————

* Strictly speaking, it is only from the time of the Atlantean, brown and yellow giant Races, that one ought to speak of MAN, since it was the Fourth race only which was the first completely human species , however much larger in size than we are now. In “Man” (by two chelas), all that is said of the Atlanteans is quite correct. It is chiefly that race which became “black with sin” that brought the divine names of the Asuras, the Râkshasas and the Daityas into disrepute, and passed them on to posterity as the names of fiends. For, as said, the Suras (gods) or Devas having incarnated in the wise men of Atlantis, the names of Asuras and Râkshasas were given to the Atlanteans; which names, owing to their incessant conflicts with the last remnants of the Third Race and the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” have led to the later allegories about them in the Purânas. “Asura was the generic appellation of all the Atlanteans who were the enemies of the spiritual heroes of the Aryans (gods).” (“Man,” p. 97.)

* In general, the so-called orthodox Christian conceptions about the “fallen” angels or Satan, are as remarkable as they are absurd. About a endeavours to show — unless he refuses to belong to the present humanity.

* It is not correct to refer to Christ — as some theosophists do — as the sixth principle in man — Buddhi . The latter per se is a passive and latent principle, the spiritual vehicle of Atman, inseparable from the manifested Universal Soul. It is only in union and in conjunction with Self-consciousness that Buddhi becomes the Higher Self and the divine, discriminating Soul. Christos is the seventh principle, if anything.

* To make it plainer, any one who reads that passage in Luke , will see that the remark follows the report of the seventy , who rejoice that “even the devils (the spirit of controversy and reasoning, or the opposing power, since Satan means simply “adversary ” or opponent ) are subject unto us through thy name.” (Luke x. 17.) Now, “thy name” means the name of Christos, or Logos, or the spirit of true divine wisdom, as distinct from the spirit of intellectual or mere materialistic reasoning — the HIGHER SELF in short. And when Jesus remarks to this that he has “beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven,” it is a mere statement of his clairvoyant powers, notifying them that he already knew it, and a reference to the incarnation of the divine ray (the gods or angels) which falls into generation . For not all men, by any means, benefit by that incarnation, and with some the power remains latent and dead during the whole life. Truly “No man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son” as added by Jesus then and there (Ibid v. 22) — the Church “of Christ” less than any one else. The Initiates alone understood the secret meaning of the term “Father and the Son,” and knew that it referred to Spirit and Soul on the Earth. For the teachings of Christ were occult teachings, which could only be explained at the initiation . They were never intended for the masses, for Jesus forbade the twelve to go to the Gentiles and the Samaritans (Matt . x. 8), and repeated to his disciples that the “mysteries of Heaven” were for them alone, not for the multitudes (Mark iv. 11).

† So, for instance, in the Purânas, “Pulastya,” a Prajâpati, or son of Brahmâ — the progenitor of the Râkshasas, and the grandfather of Ravana, the Great King of Lanka (see Ramayana ) — had, in a former birth , a son named Dattoli, “who is now known as the sage Agastya” — says Vishnu Purâna. This name of Dattoli alone, has six more variants to it, or seven meanings. He is called respectively, Dattoi, Dattâli, Dattotti, Dattotri, Dattobhri, Dambhobhi and Dambholi — which seven variants have each a secret sense, and refer in the esoteric comments to various ethnologicalclassifications, and also to physiological and anthropological mysteries of the primitive races. For, surely, the Râkshasas are not demons , but simply the primitive and ferocious giants, the Atlanteans, who were scattered on the face of the globe as the Fifth Race is now. Vasishta is a warrant to this, if his words addressed to Parâsara, who attempted a bit of JADOO (sorcery), which he calls “sacrifice,” for the destruction of the Râkshasas, mean anything. For he says, “Let no more of these unoffending ‘Spirits Darkness ’ be destroyed.” (see for details Adiparvan, s . 176, Mahabhârata ; also the Linga Purâna “Purvârdha ,” s . 64.)

