 is repeated four times, and the number 4 five times. Therefore, the Wisdom of God is contained in numbers (Sephrim or Sephiroth), for Sepher (or S‐ph‐r when unvowelled) means “to cipher.” And therefore, also, we find Plato stating that the Deity “geometrizes” in fabricating the Universe. The Kabalistic book, the Sepher Yetzirah, opens with a statement of the hidden wisdom of Alhim in Sephrim, i.e., the Elohim in the Sephiroth. In thirty and two paths, hidden wisdom, established Jah, IHVH, Tzabaoth, Elohi of Israel, Alhim of Life, El of Grace and Mercy—exalted uplifted Dweller on high, and King of Everlasting, and His name—Holy! in Three Sephrim, viz.: B—S’ph‐r, V—S’ph‐r, V—Siph‐o‐r. Mr. Ralston Skinner goes on to say:

This comment sets forth the “hidden wisdom” of the original text by hidden wisdom, that is, by the use of words carrying a special set of numbers and a special phraseology, which will set forth the very explanatory system which we find to fit so accurately in the Hebrew Bible.... In setting forth his scheme, to enforce it, and to finish out his detailed exposition in a general postulate,—viz., the one word “Sephrim” (Sephiroth), of the Number Jezirah, the author explains the separation of this word in the three subordinate ones, a play upon a common word, s‐ph‐r, or number.

The prince Al‐Chazari(73) says to the Rabbi: “I wish now that thou wouldest impart to me some of the chiefest or leading principles of Natural Philosophy, which, as thou sayest, were in former times worked out by them (the ancient wise ones);”—to which the Rabbi makes answer: “To such principles appertains the Number of Creation of our race‐father Abraham” that is Abram and Abraham, or numbers 41224 and 41252. He then says that this book of number treats of teaching the “Alhim‐ness and One‐ness through (DBRIM)” viz., the numbers of the word “Words.” That is, it teaches the use of the ratio 31415 to One, through 41224, which last, in the description of the Ark of the Covenant, was divided into two parts by the two tables of stone, on which these DBRIM, or 41224, were written or engraved—or 20612 × 2. He then comments on these three subordinately used words, and takes care as to one of them to make the comment, “and Alhim (31415 to One) said let there be Light (20612 to 6561).” The words as given in the text are: ספר ספר סיפור

and the Rabbi, in commenting upon them, says: “It teaches the Alhim‐ness (31415) and One‐ness (the diameter to Alhim), through Words (DBRIM = 41224), by which on the one side there is infinite expression in heterogeneous creations, and on the other a final harmonic tendency to One‐ness” (which, as everyone knows, is the mathematical function of pi of the schools, which measures, weighs, and numbers the stars of heaven, and yet resolves them back into the final oneness of the Uni‐verse) “through Words. Their final accord perfects itself in that One‐ness that ordains them, and which consists in ספר ספר ספור ” that is, the Rabbi, in his first comment, leaves the jod, or i, out of one of the words, whereas afterwards he restores it again. If we take the values of those subordinate words, we find them to be 340, 340 and 346;—together these are 1026, and the division of the general word into these has been to produce these numbers—which by T’mura may be changed in various ways, for various purposes.(74)

The reader is asked to turn to Stanza IV of Volume I, Shloka 3 and Commentary,(75) to find that the 3, 4, (7), and the thrice seven, or 1065, the number of Jehovah, is the number of the 21 Prajâpati mentioned in the Mahâbhârata, or the three Sephrim (words in ciphers or figures). And this comparison between the Creative Powers of Archaic Philosophy and the anthropomorphic Creator of exoteric Judaism (since the Esotericism of the Jews shows its identity with the Secret Doctrine) will lead the student to perceive and discover that, in truth, Jehovah is but a “lunar” and “generation” God. It is a fact well known to every conscientious student of the Kabalah, that the deeper he dives into it, the more he feels convinced that unless the Kabalah—or what is left of it—is read by the light of the Eastern Esoteric Philosophy, its study leads only to the discovery that, on the lines traced by exoteric Judaism and Christianity, the monotheism of both is nothing more exalted than ancient Astrolatry, now vindicated by modern Astronomy. The Kabalists never cease to repeat that Primal Intelligence can never be understood. It cannot be comprehended, nor can it be located, therefore it has to remain nameless and negative. Hence the Ain Suph—the “Unknowable” and “UNNAMEABLE”—as It could not be made manifest, was imagined as emanating Manifesting Powers. It is then with its Emanations alone that human intellect has to, and can, deal.

Christian theology, having rejected the doctrine of Emanations and replaced them with direct, conscious Creations of Angels and the rest out of nothing, now finds itself hopelessly stranded between Supernaturalism, or Miracle, and Materialism. An extra‐cosmic God is fatal to Philosophy: an intra‐cosmic Deity—i.e., Spirit and Matter inseparable from each other—is a philosophical necessity. Separate them and that which is left is a gross superstition under a mask of emotionalism. But why “geometrize,” as Plato has it, why represent these Emanations under the form of an immense arithmetical table? The question is well answered by the author just cited, who says:

Mental perception, to become physical perception, must have the cosmic principle of Light:—and, by this, our mental circle must become visible through light; or, for its complete manifestation, the circle must be that of physical visibility, or Light itself. Such conceptions, thus formulated, became the ground‐work of the philosophy of the Divine manifesting in the universe.(76) This is Philosophy. It is otherwise when we find the Rabbi in Al‐Chazari saying that: Under s’ph‐r is to be understood—calculation and weighing of the created bodies. For the calculation, by means of which a body must be constructed in harmony or symmetry, by which it must be in construction rightly arranged and made to correspond to the object in design, consists at last in number, extension, mass, weight;—co‐ordinate relation of movements, then harmony of music, must consist altogether by number, that is s’ph‐r.... By Sippor (s’phor) is to be understood the words of Alhim (206—1 of 31415 to one), whereunto joins or adapts itself the design to the frame or form of construction; for example—it was said “Let Light be.” The work became as the words were spoken, that is, as the numbers of the work came forth.(77)

This is materializing the spiritual without scruple. But the Kabalah was not always so well adapted to anthropo‐monotheistic conceptions. Compare this with any of the six schools of India. For instance in Kapila’s Sânkhya Philosophy, unless, allegorically speaking, Purusha mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti, the latter remains irrational, while the former remains inactive without her. Therefore Nature (in man) must become a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes what he is; and the Spirit latent in Matter must be awakened to life and consciousness gradually. The Monad has to pass through its mineral, vegetable and animal forms, before the Light of the Logos is awakened in the animal man. Therefore, till then, the latter cannot be referred to as “man,” but has to be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever‐changing forms. Evolution, not Creation, by means of Words is recognized in the Philosophies of the East, even in their exoteric records. Ex oriente lux. Even the name of the first man in the Mosaic Bible had its origin in India, Professor Max Müller’s negation notwithstanding. The Jews got their Adam from Chaldæa; and Adam‐Adami is a compound word and therefore a manifold symbol, and proves the Occult dogmas.

This is no place for philological disquisitions. But the reader may be reminded that the words Ad and Adi mean in Sanskrit the “first”; in Aramæan, “one” (Ad‐ad, the “only one”); in Assyrian, “Father,” whence Ak‐ad or “father‐creator.”(78) And once the statement is found correct, it becomes rather difficult to confine Adam to the Mosaic Bible alone, and to see therein simply a Jewish name.

There is frequent confusion in the attributes and genealogies of the Gods in their Theogonies, the Alpha and the Omega of the records of that symbolical science, as given to the world by the half‐initiated writers, Brâhmanical and Biblical. Yet there could be no such confusion made by the earliest nations, the descendants and pupils of the Divine Instructors; for both the attributes and the genealogies were inseparably linked with cosmogonical symbols, the “Gods” being the life and animating “soul‐ principle” of the various regions of the Universe. Nowhere and by no people was speculation allowed to range beyond those manifested Gods. The boundless and infinite Unity remained with every nation a virgin forbidden soil, untrodden by man’s thought, untouched by fruitless speculation. The only reference made to it was the brief conception of its diastolic and systolic property, of its periodical expansion, or dilatation, and contraction. In the Universe, with all its incalculable myriads of Systems and Worlds disappearing and reäppearing in eternity, the anthropomorphized Powers, or Gods, their Souls, had to disappear from view with their Bodies. As our Catechism says: “The Breath returning to the Eternal Bosom which exhales and inhales them.”

Ideal Nature, the Abstract Space in which everything in the Universe is mysteriously and invisibly generated, is the same female side of the procreative power in Nature in the Vedic as in every other Cosmogony. Aditi is Sephira, and the Sophia of the Gnostics, and Isis, the Virgin Mother of Horus. In every Cosmogony, behind and higher than the “Creative” Deity, there is a Superior Deity, a Planner, an Architect, of whom the Creator is but the executive agent. And still higher, over and around, within and without, there is the Unknowable and the Unknown, the Source and Cause of all these Emanations.

It thus becomes easy to account for the reason why Adam‐Adami is found in the Chaldæan scripture, certainly earlier than the Mosaic Books. In Assyrian Ad is the “father,” and in Aramæan Ad is “one,” and Ad‐ad the “only one,” while Ak is in Assyrian “creator.” Thus Ad‐am‐ak‐ad‐ mon became Adam‐Kadmon in the Kabalah (Zohar), meaning as it did, the “One (Son) of the divine Father, or the Creator,” for the words am and om meant at one time in nearly every language the divine, or the deity. Thus Adam‐Kadmon and Adam‐Adami came to mean “The first Emanation of the Father‐Mother or Divine Nature,” and literally the “first Divine One.” And it is easy to see that Ad‐Argat (or Aster’t, the Syrian Goddess, the consort of Ad‐on, the Lord God of Syria or the Jewish Adonai), and Venus, Isis, Ister, Mylitta, Eve, etc., are identical with the Aditi and Vâch of the Hindûs. They are all the “Mothers of all living” and “of the Gods.” On the other hand—cosmically and astronomically—all the male Gods became at first “Sun‐Gods,” then, theologically, the “Suns of Righteousness,” and the Logoi, all symbolized by the Sun.(79) They are all Protogonoi—First‐born—and Mikroprosopoi. With the Jews Adam‐Kadmon was the same as Athamaz, Tamaz, or the Adonis of the Greeks—“the One with, and of his Father”—the “Father” becoming during the later Races Helios, the Sun, as Apollo Karneios,(80) for instance, who was the “Sun‐born”; Osiris, Ormazd, and so on, were all followed by, and found themselves transformed later on into, still more earthly types: such as Prometheus, the crucified of Mount Kajbee, Hercules, and so many others, Sun‐Gods and Heroes, until all of them came to have no better significance than phallic symbols.

