The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
WILL DURANT
From here on we can offer some proof that these Bible stories are parallels, not sequents. We must present more of them, however, before this becomes self-evident.
Noah is given as the tenth from Adam, hence subsequent, and as we think of Adam as the first human being, Noah must be farther up on the evolutionary side. This is not so. Noah is just another Adam and his story another Creation myth. In this one we find the violence and “war in heaven,” space, the Priest saw fit to exclude from his. The “Deluge” was not a destruction of the world but its creation.
Chronologically, Noah is eons prior to the Adam of the Garden, and contemporaneous with the Creator of the first chapter. That he was not a human being is obvious from the Ethiopian Book of Enoch. According to this source, Noah was transfigured at birth, the light of his body illuminating the whole house—the planetary entity. So here again we have that first “light shining in darkness.” Immediately thereafter he rose and talked to God—for the simple reason that he was God. Lamech, his father, beholding this, was astonished, and hurried to Methuselah, the grandfather, to find out its portent. But Methuselah was also mystified and so he went to his father, Enoch, and Enoch told him it meant that the wonder child would become the Savior of the race during a subsequent Deluge. This Deluge, said Enoch, would be the consequence of adultery between divine and mortal beings. And this is where the scriptural account of Noah begins. In words that have puzzled the race for over two thousand years it reports this divine miscegenation thus:
1. And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2. That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
These “sons of God” are the spiritual forces of the third involutionary plane, and the “daughters of men,” generic, the material elements on the plane below, that is, prephysical matter. The spiritual came in unto the material and became material. In our outline we said the Trinity became the Quaternary, and so say the scriptures. This descent and Adam’s “fall” are one and the same—spirit becoming matter. The adultery here is one with the Greek gods’ adultery with mortals. This is that same “sin” we have assumed, yet between this “sin” and ours lie eons beyond our comprehension. Someone, either this author or the translator, has by such phrases as “on the face of the earth,” “he also is flesh,” made it sound earthly and human, but the earth here is prephvsical earth and man prephysical archetype. It was these, not biologic forms, the Deluge figuratively destroyed. The giants mentioned at this point are the same as the Titans, the Cyclops, the “mighty men” of mythology; and later when we reach this same point in Evolution we will find them mentioned again.
As the story opens, Noah is none other than the Creative Principle on the dividing line between the third and fourth planes, Lamech, Methuselah and Enoch being the three or Trinity above—a very good reason why Enoch “walked with God.” The word Noah itself comes from the Chaldean Nuah, the third person in the Chaldean Trinity, and also the third sign in the Chaldean zodiac. Perhaps this Chaldean Nuah is the source of the Greek nous, mind, philosophically defined as “an emanation of the divine principle.” In the New Testament Noah is spelled Noe, and we have the word noetic, of the mind. Be this as it may Noah represents the fourth or mental matter plane in the creative process, Lamech, Methuselah and Enoch, the three planes above and Noah’s “generations,” Japheth, Ham and Shem, the three planes below. See diagram, p. 88. As this Noachean principle existed from the beginning, the 120 preparatory years are the three spiritual and preparatory stages preceding the material. These material planes, particularly the last, dense matter, are the “evil” of all mythologies, and when Noah arrives there he too becomes evil. While still spirit “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord,” and
9. . . . Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
The mythologist does not say that Noah was morally perfect, or even perfect in his generation (day and age) but “in his generations.” And Noah’s generations were what Noah generated, namely, the lower planes, elements and archetypes. No doubt that added s puzzled our translators, but they stuck to it and revealed much, the virtue of the Jewish patriarchs, for instance. It was not moral. Unfortunately our translators were not so scrupulous elsewhere.
Noah’s generations were, like Adam’s, three, and here they are personified.
10. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Explained later. The sequence is euphemistic. Shem is the youngest, Japheth the oldest, see Chap. 10:21.)
11. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
This is but the violence of creation, therefore not moral. Here we see the reason, as stated, for the various accounts. There was nothing said about violence in the Priestly account, hence the Noah version.
12. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
If the Creator is morally perfect how could he create the morally imperfect? The answer is quite simple—there is nothing moral involved here. This is but the “original sin” all over again and it was not man’s; it was the Creator’s. Our castigation of the Hebrew scriptures is due to our realization of the tragic and far-reaching results of this deception. It was a prerequisite of a priesthood, but it wasted two thousand years on soul-salvation instead of soul development.
13. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
And now, as in Greek mythology, this Hebrew Jupiter decides to drown everything he has made save the Hebrew Deucalion, Noah and his crew. How he is going to drown the fishes we are not told. To them a flood would be a red-letter day. The inclusion of the earth in this destruction can only mean the earth entity in Involution. This is to be destroyed, figuratively, that a physical earth and Evolution might be. And here we come to another absurdity, the ark. God tells Noah to build it and also how to build it. Can you imagine the Creator of the universe, as religion sees him, teaching a man how to build a boat? Later, we will have more to say about the absurd belief in “divine instructors” of primitive man.
14. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
16. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
According to some, the Hebrew cubit was only 18 inches, others say 20. Even with the latter, the ark would be only 500 feet. Into this Noah put eight people, two or seven of every animal species, and sufficient provisions for one hundred fifty days; another account says one year. And for ventilation there was only one little window twenty inches square. The absurdity here is so great, I suspect it was meant as a hint for us to do a little thinking. But as stated elsewhere, Western man is incapable of thinking in the abstract or recognizing mythic symbolism. Yet consider the absurdity of its literalism. The fauna of the Middle East is not extensive. Where then did Noah get two or seven of every living creature? Did he go to Australia for the kangaroos, to the Arctic for the polar bears, and to the Antarctic for the penguins? And how many dinosaurs did he have aboard?
There is only one thing big enough to accommodate all the creatures of the earth and that is the earth itself. This is the ark of Genesis, or creation, and into it went the arketypal forms of every living thing. When in our version we spoke of archetypes, ideation, and genes, the reader, no doubt, dismissed it as mere metaphysical speculation, not realizing he had read it all before in his “word of God”—the plagiarized and corrupted wisdom-knowledge of Creation.
In this perverted version, the earth is still prephysical; its three stories are, therefore, the three prephysical planes, mental, astral and etheric. Mount Ararat where the ark “rested,” like God, is the physical part.
The word ark is Egyptian and means a chest or box for preserving sacred things. Here, in its symbolic sense, the sacred things are the planetary genes and archetypal ideas that only the earth is capable of holding. The idea is by no means original; the Hindus had their Argha, the Greeks, their Cista, also the Argo of the Afgonauts. In another myth it is Pandora’s box. The numbers here are also symbolic. As in Revelation, the constant use of seven can have no other meaning than the septenate creative process. This is “the mystic number” in all cosmologies.
2. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens . . .
3. Of fowls also of the air by sevens . . .
4. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth . . . 10. And it came to pass after seven days . . . (Chap. 7)
4. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month . . .
10. And he stayed yet other seven days . . .
12. And he stayed yet other seven days . . . (Chap. 8)
That there are here two conflicting versions is quite apparent. Chapter 7, verse 2, says seven of every kind, and chapter 6, verse 19, says two of every sort. In each the duration of the flood is also different. Chapter 7 says one hundred fifty days—five months; Chapter 8 says ten months before the mountain tops were seen. This is some of that rewriting of the original we spoke about in our Preface.
7. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.
10. And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
11. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life (sixth plane), in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
12. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights (Chap. 7).
The forty days and nights represent the four prephysical periods. Noah’s six hundredth year brings it down to the etheric plane, No. 6, beyond which is the sun period. In every mythology these four periods are described as violent, the elements being the aforesaid turbulentos, out of which another Creator, Fetahil, tried to form a world but could not until he gained the help of the monster Ialdabaoth (Behemoth), matter. But even together they could not form a world until they had first created the “seven stellars,” the intermediaries. These “seven stellars” are one with the “seven pillars” wisdom hewed out for her house (Prov. 9:1). And this is the Deluge, the creation of the world.
21. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:
22. All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.
And this cosmic fiend and genocide is absolved by man because His name is God. Did Satan ever commit so great a crime? And what are man’s puny sins compared with it? We condemn and deplore the Nazis’ genocidal attack on the Jews, but they destroyed human life only; this monster destroyed all life. And for twenty five hundred years no one has had the courage to cry out “J’accuse!”
And now let us see what it really means.