* We have a passage from a Master’s letter which has a direct bearing upon theseincarnating angels. Says the letter: “Now there are, and there must be, failures in the ethereal races of the many classes of Dhyan- Chohans, or Devas (progressed entities of a previous planetary period), as well as among men. But still, as the failures are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyan-Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower Kingdoms, this then happens. Where a new solar system has to be evolved these Dhyan-Chohans are borne in by influx ‘ahead’ of the Elementals (Entities... to be developed into humanity at a future time) and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual force, in the aura of a nascent world... until the stage of human evolution is reached.... Then they become an active force and commingle with the Elementals, to develop little by little the full type of humanity .” That is to say, to develop in, and endow man with his Self- conscious mind, or Manas .

† When the earth with its planetary chain and man were to appear.

‡ Our earth and the physical plane of consciousness.

§ When the pure, celestial Being (Dhyan Chohan) and the great Pitris of various classes were commissioned — the one to evolve their images (Chhaya ), and make of them physical man, the others to inform and thus endow him with divine intelligence and the comprehension of the Mysteries of Creation .

* The “dynasties of the kings” who all regard themselves as the “anointed,” reigning “by the Grace of God,” whereas in truth, they reign by the grace of matter , the great Illusion , the Deceiver.

* See the “Primeval Manus of Humanity.”

† The “Heavenly Man” — please mark again the word — is “the LOGOS” or the “Son” esoterically. Therefore, once that the title was applied to Christ (declared God and the very God himself) Christian theology had no choice. In order to support its dogma of the personal Trinity it had to proclaim, as it does, that the Christian Logos is the only true one, and that all the Logoi of other religions were false, and only the masquerading Evil Principles, SATAN. Now see where this led Western theology to.

* “For the Mind , a deity abounding in both sexes, being Life and Life, brought forth by its Word another Mind or Workman; which, being God of the Fire and the Spirit, fashioned and formed seven other Governors, which in their circles contain the Phenomenal World , and whose disposition is called Fate or Destiny.” (Section 9, ch . I, ed. of 1579).

Here it is evident that “Mind” (the primeval universal Divine Thought) is neither the Unknown unmanifested One, since it abounds in both sexes (is male and female), nor yet the Christian Father, as the latter is a male and not an androgyne. The fact is that the Father, Son, and Man are hopelessly mixed up in the translations of Pymander.

† The allegory of the fire of Prometheus is another version of the rebellion of the proud Lucifer, who was hurled down to the bottomless pit , or simply unto our Earth, to live as man. The Hindu Lucifer, the Mahasura , is also said to have become envious of the Creator’s resplendent light, and, at the head of inferior Asuras (not gods, but spirits), to have rebelled against Brahmâ; for which Siva hurled him down to Pâtâla. But, as philosophy goes hand in hand with allegorical fiction in Hindu myths, the devil is made to repent, and is afforded the opportunity to progress: he is a sinful man esoterically , and can by yoga devotion, and adeptship, reach his status of one with the deity , once more. Hercules, the Sun-god, descends to Hades (the cave of Initiation) to deliver the victims from their tortures, etc., etc. The Christian Church alone creates eternal torment for the devil and the damned, that she has invented.

* Why should, for instance, Eliphas Levi, the very fearless and outspoken Kabalist, have hesitated to divulge the mystery of the Fallen Angels so- called? That he knew the fact and real meaning of the allegory — both in its religious and mystical, as well as in its physiological sense — is proved by his voluminous writings and frequent allusions and hints. Yet Eliphas, after having alluded to it a hundred times in his previous works, says in his latest “Histoire de la Magie ,” p. 220... “We protest with all our might against the sovereignty and the ubiquity of Satan. We pretend neither to deny nor affirm here the tradition on the Fall of the Angels ... but if so, then the prince of the Angelic Rebels can be at best the last and the most powerless among the condemned — now that he is separated from deity — which is the principle of every power...” This is hazy and evasive enough; but see what Hargrave Jennings writes in his weird, staccato-like style: —

“Both Saint Michael and Saint George are types. They are sainted personages, or dignified heroes, or powers apotheosized. They are each represented with their appropriate faculties and attributes. These are reproduced and stand multiplied — distinguished by different names in all the mythologies... (including the Christian)...