In the Zohar it is said: Man was created by the Sephiroth (Elohim‐Javeh, also) and they engendered by common power the earthly Adam. Therefore in Genesis the Elohim say: “Behold Man is become as one of us.” But in Hindû Cosmogony or “Creation,” Brahmâ‐Prajâpati creates Virâj and the Rishis, spiritually; therefore the latter are distinctly called the “Mind‐born Sons of Brahmâ”; and this specified mode of engendering precluded every idea of Phallicism, at any rate in the earlier human nations. This instance well illustrates the respective spirituality of the two nations. 3. SAID THE LORD OF THE SHINING FACE: “I SHALL SEND THEE A FIRE WHEN THY WORK IS COMMENCED. RAISE THY VOICE TO OTHER LOKAS; APPLY TO THY FATHER, THE LORD OF THE LOTUS(81) (A), FOR HIS SONS.... THY PEOPLE SHALL BE UNDER THE RULE OF THE FATHERS.(82) THY MEN SHALL BE MORTALS. THE MEN OF THE LORD OF WISDOM,(83) NOT THE SONS OF SOMA,(84) ARE IMMORTAL. CEASE THY COMPLAINTS (B). THY SEVEN SKINS ARE YET ON THEE.... THOU ART NOT READY. THY MEN ARE NOT READY” (C). (a) Kumuda‐Pati is the Moon, the Earth’s parent, in his region of Soma‐ loka. Though the Pitris, or Fathers, are Sons of the Gods, elsewhere Sons of Brahmâ and even Rishis, they are generally known as the Lunar Ancestors.

(b) Pitri‐Pati is the Lord or King of the Pitris, Yama, the God of Death and the Judge of mortals. The men of Budha, Mercury, are metaphorically “immortal” through their Wisdom. Such is the common belief of those who credit every Star or Planet with being inhabited—and there are men of Science, M. Flammarion among others, who believe in this fervently, on logical as well as on astronomical data. The Moon being an inferior body—even to the Earth, to say nothing of other Planets, the terrestrial men produced by her Sons—the Lunar Men or Ancestors—from her shell or body, cannot be immortal. They cannot hope to become real, self‐conscious and intelligent men, unless they are “finished,” so to say, by other creators. Thus in the Purânic legend, the son of the Moon (Soma) is Budha (Mercury), the intelligent and the wise, because he is the offspring of Soma, the Regent of the visible Moon, not of Indu, the physical Moon. Thus Mercury is the elder brother of the Earth, metaphorically—his step‐ brother, so to say, the offspring of Spirit—while she (the Earth) is the progeny of the Body. These allegories have a deeper and more scientific meaning—astronomically and geologically—than our modern Physicists are willing to admit. The whole cycle of the first “War in Heaven,” the Târakâ‐maya, is as full of philosophical as of cosmogonical and astronomical truths. One can trace therein the biographies of all the Planets by the history of their Gods and Rulers. Ushanas (Shukra, or Venus), the bosom‐friend of Soma and the foe of Brihaspati (Jupiter), the “Instructor of the Gods,” whose wife Târâ, or Tarakâ, had been carried away by the Moon, Soma—“of whom he begat Budha”—took also an active part in this war against the “Gods” and forthwith was degraded into a Demon (Asura) Deity, and so he remains to this day.(85)

Here the word “men” refers to the Celestial men, or what are called in India the Pitaras or Pitris, the Fathers, the Progenitors of men. This does not remove the seeming difficulty, in view of modern hypotheses, of the teaching, which shows these Progenitors or Ancestors creating the first human Adams out of their sides, as astral shadows. And though it is an improvement on Adam’s rib, still geological and climatic difficulties will be brought forward. Such, however, is the teaching of Occultism. (c) Man’s organism was adapted in every Race to its surroundings. The first Root‐Race was as ethereal as ours is material. The progeny of the Seven Creators, who evolved the Seven Primordial Adams,(86) surely required no purified gases to breathe and live upon. Therefore, however strongly the impossibility of this teaching may be urged by the devotees of Modern Science, the Occultist maintains that the case was as stated æons of years before even the evolution of the Lemurian, the first physical man, which took place 18,000,000 years ago. Archaic Scripture teaches that at the commencement of every local Kalpa, or Round, the Earth is reborn, and preliminary evolution is described in one of the Books of Dzyan and the Commentaries thereon in this wise:

“_As the human Jîva [Monad], when passing into a new womb, gets recovered with a new body, so does the Jîva of the Earth; it gets a more perfect and solid covering with each Round after reëmerging once more from the matrix of space into objectivity._” This process is attended, of course, by the throes of the new birth, or geological convulsions. The only reference to it is contained in one verse of the volume of the Book of Dzyan before us, where it says: 4. AFTER GREAT THROES SHE(87) CAST OFF HER OLD THREE AND PUT ON HER NEW SEVEN SKINS, AND STOOD IN HER FIRST ONE. This refers to the growth of the Earth, whereas in the Stanza treating of the First Round it is said in the Commentary: “_After the changeless [Avikâra] immutable Nature [Essence, Sadaikarûpa] had awakened and changed [differentiated] into [a state of] causality [Avyakta], and from cause [Kârana] had become its own discrete effect [Vyakta], from invisible it became visible. The smallest of the small [the most atomic of atoms, or anîyânsam anîyasâm] became one and the many [Ekânekarûpa]; and producing the Universe produced also the fourth Loka [our Earth] in the garland of the seven lotuses. The Achyuta then became the Chyuta._”(88)

The Earth is said to cast off “her old three” Skins, because this refers to the three preceding Rounds she has already passed through; the present being the Fourth Round out of the seven. At the beginning of every new Round, after a period of Obscuration, the Earth—as do also the other six “Earths”—casts off, or is supposed to cast off, her old Skins as the Serpent does; therefore she is called in the Aitareya‐Brâhmana the Sarpa‐Râjnî, the “Queen of the Serpents,” and “the mother of all that moves.” The “Seven Skins,” in the first of which she now stands, refer to the seven geological changes which accompany and correspond to the evolution of the Seven Root‐Races of Humanity.

information concerning the age of our Earth. The chronology will be given in its place. In the Commentary appended to the Stanza, two personages are mentioned, Nârada and Asuramaya, especially the latter. All the calculations are attributed to this archaic celebrity; and what follows will make the reader superficially acquainted with some of these figures. Two Antediluvian Astronomers. To the mind of the Eastern student of Occultism, two figures are indissolubly connected with mystic Astronomy, Chronology, and their cycles. Two grand and mysterious figures, towering like two giants in the Archaic Past, emerge before him, whenever he has to refer to Yugas and Kalpas. When, at what period of pre‐history they lived, none save a few men in the world know, or ever can know, with that certainty which is required by exact chronology. It may have been 100,000 years ago, it may have been 1,000,000, for all that the outside world will ever know. The mystic West and Freemasonry talk loudly of Enoch and Hermes. The mystic East speaks of Nârada, the old Vedic Rishi, and of Asuramaya, the Atlantean.

It has already been hinted that of all the incomprehensible characters in the Mahâbhârata and the Purânas, Nârada, the son of Brahmâ in the Matsya Purâna, the progeny of Kashyapa and the daughter of Daksha, in the Vishnu Purâna, is the most mysterious. He is referred to by the honourable title of Deva‐Rishi (Divine Rishi, rather than Demi‐God) by Parâshara, and yet he is cursed by Daksha and even by Brahmâ. He informs Kansha that Bhagavân, or Vishnu in exotericism, would incarnate in the eighth child of Devakî, and thus brings the wrath of the Indian Herod upon Krishna’s mother; and then, from the cloud on which he is seated—invisible as a true Mânasaputra—he lauds Krishna, in delight at the Avatâr’s feat of killing the monster Keshin. Nârada is here, there, and everywhere; and yet, none of the Purânas gives the true characteristics of this great enemy of physical procreation. Whatever those characteristics may be in Hindû Esotericism, Nârada—who is called in Cis‐Himâlayan Occultism Pesh‐ Hun, the “Messenger,” or the Greek Angelos—is the sole confidant and the executor of the universal decrees of Karma and Adi‐Budha: a kind of active and ever‐incarnating Logos, who leads and guides human affairs from the beginning to the end of the Kalpa.

Pesh‐Hun is a general not a special Hindû possession. He is the mysterious guiding intelligent power, which gives the impulse to, and regulates the impetus of Cycles, Kalpas and universal events.(89) He is Karma’s visible adjuster on a general scale; the inspirer and the leader of the greatest heroes of this Manvantara. In the exoteric works he is referred to by some very uncomplimentary names; such as Kali‐kâraka, Strife‐maker, Kapi‐ vaktra, Monkey‐faced, and even Pishuna, the Spy, though elsewhere he is called Deva‐Brahmâ. Even Sir William Jones was strongly impressed with this mysterious character from what he gathered in his Sanskrit studies. He compares him to Hermes and Mercury, and calls him “the eloquent messenger of the gods.”(90) All this, besides the fact that the Hindûs believe him to be a great Rishi, “who is for ever wandering about the earth, giving good counsel,” led the late Dr. Kenealy(91) to see in him one of his twelve Messiahs. He was, perhaps, not so far off the real track as some imagine.

What Nârada really is, cannot be explained in print; nor would the modern generations of the profane gather much from the information. But it may be remarked, that if there be in the Hindû Pantheon a Deity which resembles Jehovah, in tempting by “suggestion” of thoughts, and “hardening” of the hearts of those whom he would make his tools and victims, it is Nârada. Only with the latter it is no desire to obtain a pretext for “plaguing,” and thus showing that “I am the Lord God.” Nor is it through any ambitious or selfish motive; but, verily, to serve and guide universal progress and evolution.

Nârada is one of the few prominent characters, if we except some Gods, in the Purânas, who visit the so‐called nether or infernal regions, Pâtâla. Whether or not it was from his intercourse with the thousand‐headed Shesha, the Serpent who bears the Seven Pâtâlas and the entire world like a diadem upon his heads, and who is the great teacher of Astronomy,(92) that Nârada learned all that he knew, certain it is that he surpasses Garga’s Guru in his knowledge of cyclic intricacies. It is he who has charge of our progress and national weal or woe. It is he who brings on wars and puts an end to them. In the old Stanzas, Pesh‐Hun is credited with having calculated and recorded all the astronomical and cosmic Cycles to come, and with having taught the Science to the first gazers at the starry vault. And it is Asuramaya, who is said to have based all his astronomical works upon those records, to have determined the duration of all the past geological and cosmical periods, and the length of all the Cycles to come, till the end of this Life‐Cycle, or the end of the Seventh Race.

There is a work among the Secret Books, called the Mirror of Futurity, wherein all the Kalpas within Kalpas, and Cycles within the bosom of Shesha, or infinite Time, are recorded. This work is ascribed to Pesh‐Hun‐ Nârada. There is another old work which is attributed to various Atlanteans. It is these two records which furnish us with the figures of our Cycles, and the possibility of calculating the date of Cycles to come. The chronological calculations which will presently be given are, however, those of the Brâhmans, as explained further on: but most of them are also those of the Secret Doctrine. The chronology and computations of the Brâhman Initiates are based upon the zodiacal records of India, and the works of the above‐mentioned Astronomer and Magician—Asuramaya. The Atlantean zodiacal records cannot err, as they were compiled under the guidance of those who first taught Astronomy, among other things, to mankind.