The only absolution for this mass-murder lies in our theory, namely, that the victims were not evolutionary beings but involutionary archetypes, and their death the same as that concerning which Adam was warned, the death of spirit, as such. Here, no morality is involved, but there is explanation. When the Creator made hunger He also made lust, the hunger of the astral body, and the astral body is part of the Creator’s body—astral matter. Thus the cause of human wickedness is in the original Cause. And this is the wickedness of Noah’s day.
Herein lies the importance of the distinction we made between God and Creator. The fault lies with the translators. They should never have used the name of man’s ideal, God, in translating Creation myths, or attributed love and mercy to the Creator. But they are not alone to blame. Had we been enlightened we would never have accepted this semantic miscegenation. And were we enlightened today we would not make fools of ourselves in sermons, novels, paintings and movies about Noah and his Ark.
While Noah was still afloat he sent forth a raven and later a dove three times, a sort of sounding of the various stages of concretion. This too was copied: the Babylonian Noah, Utnapishtim, sent first a dove, then a swallow, and finally a raven, which is more in keeping with the coarsening process.
1. And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged;
4. And the ark rested in the seventh month (cycle and plane), on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountain of Ararat (Chap. 8).
The ark rested on the seventh day the same way God rested —in dense matter. This is Mount Ararat, called elsewhere, “the mount of descent.” And today men who call themselves enlightened climb this mount in search of the ark. They should read other mythologies as well as the Hebrews’. The Babylonian ark rested on Mount Nisir, the Hindu ark on Mount Himalaya, and the Greek ark on Mount Parnassus. Hatho says the word Ararat, or Arath, is the Aramaic source of the word earth. It is generally assumed this comes from the Norse goddess Erda, but Erda is just the Arath of Scandinavian mythology.
When at last the dense and solid earth is reached, Noah and his crew come forth and build an altar, the earth itself. On this they sacrifice some of the animals, elements, which, radiating away, rose up and formed an aura. These God both saw and smelled. The “sweet savor” pleased him immensely, and so he made a covenant with Noah: never again would he destroy the earth by a deluge, and for a very good reason—the Deluge being the creative process, it happens only once. But that he might not forget his promise, he made a rainbow and set it in the sky as a reminder. Now a rainbow is the result of raindrops refracting sunlight—and there was no sun at this time. If, however, this story is literally true and the deluge an event in human history, then this is the first time the law of refraction operated. But what of the sun and rain in Adam’s day and during those lengthy “begats”? The answer is quite simple: this is not a subsequent period, nor is the rainbow meteorological; it is cosmological—the seven auric elements in Evolution, only four as yet, however. The earth’s aura is colored and constitutes the planet’s cosmic index.
This tale was also copied from others. After the flood the Babylonian Utnapishtim also built an altar and sacrificed to his God. And strange to say, this God also “smelled a sweet savor” and Ishtar, “the lady of the rainbow,” hung out her multicolored necklace. According to the Incas, the god Viracocha promised by the rainbow never to drown mankind again. And among the Chibehas of Bogota, Bochica quelled the flood while sitting on a rainbow.
1. And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth (Chap. 9).
This is not a repetition of the command given to Adam; it is the same command in a parallel myth. Thus the replenishment here is not of the lost Adamic humanity, but of the involutionary archetypes and elements figuratively “lost” in matter. These are now to be replaced by their evolutionary antiscia, or planetary opposites. The command then is not to humanity, nor is it authority to breed by blind nature instead of human intelligence. It is not even a command by God, but only that of a mythologist observing a natural fact billions of years later.
18. And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.
Ham represents the etheric element, at this point in the story, involutionary. And now we can see why Ham is the father of Canaan. Canaan is a mythic name for matter, the earth in toto, and we asserted that suns transmute the etheric into the chemical. And this is the meaning of the next step down, namely, Shem, or Chem.
It’s all cunningly concealed, but by no means original. Even the names of Noah’s sons are copies. In Maurice’s history of Hindustan we find this: “It is related in Padmapooraun that Satyavrata, whose miraculous preservation from a general deluge is told at large in the Matsya, had three sons, the eldest of whom was named Jyapeti, or Lord of the Earth; the others were Charma and Sharma, which last words are in the vulgar dialects usually pronounced Cham and Sham. . . .” In The City of God, St. Augustine uses these same forms, also Chanaan for Canaan. There is more to this quotation but it is apropos of something else assumed to be original; later we will return to it.