The idea regarding each is a general one. This idea and representative notion is that of the all-powerful champion — child-like in his ‘Virgin innocence’ — so powerful that this god-filled innocence (the Seraphim ‘Know most,’ the Cherubim ‘love most’) can shatter the world (articulated, so to use the word — in the magic of Lucifer, but condemned) in opposition to the artful constructions (this ‘side-life’) of the magnificent apostate, the mighty rebel, but yet at the same time the ‘Light-bringer,’ the Lucifer, the ‘Morning Star,’ the ‘Son of the morning’ — the very highest title ‘out of heaven, ‘for in heaven it cannot be, but out of heaven it is everything. In an apparently incredible side of his character — qualities are of no sex — this archangel, St. Michael, is the invincible, sexless, celestial ‘Energy’ — to dignify him by his grand characteristics — the invisible ‘Virgin Combatant,’ clothed... and at the same time armed, in the denying mail of the Gnostic ‘refusal to create.’ This is another... ‘myth within myths’... a stupendous ‘mystery of mysteries,’ because it is so impossible and contradictory. Unexplainable as the Apocalypse. Unrevealable as the ‘Revelation’ “(p . 213).

Nevertheless, this unexplainable and unrevealable mystery will now be explained and revealed by the doctrines of the East. But as the very erudite, but still more puzzling author of “Phallicism” gives it, of course, no uninitiated mortal would ever understand the real drift of his remarks.

* “Creation” — out of pre-existent eternal substance, or matter, of course, which substance, according to our teachings, is boundless, ever-existing space.

† The Luciferians — the sect of the fourth century who are alleged to have taught that the Soul was a carnal body transmitted to the child by its father; — and that other religious and still earlier sect of the second century A.D., the Lucianists, who taught all this, and further, that the animal Soul was not immortal, were philosophizing on the grounds of the real Kabalistic and Occult teachings.

* This “central sun” of the Occultists, which even Science is obliged to accept astronomically, for it cannot deny the presence in Sidereal Space of a central body in the milky way, a point unseen and mysterious, the ever-hidden centre of attraction of our Sun and system — this “Sun” is viewed differently by the Occultists of the East. While the Western and Jewish Kabalists (and even some pious modern astronomers) claim that in this sun the God-head is specially present — referring to it the volitional acts of God — the Eastern Initiates maintain that, as the supradivine Essence of the Unknown Absolute is equally in every domain and place, the “Central Sun” is simply the centre of Universal life- Electricity; the reservoir within which that divine radiance, already differentiated at the beginning of every creation , is focussed. Though still in a laya , or neutral condition, it is, nevertheless, the one attracting, as also the ever-emitting, life Centre.

* The Fourth, and the Fifth from below beginning by the physical body; the Third and the Fourth, if we reckon from Atma .

* “New Aspects of Life .“

† Angelic, Spiritual Essences, immortal in their being because unconditioned in Eternity; periodical and conditioned in their Manvantaric manifestations.

* The history of Prometheus, Karma, and human consciousness, is found further on.

† By an Englishman whose erratic genius killed him. The son of a Protestant clergyman, he became a Mahomedan, then a rabid atheist, and after meeting with a master , a Guru, he became a mystic; then a theosophist who doubted, despaired; threw up white for black magic, went insane and joined the Roman Church. Then again turning round, anathematized her, re-became an atheist, and died cursing humanity, knowledge, and God, in whom he had ceased to believe. Furnished with all the esoteric data to write his “War in Heaven,” he made a semi- political article out of it, mixing Malthus with Satan, and Darwin with the astral light. Peace be to his— Shell . He is a warning to the chelas who fail. His forgotten tomb may now be seen in the Mussulman burial ground of the Joonagad, Kathiawar, in India.

* The author talks of the active, fighting , damning Jehovah as though he were a synonym of Parabrahm! We have quoted from this article to show where it dissents from theosophic teachings; otherwise it would be quoted some day against us, as everything published in the Theosophist generally is.