But here again we are deliberately and recklessly facing a new difficulty. We shall be told that our statement is contradicted by Science, in the person of a man regarded as a great authority (in the West) upon all subjects of Sanskrit literature—Professor Albrecht Weber, of Berlin. This, to our great regret, cannot be helped; and we are ready to maintain what is now stated. Asuramaya, to whom the epic tradition points as the earliest Astronomer in Âryâvarta, one to whom “the Sun‐God imparted the knowledge of the stars,” in propriâ personâ, as Dr. Weber himself states, is identified by him, in some very mysterious way, with the “Ptolemaios” of the Greeks. No more valid reason is given for this identification than that: This latter name (Ptolemaios), as we see from the inscription of Piyadasi, became the Indian “Turamaya,” out of which the name “Asura Maya” might very easily grow. No doubt it “might,” but the vital question is: Are there any good proofs that it has thus grown? The only evidence that is given for this is, that it must be so: Since ... this Maya is distinctly assigned to Romaka‐pura in the West.(93)

The Mâyâ is evident, since no Sanskritist among Europeans can tell where that locality of Romaka‐pura was, except, indeed, that it was somewhere “in the West.” In any case, as no member of the Asiatic Society, or Western Orientalist, will ever listen to a Brâhmanical teaching, it is useless to take the objections of European Orientalists into consideration. Romaka‐pura was “in the West,” certainly, since it was part and parcel of the lost continent of Atlantis. And it is equally certain that it is Atlantis, to which is assigned in the Hindû Purânas the birth‐place of Asuramaya, “as great a Magician as he was an Astrologer and an Astronomer.” Moreover, Prof. Weber refuses to assign any great antiquity to the Indian Zodiac, and feels inclined to think that the Hindûs never knew of a Zodiac at all till They had borrowed one from the Greeks.(94) This statement clashes with the most ancient traditions of India, and must therefore be ignored. We are the more justified in ignoring it, as the learned German Professor himself tells us in the introduction to his work, that: In addition to the natural obstacles which impede investigation [in India], there still prevails a dense mist of prejudice and preconceived opinions hovering over the land, and enfolding it as with a veil.(95)

Caught in that veil, it is no wonder that Dr. Weber should himself have been led into involuntary errors. Let us hope that he knows better now. Now whether Asuramaya is to be considered a modern myth, a personage who flourished in the day of the Macedonian Greeks, or that which he is claimed to be by the Occultists, in any case his calculations agree entirely with those of the Secret Records. From fragments of immensely old works attributed to the Atlantean Astronomer, and found in Southern India, the calendar elsewhere mentioned was compiled by two very learned Brâhmans(96) in 1884 and 1885. The work is proclaimed by the best Pandits as faultless—from the Brâhmanical standpoint—and thus far relates to the chronology of the orthodox teachings. If we compare its statements with those made several years earlier in Isis Unveiled, with the fragmentary teachings published by some Theosophists, and with the present data derived from the Secret Books of Occultism, the whole will be found to agree perfectly, save in some details which may not be explained; for secrets of higher Initiation—as unknown to the writer as they are to the reader—would have to be revealed, and that cannot be done.

5. After enormous periods the Earth creates monsters. 6. The “Creators” are displeased. 7. They dry the Earth. 8. The forms are destroyed by them. 9. The first great tides. 10. The beginning of incrustation. 5. THE WHEEL WHIRLED FOR THIRTY CRORES MORE.(97) IT CONSTRUCTED RÛPAS;(98) SOFT STONES THAT HARDENED,(99) HARD PLANTS THAT SOFTENED.(100) VISIBLE FROM INVISIBLE, INSECTS AND SMALL LIVES.(101) SHE(102) SHOOK THEM OFF HER BACK WHENEVER THEY OVERRAN THE MOTHER (A).... AFTER THIRTY CRORES, SHE TURNED ROUND. SHE LAY ON HER BACK; ON HER SIDE.... SHE WOULD CALL NO SONS OF HEAVEN, SHE WOULD ASK NO SONS OF WISDOM. SHE CREATED FROM HER OWN BOSOM. SHE EVOLVED WATER‐MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD (B). (a) This relates to an inclination of the axis—of which there were several—to a consequent deluge and chaos on Earth (having, however, no reference to Primeval Chaos), in which monsters, half‐human, half‐animal, were generated. We find it mentioned in the Book of the Dead, and also in the Chaldæan account of creation, on the Cutha Tablets, however mutilated.

It is not even allegory. Here we have facts, that are found repeated in the account of the Pymander, as well as in the Chaldæan tablets of creation. The verses may almost be checked by the Cosmogony, as given by Berosus, which has been disfigured out of recognition by Eusebius, but some of the features of which may yet be found in fragments left by ancient Greek authors—Apollodorus, Alexander Polyhistor, etc. “The water‐ men terrible and bad”—who were the production of Physical Nature alone, a result of the “evolutionary impulse” and the first attempt to create “man,” the crown, and the aim and goal of all animal life on Earth—are shown to be failures in our Stanzas. Do we not find the same in the Berosian Cosmogony, denounced with such vehemence as the culmination of heathen absurdity? And yet who of the Evolutionists can say that things in the beginning have not come to pass as they are described? That, as maintained in the Purânas, the Egyptian and Chaldæan fragments, and even in Genesis, there have not been two, and even more, “creations,” before the last formation of the Globe; which, changing its geological and atmospheric conditions, changed also its flora, its fauna, and its men? This claim agrees not only with every ancient Cosmogony, but also with Modern Science, and even, to a certain degree, with the theory of evolution, as may be demonstrated in a few words.

There is no “Dark Creation,” no “Evil Dragon” conquered by a Sun‐God, in the earliest World‐Cosmogonies. Even with the Akkads, the Great Deep—the Watery Abyss, or Space—was the birthplace and abode of Ea, Wisdom, the incognizable infinite Deity. But with the Semites and the later Chaldæans, the fathomless Deep of Wisdom becomes gross Matter, sinful substance, and Ea is changed into Tiamat, the Dragon slain by Merodach, or Satan, in the astral waves.

In the Hindû Purânas, Brahmâ, the Creator, is seen recommencing de novo several “Creations” after as many failures; and two great Creations are mentioned,(103) the Pâdma and the Vârâha, the present, when the Earth was lifted out of the water by Brahmâ, in the shape of a Boar, the Varâha Avatâra. Creation is shown as a sport, an amusement (Lîlâ) of the Creative God. The Zohar speaks of primordial worlds, which perished as soon as they came into existence. And the same is said in the Midraish, Rabbi Abahu explaining distinctly(104) that “the Holy One” had successively created and destroyed sundry Worlds, before he succeeded in the present one. This does not relate only to other Worlds in Space, but to a mystery of our own Globe contained in the allegory about the “Kings of Edom.” For the words, “This one pleases me,” are repeated in Genesis,(105) though in disfigured terms, as usual. The Chaldæan fragments of Cosmogony in the cuneiform inscriptions, and elsewhere, show two distinct creations of animals and men, the first being destroyed, as it was a failure. The Cosmogonical tablets prove that this our actual creation was preceded by others;(106) and as shown by the author of The Qabbalah, in the Zohar, Siphra Dtzenioutha, in Jovah Rabba, 128a, etc., the Kabalah states the same.

(b) Oannes, or Dagon, the Chaldæan “Man‐fish,” divides his Cosmogony and Genesis into two portions. First the abyss of waters and darkness, wherein resided most hideous beings—men with wings, four and two‐winged men, human beings with two heads, with the legs and horns of a goat—our “goat‐ men”(107)—hippocentaurs, bulls with the heads of men, and dogs with tails of fishes. In short, combinations of various animals and men, of fishes, reptiles and other monstrous animals, assuming each other’s shapes and countenances. The feminine element they resided in is personified by Thalatth—the Sea, or “Water”—which was finally conquered by Belus, the male principle. And Polyhistor says: Belus came, and cut the woman asunder; and of one half of her he formed the earth, and of the other half the heavens; and at the same time destroyed the animals within her.(108) As pertinently remarked by Isaac Myer: With the Akkadians each object and power of Nature had its Zi or Spirit. The Akkadians formed their deities into triads, usually of males [sexless, rather?], the Semites also had triadic deities, but introduced sex(109) —or phallicism. With the Âryan and the earliest Akkadians all things are emanations through, not by, a Creator or Logos. With the Semites everything is begotten.

6. THE WATER‐MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD, SHE HERSELF CREATED FROM THE REMAINS OF OTHERS.(110) FROM THE DROSS AND SLIME OF HER FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD,(111) SHE FORMED THEM. THE DHYÂNI CAME AND LOOKED.... THE DHYÂNI FROM THE BRIGHT FATHER‐MOTHER, FROM THE WHITE(112) REGIONS THEY(113) CAME, FROM THE ABODES OF THE IMMORTAL MORTALS (A). (a) The explanations given in our Stanzas are far more clear than that which the legend of creation from the Cutha tablet would give, even were it complete. What is preserved on it, however, corroborates them. For, in the tablet, the “Lord of Angels” destroys the men in the abyss, when “there were not left the carcases and waste” after they were slaughtered. After which they, the Great Gods, create men with the bodies of birds of the desert, human beings, “seven kings, brothers of the same family,” etc., which is a reference to the locomotive qualities of the primary ethereal bodies of men, which could fly as well as they could walk,(114) but who “were destroyed” because they were not “perfect,” i.e., they “were sexless, like the Kings of Edom.”

Weeded of metaphors and allegories, what will Science say to this idea of a primordial creation of species? It will object to the “Angels” and “Spirits” having anything to do therewith; but if it be Nature and the physical law of evolution that are the creators of all there is now on Earth, why could there be “no such abyss,” when the Globe was covered with waters, in which numbers of monstrous beings were generated? Is it the “human beings” and animals with human heads and double faces, which are a point of the objection? But if man is only a higher animal and has evolved from the brute species by an infinite series of transformations, why could not the “missing links” have had human heads attached to the bodies of animals, or, being two‐headed, have heads of beasts and vice versâ, in Nature’s early efforts? Are we not shown, during the geological periods, in the ages of the reptiles and the mammalia, lizards with birds’ wings, and serpents’ heads on animal bodies?(115) And, arguing from the standpoint of Science, does not even our modern human race occasionally furnish us with monster‐specimens: two‐headed children, animal bodies with human heads, dog‐headed babies, etc.? And this proves that, if Nature will still play such freaks now that she has been settled for ages in the order of her evolutionary work, monsters, like those described by Berosus, were a possibility in her opening programme; a possibility which may even have existed once upon a time as a law, before she sorted out her species and began regular work upon them. And this indeed now admits of definite proof by the bare fact of “Reversion,” as Science puts it.