19. These are the three sons of Noah (the violent forces of Creation): and of them was the whole earth overspread.
And that explains everything, including the violence and savagery of Nature, a fact the Perfection concept and the Priestly account cannot explain. By such deception the priests hid from us the true nature of Causation, and at the same time established the idea the whole human race sprang from three Jews, and of course they were Jews, and so was Adam. Josephus, taking it all literally, says the descendants of these three spread over all the continents of Europe and Asia, founding nations and calling them after their own names. Then he berates the Greeks for subsequently changing the names and making these same claims. This, of course, was wrong for the Greeks but perfectly all right for the Jews.
The many descendants of these three were not even races but divisions in the earth itself: “And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided . . .” (Chap. 10:25). Divided into Involution and Evolution and its planes.
The earth now created, we find a very different Noah. No longer is he the saint who “walked with God,” but an old reprobate who got drunk, exposed his nakedness and cursed his son for seeing it—”Demon est Deus inversus. “
20. And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21. And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent (Chap. 9).
That is, he was, like Adam, naked. This is the naked earth— Gymnoge. He was also, like Adam, a tiller of the ground; in other words, he was Adam. The vineyard he planted was the Garden of Eden; the grapes he grew were the forbidden fruit of “the tree of good and evil”; the wine he drank was of this tree, and as with Adam, it was too much for him, therefore he also slept. Don’t blame him, however, for even God had to rest. The wine is the opiate matter and its story is very old. In the Puranas of India, Indra the Creator became drunk on soma, an intoxicant that produces stupefaction rather than hilarity; actually the deathlike sleep of genetic consciousness in matter. And how many of us can see the epigenetic parallel? In this materialistic cycle we too are drunk on soma and stupefied spiritually. That is why we cannot see the meaning of the scriptures, or solve “the riddle of the universe.”
22. And Ham, the father of Canaan (now the evolutionary etheric), saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
We dislike the Greek story of Cronos taking advantage of his father’s nakedness, but it’s all right here—this is “the word of God,” and so is the tale of Lot’s daughters. Naked Noah is naked earth; naturally, then the first emanation, etheric, saw the earth’s nakedness as it had not yet been covered with vegetation. And now, like God covering Adam, “. . . Shem and Japheth took a garment (vegetation) and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father, and their faces were backward and they saw not their father’s nakedness.” This casting the garment backward is identical with Deucalion and Pyrrha casting the stones backward, the creative process reversed, evolutionary fission instead of involutionary fusion. Their faces backward from their father, earth, means they were turned from dense matter toward Evolution.
Otherwise, why should a man’s nakedness be such a moral offense in those primitive days, that a third of the race should be cursed for all time? The Jews, even today, are not oversensitive about it. The naked earth, however, was a cosmogonical offense, as it was intended to be covered. Now actually Ham did the covering, but as the author wanted to “show cause” why the plant kingdom is subject to the other two, he made Shem and Japheth the virtuous ones. Japheth being the oldest son (see 21:10) was first in Involution, therefore last in Evolution.
24. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
25. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren (as Abel was to his brother Cain).
Exoterically, this is the third curse pronounced thus far— Adam, Cain, and Ham—but esoterically, it is the same curse, the curse of life, of being as compared to nonbeing. This is “the original sin” and its consequence, but behold, what ignorance has done with it. It has made a religion out of it; it has built a parasitic church and priesthood upon it; it has wasted millennia in saving us instead of civilizing us. The only salvation that we need is salvation from this ignorance; this is our curse and the cause of all our troubles. Therefore we should make all other things secondary to the removal of this curse.
As an aid in escaping the curse of scriptural history, we will now conclude the Hindustani source of this part of it. “The royal patriarch for such is his character in the Pooraun—was particularly fond of Jyapeti, to whom he gave all the regions to the north of Himalaya, or the snowy mountains, which extend from sea to sea, and of which Caucasus is a part; to Sharma he alloted the countries to the south of these mountains; but he cursed Charma because when the old monarch was accidentally inebriated with strong liquor made of fermented rice, Charma laughed; and it was in consequence of his father’s execration that he became a slave to the slaves of his brothers.” And such is the “revealed” history of Israel.