† Explaining the Kabala, Dr. H. Pratt says, “Spirit was to man (to the Jewish Rabbin, rather?) a bodiless, disembodied, or deprived, and degraded being, and hence was termed by the ideograph Nahash ‘Deprived;’ represented as appearing to and seducing the human race — men through the Woman.... In the picture from this Nahash, this spirit was represented by a serpent, because from its destitution of bodily members , the Serpent was looked upon as a deprived and depraved and degraded creature” (“New Aspects ,” p . 235). Symbol for symbol there are those who would prefer that of the serpent — the symbol of wisdom and eternity, deprived of limbs as it is — to the Jod () — the poetical ideograph of Jehovah in the Kabala — the god of the male symbol of generation.

* Daksha, the “intelligent, the competent.” “This name generally carries with it the idea of creative power .” He is a son of Brahmâ, and of Aditi, and agreeably to other versions, a self-born power, which, like Minerva, sprang from his father’s body. He is the chief of the Prajâpati — the Lords or Creators of Being. In Vishnu Purâna, Parâsara says of him, “in every Kalpa (or manvantara) Daksha and the rest are born and are again destroyed.” And the Rig-Veda says that “Daksha sprang from Aditi and Aditi from Daksha,” a reference to the eternal cyclic re-birth of the same divine Essence.

* No one of these orders is distinct from the Pitris or Progenitors, as says Manu (iii. 284). “The wise call our fathers Vasus; our paternal grandfathers, Rudras; our paternal great grandfathers, Adityas; agreeably to a text of the Vedas,” or “this is an everlasting Vedic text” in another translation.

† As now discovered by the late G. Smith in the Babylonian cylinder literature, it was the same in Chaldean theogony. Ishtar, “eldest of Heaven and of Earth.” Below him the Igaga or Angels of Heaven, and the Anunnaki , or angels of Earth. Below these again various classes of Spirits and “Genii” called Sadu, Vadukku, Ekimu, Gallu — of which some were good, some evil. (See “Babylonian Mythology .”)

* Some superior, others inferior, to suit the Karma of the various reincarnating Monads which could not be all of the same degree of purity in their last births in other worlds. This accounts for the difference of races, the inferiority of the savage, and other human varieties.

† “There are,” says Topinard (English edition of “Anthropology,” with preface by Professor Broca), “THREE fundamental elements of colour in the human organism — namely, the red , the yellow , and the black , which, mixed in variable quantities with the white of the tissues, give rise to those numerous shades seen in the human family.” Here is science unintentionally supporting Occultism again.

* It must be remembered that the “last remnants” here spoken of, refer to those portions of the “great continent” which still remained, and not to any of the numerous islands which existed contemporaneously with the continent. Plato’s “island” was, for instance, one of such remnants; the others having sunk at various periods previously. An occult “tradition” teaches that such submersions occur whenever there is an eclipse of the “spiritual sun.”

* Mr. Gladstone’s unfortunate attempt to reconcile the Genetic account with science (see Nineteenth Century , “Dawn of Creation” and the “Proem to Genesis,” 1886) has brought upon him the Jovian thunderbolt hurled by Mr. Huxley. The dead-letter account warranted no such attempt; and his fourfold order, or division of animated creation, has turned into the stone which, instead of killing the fly on the sleeping friend’s brow, killed the man instead. Mr. Gladstone killed Genesis for ever. But this does not prove that there is no esotericism in the latter. The fact that the Jews and all the Christians, the modern as well as the early sects, have accepted the narrative literally for two thousand years, shows only their ignorance; and shows the great ingenuity and constructive ability of the initiated Rabbis, who have built the two accounts — the Elohistic and the Jehovistic —esoterically, and have purposely confused the meaning by the vowelless glyphs or word-signs in the original text. The six days — yom —of creation do mean six periods of evolution, and the seventh that of culmination of perfection (not of rest), and refer to the seven Rounds and the seven Races with a distinct “creation” in each; though the use of the words boker , dawn or morning, and crib , evening twilight — which have esoterically the same meaning as sandhya , twilight, in Sanskrit — have led to a charge of the most crass ignorance of the order of evolution.