This is what the Doctrine teaches, and demonstrates by numerous proofs. But we shall not wait for the approval of either dogmatic Theology or Materialistic Science, but proceed with the Stanzas. Let these speak for themselves, with the help of the light thrown on them by the Commentaries and their explanations; the scientific aspect of these questions will be considered later on. Thus Physical Nature, when left to herself in the creation of animal and man, is shown to have failed. She can produce the first two kingdoms, as well as that of the lower animals, but when it comes to the turn of man, spiritual, independent and intelligent powers are required for his creation, besides the “coats of skin” and the “breath of animal life.” The human Monads of preceding Rounds need something higher than purely physical materials with which to build their personalities, under the penalty of remaining even below any “Frankenstein” animal.(116) 7. DISPLEASED THEY WERE. “OUR FLESH IS NOT THERE.(117) NO FIT RÛPAS FOR OUR BROTHERS OF THE FIFTH. NO DWELLINGS FOR THE LIVES.(118) PURE WATERS, NOT TURBID, THEY MUST DRINK (A). LET US DRY THEM.”(119) (a) Says the Catechism on the Commentaries:

_It is from the material Worlds that descend they, who fashion physical man at the new Manvantaras. They are inferior Lha [Spirits], possessed of a dual body [an Astral within an Ethereal Form]. They are the fashioners and creators of our body of illusion_.... Into the forms projected by the Lha [Pitris] the Two Letters(120)_ [the Monad, called also the __“__Double Dragon__”__] descend from the Spheres of Expectation._(121) But they are like a roof with no walls, nor pillars to rest upon.... Man needs four Flames and three Fires to become one on Earth, and he requires the essence of the forty‐nine Fires(122) to be perfect. It is those who have deserted the Superior Spheres, the Gods of Will,(123)_ who complete the Manu of illusion. For the __“__Double Dragon__”__ has no hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no tree or branch to receive and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where there is no agent of transmission [Manas, __“__Mind__”__] and the form knows it not._ In the highest worlds, the three are one,(124)_ on Earth [at first] the one becomes two. They are like the two [side] lines of a triangle that has lost its bottom line—which is the third Fire._(125)

Now this requires some explanation before proceeding any further. To do so especially for the benefit of our Âryan Hindû brethren—whose Esoteric interpretations may differ from our own—we shall have to explain to them the foregoing by certain passages in their own exoteric books, namely, the Purânas. In the allegories of the latter, Brahmâ, who is collectively the Creative Force of the Universe, is thus described: At the beginning of the Yugas [Cycles] ... possessed of the desire and of the power to create, and impelled by the potencies of what is to be created, again and again does he, at the outset of a Kalpa, put forth a similar creation.(126) It is now proposed to examine the exoteric account in the Vishnu Purâna, and see how much it may agree or disagree with our Occult version. Creation of Divine Beings in the Exoteric Accounts. In the Vishnu Purâna, which is certainly the earliest of all the scriptures of that name, we find, as in all the others, Brahmâ, as the male God, assuming, for purposes of creation, “four Bodies invested by three qualities.”(127) It is said: In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsnâ (dawn), Râtri (night), Ahan (day), and Sandhyâ (evening [twilight]) are the four bodies of Brahmâ.(128)

As Parâshara explains it, when Brahmâ wishes to create the world anew and construct progeny through his will, in the fourfold condition, or the four Orders of Beings, termed Gods (Dhyân Chohans), Demons(129) (i.e., more material Devas), Progenitors (Pitris) and Men, “he collects [Yoga‐ like] his mind into itself” (Yûyuge). Strange to say, he begins by creating Demons, who thus take precedence over the Angels or Gods. This is no incongruity, nor is it due to inconsistency, but has, like all the rest, a profound Esoteric meaning, quite clear to one free from Christian theological prejudice. He who bears in mind that the principle Mahat, or Intellect, the “Universal Mind” (literally the “Great”), which Esoteric Philosophy explains as the “Manifested Omniscience”—the “first product” of Pradhâna, Primordial Matter, as the Vishnu Purâna says, but the first Cosmic Aspect of Parabrahman or the Esoteric Sat, the Universal Soul,(130) as Occultism teaches—is at the root of SELF‐Consciousness, will understand the reason why. The so‐called Demons—who are Esoterically the Self‐asserting and intellectually active Principle—are the positive pole of creation, so to say; hence, the first produced. This is in brief the process as narrated allegorically in the Purânas.

Having concentrated his mind into itself and the Quality of Darkness pervading Brahmâ’s assumed body, the Asuras, issuing from his Thigh, were first produced; after which, abandoning this body, it was transformed into Night.

Two important points are involved herein: (a) Primarily in the Rig Veda, the Asuras are shown as spiritual divine Beings; their etymology is derived from Asu, breath, the “Breath of God,” and they mean the same as the Supreme Spirit or the Zoroastrian Ahura. It is later on, for purposes of theology and dogma, that they are shown issuing from Brahmâ’s Thigh, and that their name began to be derived from a, privative, and Sura, a God, or “not‐a‐God,” and that they became the enemies of the Gods. (b) Every ancient Theogony without exception—from the Aryan and the Egyptian down to that of Hesiod—in the order of Cosmogonical evolution, places Night before Day; even Genesis, where “darkness is upon the face of the deep” before the “first day.” The reason for this is that every Cosmogony—except in the Secret Doctrine—begins by the “Secondary Creation” so‐called; to wit, the Manifested Universe, the Genesis of which has to begin by a marked differentiation between the eternal Light of “Primary Creation,” whose mystery must remain for ever “Darkness” to the prying finite conception and intellect of the profane, and the Secondary Evolution of manifested visible Nature. The Veda contains the whole philosophy of that division, without having ever been correctly explained by our Orientalists, since it has never been understood by them.

Continuing to create, Brahmâ assumes another form, that of the Day, and creates from his Breath the Gods, who are endowed with the Quality of Goodness (Passivity).(131) In his next body the Quality of great Passivity prevailed, which is also (negative) goodness, and from the side of that personage issued the Pitris, the Progenitors of men, because, as the text explains, Brahmâ “thought of himself [during the process] as the father of the world.”(132) This is Kriyâ‐shakti—the mysterious Yoga‐power explained elsewhere. This body of Brahmâ when cast off became the Sandhyâ, Evening Twilight, the interval between Day and Night. Finally Brahmâ assumed his last form pervaded by the Quality of Foulness. And from this, Men, in whom foulness (or passion) predominates, were produced. This body when cast off became the Dawn, or Morning Twilight—the Twilight of Humanity. Here Brahmâ stands Esoterically for the Pitris. He is collectively the Pitâ, “Father.” The true Esoteric meaning of this allegory must now be explained. Brahmâ here symbolizes personally the Collective Creators of the World and Men—the Universe with all its numberless productions of things movable and (seemingly) immovable.(133) He is collectively the Prajâpatis, the Lords of Being; and the four bodies typify the four Classes of Creative Powers or Dhyân Chohans, described in the Commentary on Shloka I, Stanza VII, in

evil in this World, and of the whole Cycle of Manvantaric results therefrom, hangs on the correct comprehension of these Four Bodies of Brahmâ. The reader will now be prepared to understand the real, the Esoteric significance of what follows. Moreover there is an important point to be cleared up. Christian Theology having arbitrarily settled and agreed that Satan with his Fallen Angels belonged to the earliest creation, Satan being the first‐created, the wisest and most beautiful of God’s Archangels, the word was given, the key‐note struck. Henceforth all the Pagan Scriptures were made to yield the same meaning, and all were shown to be demoniacal, and it was and is claimed that truth and fact belong to, and commence only with, Christianity. Even the Orientalists and Mythologists, some of them no Christians at all but “infidels,” or men of Science, entered, unconsciously to themselves and by the mere force of association of ideas and habit, into the theological groove.

Purely Brâhmanical considerations, based on greed of power and ambition, allowed the masses to remain in ignorance of great truths; and the same causes led the Initiates among the early Christians to remain silent, while those who had never known the truth disfigured the order of things, judging of the Hierarchy of “Angels” by their exoteric form. Thus, as the Asuras had become the rebellious inferior Gods fighting the higher ones in popular creeds, so the highest Archangel, in truth the Agathodæmon, the eldest benevolent Logos, became in theology the “Adversary” or Satan. But is this warranted by the correct interpretation of any old Scripture? The answer is: most certainly not. As the Mazdean Scriptures of the Zend Avesta, the Vendidâd and others correct and expose the later cunning shuffling of the Gods in the Hindû Pantheon, and restore through Ahura the Asuras to their legitimate place in Theogony, so the recent discoveries of the Chaldæan tablets vindicate the good name of the first divine Emanations. This is easily proved. Christian Angelology is directly and solely derived from that of the Pharisees, who brought their tenets from Babylonia. The Sadducees, the real guardians of the Laws of Moses, knew not of any Angels, opposing even the immortality of the human Soul (not the impersonal Spirit). In the Bible the only Angels spoken of are the “Sons of God” mentioned in Genesis vi—who are now regarded as the Nephilim, the Fallen Angels—and several Angels in human form, the “Messengers” of the Jewish God, whose own rank needs a closer analysis than heretofore given. As shown above, the early Akkadians called Ea Wisdom, which was disfigured by the later Chaldees and Semites into Tiamat, Tisalat and the Thalatth of Berosus, the female Sea Dragon, now Satan. Truly—“How art thou fallen [by the hand of man], O bright Star and Son of the Morning”!

Now what do the Babylonian accounts of “Creation,” as found on the Assyrian fragments of tiles, tell us; those very accounts upon which the Pharisees built their Angelology? Compare Mr. George Smith’s Assyrian Discoveries,(134) and his Chaldean Account of Genesis.(135) The Tablet with the story of the Seven Wicked Gods or Spirits, has the following account; we print the important passages in italics: 1. In the first days the evil Gods, 2. the angels who were in rebellion, who in the lower part of heaven 3. had been created, 4. they caused their evil work 5. devising with wicked heads ... etc.

Thus we are shown, as plainly as can be, on a fragment which remained unbroken, so that there can be no dubious reading, that the “Rebellious Angels” had been created in the “lower part of heaven,” i.e., that they belonged and do belong to a material plane of evolution, although as it is not the plane of which we are made cognizant through our senses, it remains generally invisible to us, and is thus regarded as subjective. Were the Gnostics so wrong, after this, in affirming that this our Visible World, and especially the Earth, had been created by Lower Angels, the inferior Elohim, of which, as they taught, the God of Israel was one? These Gnostics were nearer in time to the records of the Archaic Secret Doctrine, and therefore ought to be allowed to have known what it contained better than non‐initiated Christians, who took upon themselves, hundreds of years later, to remodel and correct what was said. But let us see what the same Tablet says further on: 7. There were seven of them [the wicked gods]. Then follows the description of these, the fourth being a “serpent,” the phallic symbol of the Fourth Race in human Evolution. 15. The seven of them, messengers of the God Anu their king.