It is curious what devils these divine beings, straight from the hand of God, become—Adam, Cain, Lamech, and now Noah, a great mystery to our “Bible students.” Concerning Noah, one of them, C. A. Hawley, had this to say: “The second Noah seems to have been as much a reprobate as any of the descendants of the illicit union of the divine beings and mortal woman. He was the first to plant the vine, thereby identifying himself with the hated Baal religion, so violently condemned by the prophets. He was the first to become drunk with wine, again violating all the prophetic commands and injunctions. He was the first mortal to curse his fellow man. He was the originator of slavery. This could never be the same Noah who was named to be the savior of his people and the second father of the human race.”
This is commentary without knowledge, learning without understanding. Lacking these his Reverence could not accept this change from saint to sinner. It’s the same old Noah, nevertheless, but that Noah was not the second father of the race; he was the first, that is, one with Adam, and his fall from grace is Adam’s fall. As both personify the Creative Principle, this is but an occultist’s way of saying the Creator fell, from Deus to Demon—the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The author of the Zohar also knew this fact, as per diagram. (See page 98.)
Thus both the Zohar and the Bible confirm our former statements. An honest search in other sources also helps. According to rabbinical lore, Noah entered into partnership with Satan. Satan was to fertilize the soil and Noah was to plant and tend the vine, the two splitting the profits. So this is the origin of the “profit system.” We thought there was something Satanic about it.
Such is the story of Noah, merely a revolutio of other myths.
Noah and the Flood
DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS
As all the aspects of Creation could not be shown in one, the ancients made many. Furthermore, each race wrote the story in terms of its own people, hence both their universality and their difference. There are in all some four hundred deluge myths, each with its own Noah, ark and Ararat. The Greek parallel is too well known for lengthy comment, so just an outline.
Zeus, Jupiter to the Romans, becoming offended with his own creation, decided to drown the whole wicked lot of them, except Deucalion and Pyrrha, who had “found grace” in his eyes. These he allowed to escape in a boat or ark which finally landed on Mt. Parnassus. Here his “chosen” disembarked only to look upon a bare and desolate world. While wondering what to do they heard a voice from heaven telling them to pick up their parents’ bones and cast them backwards. This they did and life sprang up to “replenish the earth.” In this throwing backwards, we have a bit of knowledge we think we alone possess—the creative process reversed, atomic catalysis instead of atomic synthesis. Science calls it fission, in nature, radiation, slow and harmless. In a parallel myth Cadmus sows dragon teeth and warriors spring up from them—the warring elements now in Evolution. Their first biologic counterpart is the viruses, lethal and murderous. Such is even first life, and this is what the Jhwhist is telling us through Cain, Lamech, Noah, Moses and Joshua. Knowledge of this kind should open our eyes to what we are here for—to qualify the quantitative and civilize the savage, in other words, finalize God’s unfinished business.
From the tablets of Assurbanipal we get the Babylonian account. Here the great God, Enlil, offended by man’s wickedness, decides to destroy him with water, but Ea, the god of wisdom (creative), overhears his plan and tells Utnapishtim about it. This good man, like the Sethite Noah, is tenth in line from the first man, and, like Noah, walks with Ea. The latter advises him to forsake all else and build a boat, not just for himself and family, but large enough to hold all the beasts and birds and creeping things. No sooner was it built and all things stored within than a great storm arose, so great indeed that even the lesser gods “trembled in fear.” For six days and nights it lasted and on the seventh it stopped. Meanwhile the boat had floated about until it came to rest on Mount Nisir. Now Mount Nisir is between Medea and Armenia and thus is practically identical with Ararat.
In this story Utnapishtim waits “seven days” and sends out the dove, swallow, and raven already mentioned. When the latter fails to return Utnapishtim knows the land is dry and so opens the boat and debarks. Immediately thereafter he builds an altar and offers incense upon it. The gods smell the “sweet savor” and gather around; and here it is that Mother Ishtar hangs out her colored necklace, the rainbow.
In the Persian and Hindu myths we get a closer approximation to the real meaning. In these it is not physical birds and beasts that are taken into the ark but their seeds, the planetary genes. And so we quote: “. . . (take) the seeds of sheep, oxen, men and women, dogs, and birds and every kind of tree and fruit, two of every kind, into the ark and seal it up with a golden ring (“ring-pass-not”) and make in it a door and window.”
The Hindu Noah, Vaivasvata, is warned by an avatar of Vishnu that the earth is to be submerged and all life destroyed. The avatar then orders him to construct a vessel for his family and the seeds of plants, and pairs of animals. A great fish appears to guide the boat which, after being buffeted about, comes to rest on Mount Himalaya. In this, the number of days the storm lasted agrees exactly with that of the Hebrew account. We said the Jews in Bible days had many sources we’re unaware of.