* “Follow the law of analogy” — the Masters teach. Atma-Buddhi is dual and Manas is triple; inasmuch as the former has two aspects, and the latter three, i.e ., as a principle per se , which gravitates, in its higher aspect, to Atma-Buddhi, and follows, in its lower nature, Kama, the seat of terrestrial and animal desires and passions. Now compare the evolution of the Races, the First and the Second of which are of the nature of Atma- Buddhi, their passive Spiritual progeny, and the Third Root-Race shows three distinct divisions or aspects physiologically and psychically; the earliest, sinless; the middle portions awakening to intelligence; and the third and last decidedly animal: i.e ., Manas succumbs to the temptations of Kama.

† “Men are made complete only during their third, toward the fourth cycle (race). They are made ‘gods’ for good and evil, and responsible only when the two arcs meet (after 3½ rounds towards the fifth Race). They are made so by the Nirmânakaya (spiritual or astral remains) of the Rudra-Kumâras, ‘cursed to be reborn on earth again; meaning — doomed in their natural turn to reincarnation in the higher ascending arc of the terrestrial cycle.’ (Commentary IX .)

* The whole trouble is this: neither physiologists nor pathologists will recognize that the cell-germinating substance (the cytoblastema ) and the mother-lye from which crystals originate, are one and the same essence, save in differentiation for purposes.

* “Trans . of Geolog. Soc. of Glasgow,” vol. iii. Very strangely, however, he has just changed his opinion. The sun, he says, is only 15,000,000 old.

* Hence the philosophy in the allegory of the 7, 10, and finally 21 Prajâpati, Rishis, Munis, etc., who all are made the fathers of various things and beings. The order of the seven classes or orders of plants, animals, and even inanimate things, given at random in the Purânas, is found in several commentaries in the correct rotation. Thus, Prithu is the father of the Earth. He milks her , and makes her bear every kind of grain and vegetable, all enumerated and specified. Kasyapa is the father of all the reptiles, snakes, demons, etc., etc.

† See Vol. I. 152, et seq ., about the tree of evolution — The “Mundane Tree.”

‡ Checked and modified, however, by the Law of Retardation , which imposes a restriction on the advance of all species when a Higher Type makes its appearance.

* This is shown by Faber, again a pious Christian, who says that “the Noetic family also... bore the appellations of Atlanteans and Titans , and the great patriarch himself was called by way of eminence Atlas and Titan .” (Vol. II. p . 285). And if so, then, according to the Bible , Noah must have been the progeny of the Sons of God, the fallen angels , agreeably to the same authority, and of the “daughters of men who were fair,” (See Genesis, chap . vi.) And why not, since his father Lamech slew a man, and was, with all his sons and daughters (who perished in the Deluge), as bad as the rest of mankind?

† In that wonderful volume of Donnelly’s “Atlantis, the Antediluvian World,” the author, speaking of the Aryan colonies from Atlantis, and of the arts and sciences the legacy of our Fourth Race — bravely announces that “the roots of the institutions of to-day reach back to the Miocene age.” This is an enormous allowance for a modern scholar to make; but civilization dates still further back than the Miocene Atlanteans. “Secondary-period” man will be discovered, and with him his long forgotten civilization.

* Nature is the natural body, the shadow of the Progenitors; and —

† MAN is the “Heavenly man,” as already stated.

‡ The “Pymander” of our museums and libraries is an abridgement of one of the Books of Thoth, by a Platonist of Alexandria. In the Third Century it was remodelled after old Hebrew and Phœnician MSS. by a Jewish Kabalist, and called the “Genesis of Enoch.” But even its disfigured remnants show how closely its text agrees with the Archaic Doctrine, as is shown in the creation of the Seven Creators and seven primitive men . As to Enoch, Thoth or Hermes, Orpheus and Kadmus, these are all generic names, branches and offshoots of the seven primordial sages (incarnated Dhyan Chohans or Devas, in illusive , not mortal bodies) who taught Humanity all it knew, and whose earliest disciples assumed their master’s names. This custom passed from the Fourth to the Fifth Race. Hence the sameness of the traditions about Hermes (of whom Egyptologists count five) Enoch, etc., they are all inventors of letters; none of them dies but still lives, and they are the first Initiators into, and Founders of the Mysteries. The Genesis of Enoch disappeared only very lately among the Kabalists. Guillaume Postel saw it. It was most certainly in a great measure a transcript from the books of Hermes, and far anterior to the Books of Moses, as Eliphas Levi tells his readers.