Now Anu belongs to the Chaldæan Trinity, and is identical with Sin, the “Moon,” in one aspect. And the Moon in the Hebrew Kabalah is the Argha of the seed of all material life, and is still more closely connected, kabalistically, with Jehovah, who is double‐sexed, as Anu is. They are both represented in Esotericism, and viewed, from a dual aspect: male or spiritual, female or material, or Spirit and Matter, the two antagonistic principles. Hence the “Messengers of Anu,” who is Sin, the “Moon,” are shown, in lines 28 to 41, as being finally overpowered by the same Sin with the help of Bel, the Sun, and Ishtar, Venus. This is regarded as a contradiction by the Assyriologists, but it is simply metaphysics in the Esoteric teaching.

There is more than one interpretation, for there are seven keys to the mystery of the “Fall.” Moreover there are two “Falls” in Theology: the rebellion of the Archangels and their “Fall,” and the “Fall” of Adam and Eve. Thus the lower as well as the higher Hierarchies are charged with a supposed crime. The word “supposed” is the true and correct term, for in both cases it is founded on misconception. Both are considered in Occultism as Karmic effects, and both belong to the law of Evolution—intellectual and spiritual on the one hand, physical and psychic on the other. The “Fall” is a universal allegory. It sets forth at one end of the ladder of Evolution the “rebellion,” i.e., the action of differentiating intellection, or consciousness, on its various planes, seeking union with Matter; and at the other, the lower end, the rebellion of Matter against Spirit, or of action against spiritual inertia. And here lies the germ of an error which has had such disastrous effects on the intelligence of civilized societies for over 1,800 years. In the original allegory it is Matter—hence the more material Angels—which was regarded as the conqueror of Spirit, or the Archangels who “fell” on this plane. They of the flaming sword [or animal passions] had put to flight the Spirits of Darkness.

Yet it is the latter who fought for the supremacy of the conscious and divine spirituality on Earth and failed, succumbing to the power of Matter. But in theological dogma we see the reverse. It is Michael, “who is like unto God,” the representative of Jehovah, who is the Leader of the Celestial Hosts—as Lucifer, in Milton’s fancy, is of the Infernal Hosts—who has the best of Satan. It is true that the nature of Michael depends upon that of his Creator and Master. Who the latter is, one may find out by carefully studying the allegory of the “War in Heaven” with the astronomical key. As shown by Bentley, the “War of the Titans against the Gods” in Hesiod, and also the War of the Asuras, or the Târakâmaya, against the Devas in Purânic legend, are identical in all save the names. The aspects of the stars show—Bentley taking the year 945 B.C. as the nearest date for such conjunction—that: All the planets, except Saturn, were on the same side of the heavens as the Sun and Moon. And hence were his opponents. And yet it is Saturn, or the Jewish “Moon‐ God,” who is shown as prevailing, both by Hesiod and Moses, neither of whom was understood. Thus it was that the real meaning became distorted.

8. THE FLAMES CAME. THE FIRES WITH THE SPARKS; THE NIGHT‐FIRES AND THE DAY‐FIRES (A). THEY DRIED OUT THE TURBID DARK WATERS. WITH THEIR HEAT THEY QUENCHED THEM. THE LHAS(136) OF THE HIGH; THE LHAMAYIN(137) OF BELOW, CAME (B). THEY SLEW THE FORMS, WHICH WERE TWO‐ AND FOUR‐FACED. THEY FOUGHT THE GOAT‐MEN, AND THE DOG‐HEADED MEN, AND THE MEN WITH FISHES’ BODIES. (a) The “Flames” are a Hierarchy of Spirits parallel to, if not identical with, the “burning” fiery Saraph (Seraphim), mentioned by Isaiah(138) those who, according to Hebrew Theogony, attend the “Throne of the Almighty.” Melha is the Lord of the “Flames.” When he appears on Earth, he assumes the personality of a Buddha, says a popular legend. He is one of the most ancient and revered Lhas, a Buddhist St. Michael. (b) The word “Below” must not be taken to mean Infernal Regions, but simply a spiritual, or rather ethereal, Being of a lower grade, because nearer to the Earth, or one step higher than our Terrestrial Sphere; while the Lhas are Spirits of the highest Spheres—whence the name of the capital of Tibet, Lha‐ssa.

Besides a statement of a purely physical nature and belonging to the evolution of life on Earth, there may be another allegorical meaning attached to this shloka, or indeed, as is taught, several. The “Flames,” or “Fires,” represent Spirit, or the male element, and “Water,” Matter, or the opposite element. And here again we find, in the action of the Spirit slaying the purely material form, a reference to the eternal struggle, on the physical and psychic planes, between Spirit and Matter, besides a scientific cosmic fact. For, as said in the next verse: 9. MOTHER‐WATER, THE GREAT SEA, WEPT. SHE AROSE, SHE DISAPPEARED IN THE MOON, WHICH HAD LIFTED HER, WHICH HAD GIVEN HER BIRTH.

Now what can this mean? Is it not an evident reference to tidal action in the early stage of the history of our Planet in its Fourth Round? Modern research has been busy of late in its speculations on the Palæozoic high‐ tides. Mr. G. H. Darwin’s theory was that not less than 52,000,000 years ago—and probably much more—the Moon originated from the Earth’s plastic mass. Starting from the point where research was left by Helmholtz, Ferrel, Sir William Thomson and others, he retraced the course of tidal retardation of the Earth’s rotary motions far back into the very night of time, and placed the Moon during the infancy of our Planet at only “a fraction of its present distance.” In short, his theory was that it was the Moon which separated from the Earth. The tidal elevation concurring with the swing of the globular mass—centrifugal tendency being then nearly equal to gravity—the latter was overcome, and the tidally elevated mass could thus separate completely from the Earth.(139)

The Occult teaching is the reverse of this. The Moon is far older than the Earth; and, as explained in Volume I, it is the latter which owes its being to the former, however Astronomy and Geology may explain the fact. Hence, the tides and the attraction to the Moon, as shown by the liquid portion of the Globe ever striving to raise itself towards its parent. This is the meaning of the sentence that the Mother‐Water “arose, she disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.” 10. WHEN(140) THEY WERE DESTROYED, MOTHER EARTH REMAINED BARE.(141) SHE ASKED TO BE DRIED.(142)

The time for the Earth’s incrustation had arrived. The waters had separated and the process was started. It was the beginning of a new life. This is what one key divulges to us. Another key teaches the origin of Water, its admixture with Fire—“Liquid Fire” it calls it—and enters upon an Alchemical description of the progeny of the two—solid matters such as minerals and earths. From the “Waters of Space,” the progeny of the male Spirit‐Fire and the female (gaseous) Water has become the Oceanic expanse on Earth. Varuna is dragged down from the infinite Space, to reign as Neptune over the finite Seas. As always, the popular fancy is found to be based on a strictly scientific foundation. Water is the symbol of the Female Element everywhere; Mater, from which comes the letter M, is derived pictorially from [Symbol like three mountains, rather like the letter “M”], a water hieroglyph. It is the Universal Matrix or the “Great Deep.” Venus, the great Mother‐Virgin, issues forth from the sea‐wave, and Cupid or Erôs is her son. But Venus is the later mythological variant of Gæa, Gaia, the Earth, which, in its higher aspect is Prakriti, Nature, and metaphysically Aditi, and even Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Prakriti, or its noumenon.

Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Erôs, the Divine Will, or Desire of manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the prototype of Erôs, becomes on Earth the Great Power “Life‐Electricity,” or the Spirit of “Life‐giving.” Let us remember the Greek Theogony and enter into the spirit of its Philosophy. We are taught by the Greeks that all things, Gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys, the latter being Gæa, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the immeasurable Space—Spirit in Chaos—which, is the Deity; and Tethys is not the Earth, but Primordial Matter in the process of formation. In our case it is no longer Aditi‐Gæa who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Âditya among the seven Planetary Gods, but Prakriti, materialized and localized. The Moon, masculine in its theogonic character, is, in its cosmic aspect only, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem thereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every nation. Evolution proceeds on the laws of analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of the smallest Globe. Thus the above, applying to the modus operandi at the time when the Universe was appearing, applies also in the case of our Earth’s formation.

The Stanza now being commented upon opens by speaking of thirty crores, 300,000,000 of years. We may be asked: What could the ancients know of the duration of geological periods, when no modern Scientist or Mathematician is able to calculate their duration with anything like approximate accuracy? Whether they had or had not better means—and it is maintained that they had them as is evidenced by their Zodiacs—still the chronology of the ancient Brâhmans shall now be given as faithfully as possible. The Chronology of the Brâhmans. No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly insoluble, than the question: How old—even approximately—are the Sun and Moon, the Earth and Man? What does Modern Science know of the duration of the Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods? Nothing; absolutely nothing.

If one turns to Science for chronological information, one is told by those who are straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly, the eminent Geologist, “We do not know.”(143) One will learn that, so far, no trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of the World and Man could be made, and that both Geology and Anthropology are at sea. Yet when a student of Esoteric Philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when reduced to their own physical methods, the greatest Scientists have failed to arrive even at an approximate agreement?

It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit into the archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own conflicting speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide them, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender thread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at perfect random? Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to which documentary record extends is now generally regarded by Anthropology as but “the earliest distinctly visible point of the pre‐historic period”—in the words of the writer of the article in the Encyclopædia Britannica. At the same time it is confessed that “beyond that period stretches back a vast indefinite series of pre‐historic ages.”

It is with those specified “ages” that we shall begin. They are “pre‐ historic” to the naked eye of Matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of the Seer and the Prophet of every race, Ariadne’s thread stretches beyond that “historic period” without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into the very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop it, or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as fanciful by the profane; though, indeed, many of them are tacitly accepted by Philosophers and men of great learning, and meet with an unvarying refusal only from the official and collective body of orthodox Science. And since the latter refuses to give us even an approximate idea of the duration of the geological Ages—save in a few conflicting and contradictory hypotheses—let us see what Âryan Philosophy can teach us. Such computations as are given in Manu and the Purânas—save trifling and most evidently intentional exaggerations—are, as already stated, almost identical with those taught in Esoteric Philosophy. This may be seen by comparing the two in any Hindû calendar of recognized orthodoxy.

The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched for by the learned Brâhmans of Southern India, is the already mentioned Tamil calendar called the Tirukkanda Panchanga, compiled, as we are told, from, and in full accordance with, secret fragments of Asuramaya’s data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest Astronomer, so he is whispered to have also been the most powerful “Sorcerer” of the “White Island, which had become Black with sin,” i.e., of the islands of Atlantis.