These are all Asian and might be copies one from the other, yet how did the people of far-off Mexico, Brazil and the Society Islands know about this event, even the details? The Tepanecans of Mexico tell of a great flood that lasted exactly forty days and nights. The Society Islanders say the great god Tangaloa, offended by the sins of man, caused a flood so great that only the mountaintops remained when the flood subsided—the present archipelago. Thereafter a stranger landed from a boat on Mount Eimeo and built an altar to his god. And no doubt he thanked this god for saving him after drowning all the rest. According to the Tupi-Guarani of western Brazil, their god Monan was so vexed with their evil ways that he tried to destroy them with fire, but a great magician, Irin-Magé, extinguished it with a deluge of water. The Quichi (Mayans) say that only four men and four women escaped from a rain and hail. These had taken refuge in a mountain and when they sought a better abode the waters parted and they passed through on dry land. The Man-deans of Mesopotamia tell of a flood of fire-water, from which only a pair escaped. The Mundari of Central India say their god Sing Bonga, perceiving that all men had become evil, destroyed them with fire and water. The Tolowas tell us of a great flood following a torrential rain. All were drowned except one pair. From this pair the Tolowas sprang. A Welsh myth says that Dwyvan and Dwyvach alone escaped the Great Flood. And even the Jews had other Deluge myths. In one a wrathful God scalded the sinful antediluvians.
There are some who contend that the other races copied from the Hebrew account, this being the one and only “revealed” account, yet the Hindu, Chaldean, Babylonian and Egyptian accounts antedate the Hebrew version by many centuries. Who did the copying then is obvious. Speaking of this Dr. Driver said:”. . . their materials it is plain were obtained by them from the best human sources obtainable.” And again:”. . . the author has utilized elements derived ultimately from a heathen source.” The truth is that the entire Bible is derived from this heathen source. The mythoplasm of all myths is that of the creation of the world, and all antiquity dramatized it. Below are a few of the better known deluge myths with their Noahs and their gods.
While on the subject of myths and “lost” races let us consider another—the “lost” Atlantis. Atlantis is also a myth, but as we know it, no part of the mythopoeic legacy. It belongs to historic times and Plato is the author. But Plato had no firsthand knowledge of this land or the original myth either. He got the idea from a pupil of his, who got it from a relative, Solon, who got it from Egyptian priests, who did not know its meaning either. Thus remote, in more ways than one, Plato just fictionized a myth into a fact. If you don’t believe this can be done, just read your Bible. The facts of the case are these: While visiting Sais in Egypt, Solon was shown two pillars inscribed with hieroglyphics, ancient even then. Curious to know their meaning, he asked the priests to interpret them to him. This they did and the story they told is the story of Atlantis, another fabulous land in the west, now sunk in the Atlantic. This too was a wondrous place, but not as Plato described it—the philosopher needed a basis for his ideal Republic. It was more like Eden; in other words, the land of the gods, not of men. It was involutionary, and like all the rest it became corrupt and wicked, therefore it too was destroyed—that an evolutionary world might be. This is the story the tablets told, and if ever they are rediscovered they will tell a story as old and as universal as thinking man. Even in far-off China we find its counterpart—Teheon, so like the Hebrew Tehom. This was a happy, “Holy Island beyond the sun,” which because of its sins was destroyed by a deluge. “Beyond the sun,” not in space but in time, that is, beyond the sun period.
The word Atlantis, like Atlantic, comes from Atlas, the mighty man who upholds the world, that is, we believe the poor, benighted Greeks believed he did. But we see in others only what we are ourselves and by reason of it. Thus we know mythology only as we know cosmology, and having substituted religious faith for prereligious knowledge, we know but little. Atlas was not a reality even to the Greeks; he was but a mythic personification of cosmic power. And do we not believe a mighty power called God upholds the world? When once we acquire even a little knowledge of things cosmic we will then see Eden as one with Atlantis, Adam as one with Atlas, and even Noah. These are but earth on the involutionary side; their glories but the glories of mythology, their magic but the magic of creation; and their “fall” but descent into generation.