* Uranos is a modified Varuna, “the Universal encompasser,” the all- embracer, and one of the oldest of the Vedic deities — SPACE, the maker of Heaven and Earth, since both are manifested out of his (or its) seed. It is only later that Varuna became the chief of the Adityas and a kind of Neptune riding on the Leviathan — Makara , now the most sacred and mysterious of the signs of the Zodiac. Varuna, “without whom no creature can even wink,” was degraded like Uranos, and, like him, he fell into generation , his functions, “the grandest cosmical functions,” as Muir calls them, having been lowered down from heaven to earth by exoteric anthropomorphism. As the same Orientalist says, “The attributes ascribed to Varuna (in the Vedas) impart to his character a moral elevation and sanctity far surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic Deity.” But to understand correctly the reason of his fall, like that of Uranos, one has to see in every exoteric religion the imperfect and sinful work of man’s fancy, and also to study the mysteries which Varuna is said to have imparted to Vasishta. Only... “his secrets and those of Mitra are not to be revealed to the foolish .“

* Kronos is not only Crono”, time , but also, as Brèal showed in his Hercule et Cacus (p. 57), comes from the root Kar , “to make, to create.” Whether Brèal and Decharme, who quotes him, are as right in saying that in the Vedas Kronan is a creative god, we have our doubts. Brèal probably meant Karma, or rather Visva-Karma, the creative god, the “Omnificent” and the “great Architect of the world.”

† The Titanic struggle, in theogony at least, is the fight for supremacy between the children of Uranos and Gaia (or Heaven and Earth in their abstract sense), the Titans, against the children of Kronos , whose chief is Zeus. It is the everlasting struggle going on to this day between the spiritual inner man and the man of flesh, in one sense.

‡ Just as the “Lord God,” or Jehovah, is Cain esoterically, and the “tempting serpent” as well, the male portion of the androgynous Eve, before her “Fall;” the female portion of Adam Kadmon; the left side or Binah of the right side Chochmah in the first Sephirothal Triad.

* In the Egyptian legend, translated by M. Maspero (the ex-director of the Bulaq Museum), called the “two Brothers,” the original of Pandora is given. Noum , the famous heavenly artist, creates a marvellous beauty, a girl which he sends to Batoo , after which the happiness of the latter is destroyed. Batoo is man, and the girl Eve, of course. (See Maspero ’ s Egyptian Legends, and also Decharme ’ s “Mythologie de la Grece Antique .”)

† Yima is not the “first man” in the Vendidad , but only in the theories of the Orientalists. — See further on.

‡ Bœotia, then ancient Athens, and Eleusis were submerged.

* The name is used here in the sense of, and as a synonym of “sorcerers.” The Atlantean races were many, and lasted in their evolution for millions of years: all were not bad. They became so toward their end, as we (the fifth) are fast becoming now.

† The “Gods of the Elements” are by no means the Elementals. The latter are at best used by them as vehicles and materials in which to clothe themselves...

* Cain was the sacrificer , as shown at first in chap. iv. of Genesis , of “the fruit of the ground,” of which he was first tiller , while Abel “brought of the firstlings of his flock” to the Lord. Cain is the symbol of the first male, Abel of the first female humanity, Adam and Eve being the types of the third race. (See “The Mystery of Cain and Abel .”) The “murdering” is blood- shedding, but not taking life.

* It is, perhaps, with an eye to this degradation of the highest and purest Spirits, who broke through the intermediate planes of lower consciousness (the “Seven circles of fire” of Pymander), that St. James is made to say that “this Wisdom (psüche in the original) descended not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish “; and Psüche is Manas , the “human soul,” the Spiritual Wisdom or Soul being Buddhi . Yet Buddhi per se , being so near the Absolute, is only latent consciousness.