The “White Island” is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived, as in the tradition of the Jñâna‐bhâskara, in Romaka‐pura, in the West; because the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the “Sweat‐born” of the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant of the Wise Race, the Race that never dies. Many are the legends concerning this hero, the pupil of Sûrya, the Sun‐God, himself, as the Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or another island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr. Weber and others would make him. The fact of Romaka‐pura, in the West, being named as the birthplace of this hero of the Archaic Ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching about the Sweat‐born Races, the men born from the “pores of their parents.” “Roma‐kûpas” mean “hair‐pores” in Sanskrit. In the Mahâbhârata,(144) a people named Raumas are said to have been created from the pores of Vîrabhadra, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha’s sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third Root‐Races.

The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a foot‐note marks the points of disagreement with the figures of the Ârya Samâj school: I. From the beginning of Cosmic Evolution,(145) up to the Hindû year Tarana (or 1887), 1,955,884,687 years. II. The (astral), mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to Man, have taken to evolve, 300,000,000 years.(146) III. Time, from the first appearance of “Humanity” (on our Planetary Chain), 1,664,500,987 years.(147) IV. The number that elapsed since the Vaivasvata, Manvantara(148)—or the Human Period—up to the year 1887, is just 18,618,728 years. V. The full period of one Manvantara is 308,448,000 years. VI. Fourteen Manvantaras, plus the period of one Satya Yuga make one Day of Brahmâ, or a complete Manvantara, or 4,320,000,000 years. Therefore a Mahâ Yuga consists of 4,320,000 years.(149) The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali Yuga, 4,989 years. To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row, are given from the Theosophist of November, 1885. 360 days of mortals make a year Krita Yuga contains 1,728,000 Tretâ Yuga contains 1,296,000 Dvâpara Yuga contains 864,000 Kali Yuga contains 432,000 The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Mahâ Yuga, 4,320,000 Seventy‐one of such Mahâ Yugas form the period of the reign of one Manu, 306,720,000

The reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration of 994 Mahâ Yugas, which is equal to 4,294,080,000 Add Sandhis, i.e., intervals between the reign of each Manu, which amount to six Mahâ Yugas, equal to 25,920,000 The total of these reigns and interregnums of fourteen Manus, is 1,000 Mahâ Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa, i.e., one Day of Brahmâ, 4,320,000,000 As Brahmâ’s Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of Brahmâ would contain 8,640,000,000 360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmâ equal to 3,110,400,000,000 100 such Years constitute the whole period of Brahmâ’s Age, i.e., Mahâ Kalpa, 311,040,000,000,000 These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter, moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles, never mentioned in Brâhmanical popular writings—one of which, the division of the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are, nevertheless, known to every “Twice‐born” (Dvija, or Initiated) Brâhman, and the Purânas contain references to some of them in veiled terms, which no matter‐of‐fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor could he if he would.

These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Nârada and Asuramaya. The latter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. But the Antediluvian Giants—the Gibborim of the Bible—were not all bad or Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist a servant of the Evil One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of “the faithful sons of the Church.” A Torquemada and a Catherine de Médicis certainly did more harm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean Giant or Demigod of antiquity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There were good “giants” in days of old just as there are bad “pigmies” now; and the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern wars. Nor are they myths. He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from going to, or even talking of, Carnac or Stonehenge. remarks somewhere a modern writer. As the Brâhmanical figures given above are approximately the basic calculations of our Esoteric System, the reader is requested to carefully keep them in mind.

In the Encyclopædia Britannica we find, as the last word of Science, that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretch only over “tens of thousands of years.” It becomes evident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man in the “pre‐ or post‐ glacial drift,” if we are told at the same time that the so‐called “Ice Age” is simply a long succession of ages which Shaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the human or recent period ... the overlapping of geological periods having been the rule from the beginning of time.(150) The latter “rule” only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, information, that: Even to‐day man is contemporary with the ice‐age in the Alpine valleys and in the Finmark.(151)

Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric Hindûism and its traditions, we should to this day be left to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite “Ages” of one school of Science, the “tens of thousands” of years of the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one of the several reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such questions of pre‐historic antiquity. Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views. But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing’s assurances that: In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and later formations, there is no theory, they are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error either way.(152)

Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is very much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preëminence for correctness over Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the admissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author: In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the Silurian period(153) when the present order of things was fairly inaugurated, are approximate [truly so] facts and not theories, while the astronomical conclusions are theories based on data so uncertain, that while in some cases they give results incredibly short, ... in others they give results almost incredibly long.(154) After which, the reader is advised that the “safest course” Seems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100 millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar system, of which our earth is a small planet now passing through the habitable phase.(155)

Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt that, once called upon to answer “the absurd unscientific and preposterous claims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Âryan chronology,” the Scientist of the “results incredibly short,” i.e., only 15,000,000 years, and the Scientist, who “would require 600,000,000 years,” together with those who accept Mr. Huxley’s figures of 1,000,000,000(156) “since sedimentation began in Europe,” would all be as dogmatic the one as the other. Nor would they fail to remind the Occultist and the Brâhman, that it is the modern men of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to fight “inaccuracy” and “superstition.” The Earth is passing through the “habitable phase” only for the present order of things, and as far as our present mankind is concerned with its actual “coats of skin” and phosphorus for bones and brain. We are ready to concede the 100 millions of years offered by Geology, since we are taught that our present physical mankind—or the Vaivasvata Humanity—began only eighteen millions of years ago. But Geology has no facts to give us for the duration of geological periods, as we have shown, no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter from Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says:

It is at present, and perhaps always will be, impossible to reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even into millenniums. And having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than the present form—what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or strata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian. When it has, in the same way, traced man down to his primordial protoplasmic form, then we will admit that it may know something of primordial man. If it is not very material to “the bearings of modern scientific discovery on modern thought,” whether Man has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for the last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the last 500,000 years of a period of 150 millions,(157)

as Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of the Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is a possibility, if not a perfect certainty, that man lived eighteen millions of years ago, the Secret Doctrine might as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must, therefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern Geologists and men of Science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in the Third Part of this Volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact that Hindû Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a fiction based on no “actual” computation,(158) but simply a “childish boasting,” it is nevertheless often twisted out of recognition to make it yield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures have ever been more meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by cyphers, of the Yugas and Mahâ Yugas.

As the whole Cycle of pre‐historic events, such as the evolution and transformation of Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the said Chronology, it becomes extremely important to check it by other existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology is rejected, we shall at least have the consolation of proving that no other—whether in the figures of Science or of the Churches—is one whit more reliable. As Professor Max Müller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a thing is not as to show what it may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the fallacies of both Christian and Scientific computations—by allowing them a fair chance of comparison with our Chronology—neither of these will have a reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the Esoteric figures less reliable than its own. We may here refer the reader to our earlier work, Isis Unveiled,(159) for some remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.

To‐day a few more facts may be added to the information there given, which is already known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of 4,320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which compose it, taken separately or joined in various combinations, are each and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, whether one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making 7, or again the three, 4, 3, 2, added together and yielding 9, all these numbers have their application in the most sacred and Occult matters, and record the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and reäction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic agencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives and breathes on it, from the one end to the other of any Manvantara. Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric and “endexoteric,” so to say.

In Isis Unveiled we wrote that which we now repeat: We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state. Plato divides the intellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the Divine Nature, he says; “but their parts,” owing to a too close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the earthly (which is Matter, and therefore the realm of evil), “are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to (Divine) Nature.” When those circulations—which Éliphas Lévi calls “currents of the Astral Light”—in the universal Ether which contains in itself every element, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, our Earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the “superior natures,” and the Divine Soul of man is in perfect intelligence with these “inferior” ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone “philosophizes.” And philosophizing alone, how can it understand the “Soul Doctrine”?

In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give some striking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part II, proceeding meanwhile with our explanations of Geological and Racial Cycles.

11. The Descent of the Demiurge. 12. The Lunar Gods ordered to create. 13. The Higher Gods refuse. 11. THE LORD OF THE LORDS CAME. FROM HER BODY HE SEPARATED THE WATERS, AND THAT WAS HEAVEN ABOVE, THE FIRST HEAVEN.(160) Here tradition falls again into the Universal. As in the earliest version, repeated in the Purânas, so in the latest, the Mosaic account. In the first it is said: He the Lord [the God who has the form of Brahmâ], when the world had become one ocean, concluding that within the waters lay the earth, and desirous to raise it up [to separate it], created himself in another form. As in the preceding Kalpa [Manvantara] he had assumed the shape of a tortoise, so in this one he took the shape of a boar, etc.(161) In the Elohistic “creation,”(162) “God” creates “a firmament in the midst of the waters,” and says “let dry land appear.” And now comes the traditional peg whereunto is hung the Esoteric portion of the Kabalistic interpretation. 12. THE GREAT CHOHANS(163) CALLED THE LORDS OF THE MOON, OF THE AIRY BODIES: “BRING FORTH MEN,(164) MEN OF YOUR NATURE. GIVE THEM(165) THEIR FORMS WITHIN. SHE(166) WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT.(167) MALES‐FEMALES WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME ALSO....”

Who are the “Lords of the Moon”? In India they are called Pitris or “Lunar Ancestors,” but in the Hebrew scrolls it is Jehovah himself who is the “Lord of the Moon,” collectively as the Host, and also as one of the Elohim. The Astronomy of the Hebrews and their “observance of times” was regulated by the Moon. A Kabalist, having shown that “Daniel ... told off God’s providence by set times” and that the Revelation of John “speaks of a carefully measured cubical city descending out of the heavens,” etc., adds:

But the vitalizing power of heaven lay chiefly with the moon.... It was the Hebrew יהוה [Jehovah],—and St. Paul enjoins:—“Let no man judge you for your observance of the 7th day, and the day of new moon,—which are a shadow of things to come; but the body (or substance) is of Christ,” i.e., Jehovah,—that function of this power that “made the barren woman the joyful mother of children,”—“for they are the gift of Jehovah,” ... which is a key to the objection which her husband made to the Shunamite, as to her going to the man of God:—“for it is neither the 7th day nor the day of new moon.” The living spiritual powers of the constellations had mighty wars marked by the movements and positions of the stars and planets, and especially as the result of the conjunction of the moon, earth and sun. Bentley comments on the Hindû “war between the gods and the giants,” as marked by the eclipse of the sun at the ascending node of the moon, 945 B.C. [!], at which time was born,(168) or produced from the sea, SRI (Sarai), S‐r‐i, the wife of the Hebrew Abram(169), who was the Venus‐Aphroditus [sic] of the Westerns, emblem “of the luni‐ solar year, or the moon, [as Sri is the wife of the Moon; see foot‐note], the goddess of increase.”(170) ... [Therefore] the grand monument and land‐mark of the exact period of the lunar year and month, by which this cycle [of 19 tropical years of the sun and 235 revolutions of the moon] could be calculated, was Mount Sinai,—the Lord Jehovah coming down thereon....