What then of “divine man” and his “divine instructors”? Simply this: they never existed, therefore all faith in and commentary on them is but misunderstood cosmology mythologized. Consider this now obvious misunderstanding from Panodorus: “Now it is during these thousand years (i.e., before the Deluge) that the reign of the Seven Gods (seven plane forces) who rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanity descended on Earth and taught man to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic (the zodiac).” If man had divine teachers and divine knowledge in the beginning how did he get like Neanderthal, or even us? This is Devolution. That sin caused it, is part of the priestly hoax; science has “no need of that hypothesis”; it has studied first-man’s remains.
The Seven Gods Panodorus took so literally and as coexisting, were the seven successive or henotheistic powers in Involution—the first seven Manus of Hindu cosmology. They did not descend to earth and teach men; they descended and became men. We now are they, biologically, and only by our own efforts do we learn to “calculate the course of the sun and moon”—also to build a boat. And we might also add, a radio, a plane, an antibiotic. This is our job in the Zodiacal Night; all such knowledge eventually handed up to the human group-soul. In the Zodiacal Day it will be changed and sublimated into wisdom, and as the twilight comes again, handed down to a wisdom lacking humanity that will again misinterpret it.
Today, we think of this wisdom-knowledge in terms of religion—”revealed,” or mystically intuited rather than rationally discerned. It is not so; the ancient knowledge of Reality was as rationalistic as our own science, and far more extensive, cosmically. It was the result of preceding millennia of scientific study philosophically examined. To paraphrase a recent comment, it was scientific experience contemplated in tranquillity—the Zodiacal Day. Thus there was nothing mystic or mysterious about it. It was the period in between that mystified it, the age of religion. And as this gave us no knowledge whatever, we think, like Panodorus, that it was “revealed” to “holy men” by “divine beings.”
This false idea has filled the world with nonsense—Gods and Devils, Angels and Archangels, Lipikas and Builders, Lords of Wisdom and Sons of Light. Even Madame Blavatsky, who should have known better, writes in this fashion. “The question will surely be asked: Do the occultists believe in all these ‘Builders,’ ‘Lipikas,’ and ‘Sons of Light,’ as Entities, or are they merely imaginary? To this the answer is given as plainly: After due allowance for the imagery of personified Powers, we must admit the existence of these Entities, if we would not reject the existence of spiritual Humanity within physical mankind. For the hosts of these Sons of Light, the mind born sons of the manifested Ray of the Unknown All, are the very root of spiritual man.” 1 Thus belief in these beings depends on a delusion, namely, that this “Ray of the Unknown All” constitutes the spiritual part of evolved humanity. It does not; this “Ray” is only the Life Principle, the morally unqualified genetic; the spirituality of evolved humanity is epigenetic and of man’s own creating.
There is simply no end to the delusions this false doctrine has wrought. It molds the mind of the theologian, it bedevils the philosopher, the statesman, and even the nation. In the Germans and Japanese we see the consequence of this. The latter took literally their myth about divine beings descending upon their islands and establishing their race and culture—then fought like devils to force them upon the world. And only after bitter defeat did they humanize their “divine” Emperor. The statement that their founder was fifth in line from the Sun Goddess has no racial meaning whatever. It means only that they, mankind, are fifth in line cyclically from the sun period— sun, earth, plant, animal, man.
A similar idea underlies the Germans’ politicomysticism, ending in militarism—and two defeats. It too derives from mythology, its unscrupulous gods and violent means—Thor, the thunderer, Wotan, the pact-breaker, Loki, the cunning schemer, and so on. The result is Der Tag, Blitzkrieg, Deutsche Donner and dāmmerung, all due to ignorance of the ruthless nature of Causation and man’s corrective purpose. Whenever a people associate themselves with God or the gods and boast of their racial superiority, they are but exposing an inferiority complex. Due to a sense of inadequacy they create a divinity to supplement their own deficiency. In this we should not forget the Jews, with their claim to divine origin and selection. The resulting pride and prejudice is a good example of what happens when the wisdom-knowledge is lost and only the deceptive letter remains. But before we pluck the mote from others’ eyes, let’s get the beam out of our own. We too believe their silly claims and help them steal a country. We too believe we’re essentially divine; we too believe Causation is divine; for ages we believed in “the divine right of kings,” and still believe in the divine authority of the Church. Indeed, in these things we’re all so ignorant “it ill behooves the best of us to talk about the rest of us.”
1 The Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 131.