* This is the “undying race” as it is called in Esotericism, and exoterically the fruitless generation of the first progeny of Daksha, who curses Narada, the divine Rishi, alleged to have dissuaded the Haryaswas and the Sabalâswas, the sons of Daksha, from procreating their species, by saying “Be born in the womb; there shall not be a resting place for thee in all these regions”; after this Narada, the representative of that race of fruitless ascetics, is said, as soon as he dies in one body, to be reborn in another.

† The traditions of every country and nation point to this fact. Donnelly quotes from Father Duran’s Historia Antigua de la Nueva Espana of 1885, in which a native of Cholula, a centenarian, accounts for the building of the great pyramid of Cholula, by saying as follows: “In the beginning, before the light of the Sun had been created, this land (Cholula) was in obscurity and darkness... but immediately after the light of the Sun arose in the East , there appeared gigantic men...who built the said pyramid, its builders being scattered after that to all parts of the Earth.” “A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the doings of an ancient race of giants called Quinanes,” says the author of “Atlantis” (p. 204.)

* There are critics who, finding no evidence about the existence of Tertullian save in the writings of Eusebius “the veracious,” are inclined to doubt it.

* And that, notwithstanding the formal prohibition at the great Church Council of Elyrus in A.D. 303, when it was declared that “the form of God, which is immaterial and invisible, shall not be limited by figure or shape.” In 692, the council of Constantinople had similarly prohibited “to paint or represent Jesus as a lamb ,” as also “to bow the knee in praying, as it is the act of idolatry.” But the council of Nicæa (787) brought this idolatry back, while that of Rome (883) excommunicated John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, for his showing himself a declared enemy of image worship.

† Treating of the Chinese Dragon and the literature of China, Mr. Ch. Gould writes in his “Mythical Monsters ” on p. 212: — “Its mythologies, histories, religions, popular stories and proverbs, all teem with references to a mysterious being who has a physical nature and spiritual attributes . Gifted with an accepted form, which he has the supernatural power of casting off for the assumption of others, he has the power of influencing the weather, producing droughts or fertilizing rains at pleasure, of raising tempests and allaying them. Volumes could be compiled from the scattered legends which everywhere abound relating to this subject... “

This “mysterious being” is the mythical Dragon, i.e ., the symbol of the historical , actual Adept, the master and professor of occult sciences of old. It is stated already elsewhere, that the great “magicians” of the Fourth and Fifth Races were generally called the “Serpents” and the “Dragons” after their progenitors. All these belonged to the hierarchy of the so- called “Fiery Dragons of Wisdom,” the Dhyan Chohans, answering to the Agnishwatta Pitris, the Maruts and Rudras generally, as the issue of Rudra their father, identified with the god of fire. More is said in the text. Now Clement, an initiated Neo-Platonist, knew, of course, the origin of the word “Dragon,” and why the initiated Adepts were so-called, as he knew the secret of Agathodæmon , the Christ, the seven-vowelled Serpent of the Gnostics. He knew that the dogma of his new faith required the transformation of all the rivals of Jehovah, the angels supposed to have rebelled against that Elohim as the Titan-Prometheus rebelled against Zeus, the usurper of his father’s kingdom; and that “Dragon” was the mystic appellation of the “Sons of Wisdom”; from this knowledge came his definition, as cruel as it was arbitrary, “Serpents and Giants signify Demons ,” i.e ., not “Spirits,” but Devils , in Church parlance.

* “What would you say to our affirmation that the Chinese — I speak of the inland, the true Chinaman, not of the hybrid mixture between the Fourth and Fifth Races now occupying the throne, the aborigines who belong in their unallied nationality wholly to the highest and last branch of the Fourth Race — reached their highest civilization when the Fifth had hardly appeared in Asia” (Esoteric Buddhism , p. 67). And this handful of the inland Chinese are all of a very high stature. Could the most ancient MSS. in the Lolo language (that of the aborigines of China) be got at and translated correctly, many a priceless piece of evidence would be found. But they are as rare as their language is unintelligible. So far, one or two European archæologists only have been able to procure such priceless works.