Paul speaks [then] as a mystagogue, when he says concerning the freed woman and bond woman of Abraham:—“For this Hagar (the bond woman of Abraham) is Mount Sinai in Arabia.” How could a woman be a mountain? and such a mountain! Yet, in one sense, ... she was, and in a very marvellously true one. Her name was Hagar, הגר whose numbers read 235, or in exact measure, the very number of lunar months to equal 19 tropical years to complete this cycle and make the likeness and similitude good; Mount Sinai being, in the esoteric language of this wisdom, the monument of the exact time of the lunar year and month, by which this spiritual vitalizing cycle could be computed, and which mountain, indeed, was called (Fuerst) “the Mountain of the Moon (Sin).” So also Sarai (SRI), the wife of Abram, could have no child until her name was changed to Sarah, שרה, giving to her the property of this lunar influence.(171)

This may be regarded as a digression from the main subject; but it is a very necessary one with a view to Christian readers. For who, after studying dispassionately the respective legends of Abram or Abraham, Sarai or Sarah, who was “fair to look upon,” and those of Brahmâ and Sarasvatî, or Shrî, Lakshmî‐Venus, with the relations of all these to the Moon and Water;—and especially one who understands the real Kabalistic meaning of the name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection with, the Moon—who can doubt that the story of Abram is based upon that of Brahmâ, or that Genesis was written upon the old lines used by every ancient nation? All in the ancient Scriptures is allegorical—all based upon and inseparably connected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry. 13. THEY(172) WENT EACH ON HIS ALLOTTED LAND: SEVEN OF THEM, EACH ON HIS LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME REMAIN BEHIND. THEY WOULD NOT GO, THEY WOULD NOT CREATE.

The Secret Teachings show the divine Progenitors creating men on seven portions of the Globe “each on his lot”—i.e., each a different Race of men externally and internally, and on different Zones. This polygenistic claim is considered elsewhere, in Stanza VII. But who are “They” who create, and the “Lords of the Flame,” “who would not”? Occultism divides the “Creators” into Twelve Classes; of which four have reached “Liberation” to the end of the “Great Age,” the fifth is ready to reach it, but still remains active on the intellectual planes, while seven are still under direct Karmic Law. These last act on the man‐bearing Globes of our Chain.

Exoteric Hindû books mention Seven Classes of Pitris, and among them two distinct kinds of Progenitors or Ancestors: the Barhishad and the Agnishvâtta; or those possessed of the “sacred fire” and those devoid of it. Hindû ritualism seems to connect them with sacrificial fires, and with Grihastha Brâhmans in earlier incarnations; those who have, and those who have not attended as they should to their household sacred fires in their previous births. The distinction, as said, is derived from the Vedas. The first and highest class (Esoterically), the Agnishvâtta, are represented in the exoteric allegory as Grihastha or Brâhman‐householders, who, having failed to maintain their domestic fires and to offer burnt sacrifices, in their past births in other Manvantaras, have lost every right to have oblations with fire presented to them. Whereas the Barhishad, being Brâhmans who have kept up their household sacred fires, are thus honoured to this day. Thence the Agnishvâtta are represented as devoid of, and the Barhishad as possessed of, fires.

But Esoteric Philosophy explains the original qualifications as being due to the difference between the natures of the two Classes: the Agnishvâtta Pitris are devoid of “fire” i.e., of creative passion, because they are too divine and pure; whereas the Barhishad, being the Lunar Spirits more closely connected with Earth, became the creative Elohim of form, or the Adam of dust. The allegory says that Sanandana and other Vedhas, the Sons of Brahmâ, his first progeny: Were without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the universe and undesirous of progeny.(173) This also is what is meant in the shloka by the words, “They would not create,” and is explained as follows: “_The Primordial Emanations from the Creative Power are too near the Absolute Cause. They are transitional and latent forces, which will develop only in the next and subsequent removes._” This makes it plain. Hence Brahmâ is said to have felt wrathful when he saw that those Embodied spirits, produced from his limbs [gâtra], would not multiply themselves.

After which, in the allegory, he creates other seven Mind‐born Sons(174) namely, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu and Vasishtha, the latter being often replaced by Daksha, the most prolific of the Creators. In most of the texts these Seven Sons of Vasishtha‐Daksha are called the Seven Rishis of the Third Manvantara; the latter referring both to the Third Round and also to the Third Root‐Race and its Branch‐Races in the Fourth Round. These are all the Creators of the various Beings on this Earth, the Prajâpati, and at the same time they appear as divers reïncarnations in the early Manvantaras or Races.

It thus becomes clear why the Agnishvâtta, devoid of the grosser “creative fire,” hence unable to create physical man, having no Double, or Astral Body, to project, since they were without any “form,” are shown in exoteric allegories as Yogîs, Kumâras (chaste youths), who became “rebels,” Asuras, fighting and opposing Gods,(175) etc. Yet it is they alone who could complete man, i.e., make of him a self‐conscious, almost a divine Being—a God on Earth. The Barhishad, though possessed of “creative fire,” were devoid of the higher Mahat‐ic element. Being on a level with the lower “Principles”—those which precede gross objective matter—they could only give birth to the outer man, or rather to the model of the physical, the astral man. Thus, though we see them intrusted with the task by Brahmâ—the collective Mahat or Universal Divine Mind—the “Mystery of Creation” is repeated on Earth, only in an inverted sense, as in a mirror.

It is those who are unable to create the spiritual immortal man, who project the senseless model (the Astral) of the physical Being; and, as will be seen, it was those who would not multiply, who sacrificed themselves to the good and salvation of Spiritual Humanity. For, to complete the septenary man, to add to his three lower Principles and cement them with the Spiritual Monad—which could never dwell in such a form otherwise than in an absolutely latent state—two connecting “Principles” are needed: Manas and Kâma. This requires a living Spiritual Fire of the middle Principle from the Fifth and Third States of Plerôma. But this Fire is the possession of the Triangles, not of the (perfect) Cubes, which symbolize the Angelic Beings;(176) the former having from the First Creation possessed themselves of it and being said to have appropriated it for themselves, as in the allegory of Prometheus. These are the active, and therefore—in Heaven—no longer “pure” Beings. They have become the independent and free Intelligences, shown in every Theogony as fighting for that independence and freedom, and hence—in the ordinary sense—“rebellious to the divine passive law.” These are then those “Flames”—the Agnishvâtta—who, as shown in the shloka, “remain behind,” instead of going along with the others to create men on Earth. But the true Esoteric meaning is that most of them were destined to incarnate as the Egos of the forthcoming crop of Mankind.

The human Ego is neither Âtman nor Buddhi, but the Higher Manas; the intellectual fruitage and the efflorescence of the intellectual self‐ conscious Egotism—in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer to it as Kârana Sharîra on the plane of Sûtrâtmâ, which is the “golden thread” on which, like beads, the various Personalities of this Higher Ego are strung. If the reader were told, as in the semi‐Esoteric allegories, that these Beings were returning Nirvânîs from preceding Mahâ‐Manvantaras—Ages of incalculable duration which have rolled away in the Eternity, a still more incalculable time ago—he would hardly understand the text correctly; while some Vedântins might say: “This is not so; the Nirvânî can never return”; which is true during the Manvantara he belongs to, and erroneous where Eternity is concerned. For it is said in the Sacred Shlokas: “_The Thread of Radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in __ Nirvâna, reëmerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all things back into action._”

Hence, as the higher Pitris or Dhyânîs had no hand in his physical creation, we find Primeval Man—issued from the bodies of his spiritually “fireless” Progenitors—described as aëriform, devoid of compactness, and “mindless.” He had no middle Principle to serve him as a medium between the Highest and the Lowest—the Spiritual Man and the physical brain—for he lacked Manas. The Monads which incarnated in those empty Shells, remained as unconscious as when separated from their previous incomplete forms and vehicles. There is no potentiality for Creation, or Self‐ Consciousness, in a pure Spirit on this our plane, unless its too homogeneous, perfect—because divine—nature is, so to say, mixed with, and strengthened by, an essence already differentiated. It is only the lower line of the Triangle—representing the first Triad that emanates from the Universal Monad—that can furnish this needed consciousness on the plane of differentiated Nature. But how could these pure Emanations, which, on this principle, must have originally been themselves “unconscious” (in our sense), be of any use in supplying the required Principle, as they could hardly have possessed it themselves?

The answer is difficult to comprehend, unless one is well acquainted with the philosophical metaphysics of a beginningless and endless series of Cosmic Re‐births, and becomes well impressed and familiarized with that immutable law of Nature which is ETERNAL MOTION, cyclic and spiral—therefore progressive even in its seeming retrogression. The one Divine Principle, the nameless THAT of the Vedas, is the Universal Total, which, neither in its spiritual aspects and emanations, nor in its physical Atoms, can ever be at “Absolute Rest” except during the Nights of Brahmâ. Hence, also, the “First‐born” are those who are first set in motion at the beginning of a Manvantara, and thus the first to fall into the lower spheres of materiality. They who are called in Theology the “Thrones,” and are the “Seat of God,” must be the first incarnated men on Earth; and it becomes comprehensible, if we think of the endless series of past Manvantaras, to find that the last had to come first, and the first last. We find, in short, that the higher Angels had broken, countless æons before, through the “Seven Circles,” and thus “robbed” them of the Sacred Fire; this means in plain words, that they had assimilated during their past incarnations, in lower as well as in higher Worlds, all the wisdom therefrom—the reflection of Mahat in its various degrees of intensity. No Entity, whether angelic or human, can reach the state of Nirvâna, or of absolute purity, except through æons of suffering and the knowledge of evil as well as of good, as otherwise the latter would remain incomprehensible.

Between man and the animal—whose Monads, or Jîvas, are fundamentally identical—there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and Self‐ consciousness. What is human mind in its higher aspect, whence comes it, if it be not a portion of the essence—and, in some rare cases of incarnation, the very essence—of a higher Being; one from a higher and divine plane? Can man—a God in the animal form—be the product of Material Nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal which differs from man in external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric, and is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad—seeing that the intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the sun does from the glow‐worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an animal plus a living God within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask ourselves seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms of both the materialistic and the psychological modern Sciences.

To some extent, it is admitted that even the Esoteric Teaching is allegorical. To make the latter comprehensible to the average intelligence, the use of symbols cast in an intelligible form is needed. Hence the allegorical and semi‐mythical narratives in the exoteric, and the only semi‐metaphysical and objective representations in the Esoteric Teachings. For the purely and transcendentally spiritual conceptions are adapted only to the perceptions of those who “see without eyes, hear without ears, and sense without organs,” according to the graphic expression of the Commentary. The too puritan Idealist is at liberty to spiritualize the tenet, whereas the modern Psychologist would simply try to spirit away our “fallen,” yet still divine, human Soul—divine in its connection with Buddhi.

The mystery attached to the highly spiritual Ancestors of the Divine Man within the earthly man is very great. His dual creation is hinted at in the Purânas, though its Esoteric meaning can be approached only by collating together the many varying accounts, and reading them in their symbolical and allegorical character. So it is in the Bible, both in Genesis and even in the Epistles of Paul. For that “Creator,” who is called in the second chapter of Genesis the “Lord God,” is in the original the Elohim, or Gods (the Lords), in the plural; and while one of them makes the earthly Adam of Dust, the other breathes into him the Breath of Life, and the third makes of him a Living Soul, all of which readings are implied in the plural number of the word Elohim.(177) Or again, as Paul says: The first man is of the earth, the second [the last, or rather highest] is the Lord from heaven.(178)

In the Âryan allegory the rebellious Sons of Brahmâ are all represented as holy Ascetics and Yogîs. Re‐born in every Kalpa, they generally try to impede the work of human procreation. When Daksha, the chief of the Prajâpatis or Creators, brings forth 10,000 sons for the purpose of peopling the world, Nârada—a son of Brahmâ, the great Rishi, and virtually a Kumâra, if not so in name—interferes with, and twice frustrates Daksha’s aim, by persuading those Sons to remain holy Ascetics and eschew marriage. For this, Daksha curses Nârada to be “re‐born as a man,” as Brahmâ had cursed him before for refusing to marry, and obtain progeny, saying: “Perish in thy (present [Deva or Angelic] form); and take up thy abode in the womb”—i.e., become a man.(179) Notwithstanding several conflicting versions of the same story, it is easy to see that Nârada belongs to that Class of Brahmâ’s “First‐born,” who have all proven rebellious to the law of animal procreation, for which they had to incarnate as men. Of all the Vedic Rishis, Nârada, as already shown, is the most incomprehensible, because the most closely connected with the Occult Doctrines—especially with the Secret Cycles and Kalpas.

Certain contradictory statements about this Sage have much distracted the Orientalists. Thus he is shown as refusing positively to “create” or have progeny, and even as calling his father Brahmâ a “false teacher” for advising him to get married, as related in the Nârada‐Pancha‐Râtra; nevertheless, he is referred to as one of the Prajâpatis or Progenitors! In the Nâradîya Purâna, he describes the laws and the duties of the celibate Adepts; and as these Occult duties do not happen to be found in the fragment of about 3,000 Stanzas in the possession of European museums, the Brâhmans are proclaimed liars; the Orientalists forgetting that the Nâradîya is credited with containing 25,000 Stanzas, and that it is not very likely that such MSS. should be found in the hands of the Hindû profane, those who are ready to sell any precious Olla for a red pottage. Suffice it to say, that Nârada is the Deva‐Rishi of Occultism par excellence, and that the Occultist who does not ponder, analyze, and study Nârada from his seven Esoteric facets, will never be able to fathom certain anthropological, chronological, and even cosmic Mysteries. He is one of the Fires above‐mentioned, and plays a part in the evolution of this Kalpa from its incipient down to its final stage. He is an actor who appears in each of the successive acts, or Root‐Races, of the present Manvantaric drama, in the world‐allegories which strike the key‐note of Esotericism, and are now becoming more familiar to the reader. But shall we turn to other ancient Scriptures and documents for the corroboration of the “Fires,” “Sparks,” and “Flames”? They are plentiful, if one only seeks for them in the right places.

In the Kabalistic Book of the Concealed Mystery they are clearly enunciated, as also in the Ha Idra Zuta Qadisha, or “The Lesser Holy Assembly.” The language is very mystical and veiled, yet still comprehensible. In the latter, among the sparks of Prior Worlds, “vibrating Flames and Sparks,” from the divine flint, the “Workman” proceeds to create man, “male and female” (427). These “Flames and Sparks”—Angels and their Worlds, Stars and Planets—are said, figuratively, to become extinct and die, that is to say, remain “unmanifested” until a certain process of Nature is accomplished. To show how thickly veiled from public view are the most important facts of Anthropogenesis, two passages are now quoted from two Kabalistic books. The first is from the Ha Idra Zuta Qadisha: 429. From a Light‐Bearer [one of the Seven Sacred Planets] of insupportable brightness proceeded a Radiating Flame, dashing off like a vast and mighty hammer those sparks which were the Prior Worlds. 430. And with most subtle ether were these intermingled and bound mutually together, but only when they were conjoined together, even the Great Father and Great Mother. 431. From Hoa, Himself, is AB, the Father; and from Hoa, Himself, is Ruach, the Spirit; Who are hidden in the Ancient of Days, and therein is that ether concealed.

432. And It was connected with a light‐bearer [a Planet and its Angel or Regent], which went forth from that Light‐Bearer of insupportable brightness, which is hidden in the bosom of Aima, the Great Mother.(180) Now the following extract from the Zohar,(181) under the heading, “The Pre‐Adamite Kings,” also deals with the same mystery: We have learned in the Siphrah D’Tznioothah: That the At‐tee’ kah D’At‐tee’ keen, Ancient of Ancients, before He prepared His Form, built kings and engraved kings, and sketched out kings [men, the “kings” of the animals], and they could not exist: till He overthrew them and hid them until after a time, therefore it is written; “And these are the kings which reigned in the land of Edom.”... And they could not exist till Resha’Hiv’rah, the White Head, the At’‐tee’‐kah D’At‐tee’‐keen, Ancient of the Ancients, arranged Himself. When he arranged Himself He formed all forms Above and Below.... Before He arranged Himself in His Form, had not been formed all those whom He desired to form, and all worlds have been destroyed.... They did not remain in their places, because the form of the kings had not been formed as it ought to be, and the Holy City had not been prepared.(182)

Now the plain meaning of these two allegorical and metaphysical disquisitions is simply this: Worlds and men were in turn formed and destroyed, under the law of evolution and from preëxisting material, until both the Planets and their men, in our case our Earth and its animal and human races, became what they are now in the present cycle—opposite polar forces, an equilibrized compound of Spirit and Matter, of the positive and the negative, of the male and the female. Before man could become male and female physically, his prototype, the creating Elohim, had to arrange his Form on this sexual plane astrally. That is to say, the Atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane of the given differentiation, had to be marshalled in the order intended by Nature, so as to be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the Kabalah calls the “Balance,” through which everything that exists does so as male and female in its final perfection, in this present stage of materiality. Chokmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephira, had to diffuse itself in, and through, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding. Therefore the First Root‐Race of men, sexless and mindless, had to be overthrown and “hidden until after a time”; i.e., the First Race, instead of dying, disappeared in the Second Race, as certain lower lives and plants do in their progeny. It was a wholesale transformation. The First became the Second Root‐Race, without either begetting it, procreating it, or dying.

“They passed by together,” as it is written: “And he died” and another “reigned in his stead.”(183) Why? Because the “Holy City had not been prepared.” And what is the “Holy City”? The Ma‐qom—the Secret Place or the Shrine—on Earth; in other words, the human womb, the microcosmic copy and reflection of the Heavenly Matrix, the female Space or primeval Chaos, in which the male Spirit fecundates the germ of the Son, or the visible Universe. So much so, that in the paragraph on “The Emanation of the Male and Female Principles” in the Zohar, it is said that, on this Earth, the Wisdom from the “Holy Ancient” “does not shine except in male and female.” (Hokhmah Wisdom, is the Father, and Binah Understanding, is the Mother.)... And when they connect one with the other, they bring forth and diffuse and emanate Truth. In the sayings of Rabbi Ye‐yeva, Sabbah, i.e., the Old, we learned this; What is Binah Understanding? But when they connect in one another, the י (Yod) in the ה (Heh), they become impregnated and produce a Son. And, therefore, it is called Binah, Understanding. It means BeN YaH, i.e., Son of YaH. This is the completeness of the Whole.(184)

This is also the “completeness” of phallicism by the Rabbis, its perfect apotheosis, the divine being dragged into the animal, the sublime into the grossness of the terrestrial. Nothing so graphically gross exists in Eastern Occultism, nor in the primitive Kabalah—the Chaldæan Book of Numbers. We have said so already in Isis Unveiled: We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour out their vials of wrath in such sentences as these: “In a multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always assuming, like the Grecian batylos, the brutally indecent form of the lingham ... the Mahâ Deva.” Before casting slurs on a symbol whose profound metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern champions of that religion of sensualism par excellence, Roman Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their own temples. The Mahadeo of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhagulpore, the minarets of Islam—either rounded or pointed—are the originals of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of Rochester Cathedral, and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian temples, are the reproductions of the primitive idea of the lithos, the upright phallus.(185)

Nevertheless, and however it may be, the fact that all these Hebrew Elohim, Sparks, and Cherubs are identical with the Devas, Rishis and the Fires and Flames, the Rudras and the forty‐nine Agnis of the ancient Âryas, is sufficiently proven by and in the Kabalah.

14. Creation of men. 15. They are empty shadows. 16. The Creators are perplexed how to create a thinking man. 17. What is needed for the formation of a perfect Man. 14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE WILL‐BORN(186) LORDS, PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF LIFE‐GIVING,(187) SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE. They threw off their “Shadows” or Astral Bodies—if such an ethereal being as a “Lunar Spirit” may be supposed to rejoice in an Astral, besides a hardly tangible Body. In another Commentary it is said that the Ancestors breathed out the first man, as Brahmâ is explained to have breathed out the Suras, or Gods, when they became Asuras (from Asu, breath). In a third it is said that they, the newly‐created Men, were the “shadows of the Shadows.”

With regard to this sentence—“They were the shadows of the Shadows”—a few more words may be said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first process of the evolution of mankind is far easier to accept than the one which follows it, though one and all such processes will be rejected and doubted even by some Kabalists, especially the Western, who study the present effects, but have neglected to study their primary causes. Nor does the writer feel competent to explain a mode of procreation so difficult of appreciation save for an Eastern Occultist. Therefore it is useless to enter here into details concerning the process, though it is minutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to speaking of facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their being misunderstood. An Adam made of the dust of the ground will always be found preferable, by a certain class of students, to one projected out of the ethereal body of his creator; though the former process has never been heard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many Spiritualists in Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of those who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materializing form oozing out of the pores of a medium or,

at other times, out of his left side, can fail to credit the possibility, at least, of such a birth? If there are in the Universe such beings as Angels or Spirits, whose incorporeal essence may constitute an intelligent Entity, notwithstanding the absence of any (to us) solid organism; and if there are those who believe that a God made the first man out of dust, and breathed into him a living Soul—and there are millions upon millions who believe both—what does this doctrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the day will dawn, when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the miraculous creation of man (and Kosmos too) out of nothing, according to the dead letter of Genesis, or a first man born from a fantastic link—absolutely “missing” so far—the common ancestor of man, and of the “true ape.”(188) Between these two fallacies, Occult Philosophy steps in. It teaches that the first human stock was projected by higher and semi‐ divine Beings out of their own essences. If the latter process is to be considered as abnormal or even inconceivable—because obsolete in Nature at this point of evolution—it is yet proven possible on the authority of certain “spiritualistic” facts. Which, then, we ask of the three hypotheses or theories is the most