† Remember the same statement in the Book of Enoch, as also the ladder seen by Jacob in his dream. The “two worlds” mean of course the “two planes of Consciousness and Being.” A seer can commune with beings of a higher plane than the earth, without quitting his arm-chair.

* Vide supra the Commentary on the Four Races — and on the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” the immaculate progeny of the Androgynous Third Race.

† In the Kabala the pronunciation of the four-lettered ineffable name is “a most secret arcanum” — “a secret of secrets.”

* Returning once more to the most important subject in the archaic Cosmogony, it may be said that even in the Norse legends, in the Sacred Scrolls of the goddess Saga, we find Loki, the brother by blood of Odin (as Typhon, Ahriman, and others are brothers of Osiris and Ormazd), becoming evil only later, when he has mixed too long with humanity. Like all other fire or light gods — fire burning and destroying as well as warming and giving life — he ended by being accepted in the destructive sense of “fire.” The name Loki , we learn (“Asgard and the Gods ,” p . 250), has been derived from the old word “liechan,” to enlighten. It has, therefore, the same origin as the Latin “lux , light.” Hence Loki is identical with Lucifer (light-bringer). This title, given to the Prince of Darkness, is very suggestive and is a vindication in itself against theological slander. But Loki is still more closely related to Prometheus, as he is shown chained to a sharp rock, while Lucifer, identified with Satan, was chained down in hell; a circumstance, however, which prevented neither of them from acting in all freedom on Earth, if we accept the theological paradox in its fulness. Loki is a beneficent, generous and powerful god in the beginning of times, and the principle of good, not of evil, in early Scandinavian theogony.

* The Greek mythos just alluded to a few pages back, namely the mutilation of Uranos by his son Kronos in the Greek theogony, is an allusion to this theft by the Son of the Earth and Heavens of the divine creative fire . If Uranos , the personification of the celestial Powers, has to stop creating (he is made impotent by Kronos , the god in time ) so, in the Egyptian Cosmogony it is Thot, the god of Wisdom, who regulates this fight between Horus and Set, the latter being served by the former as Uranos is by Kronos (see “Book of the Dead ” ch. XVII. V . 26). In the Babylonian account it is the god Zu, who strips “the father of the gods” of umsimi —the ideal creative organ not the crown (!) as G. Smith thought (see pp. 115 and 116 Chaldean Account). For, in the fragment K. 3454 (British Museum) it is said very clearly, that Zu having stripped the “venerable of Heaven” of his desire , he carried away the umsimi of the gods, and burnt thereby the teroti (the power) of all the other gods, thus “governing the seed of all the angels” (15). As the umsimi was on the seat of Bel, it could hardly be the “crown.” A fourth version is in the Bible. Ham is the Chaldean Zu, and both are cursed for the same allegorically described crime.

* These are the beings whose legendary existence has served as a ground-work upon which to build the rabbinical Lilith, and what the believers in the Bible would term the antediluvian women, and the Kabalists the pre-Adamite races. They are no fiction — this is certain, however fantastic the exuberance of later growth.

* For suggestiveness, we would recommend a short article in the Theosophist of August, 1887, “Esoteric Studies.” Its author expounds therein quite an occult theory, though to the world a new idea: “the progress of the Monad concurring with the retrogression of Form” (666), i.e ., “with decrease of the vis formativa .” He says, “Who knows what shape vehicled the Ego in remote rings (Rounds, or races?)...? May not man’s type have been that of the Simiadæ in its variety? Might not the monkey- kingdom of Ramayana fame rest on some far-off tradition relating to a period when that was the common lot, or rather aspect, of man?”... and winds up a very clever, though too short, exposition of his theory by saying that which every true occultist will endorse: “With physico- ethereal man there must be involution of sex. As physico-astral man depended on entities of the sub-human class (evolved from animal prototypes) for rebirth, so will physico-ethereal man find among the graceful, shapely orders issuing from the air -plane, one or more which will be developed for his successive embodiments when procreated forms are given — a process which will include all mankind only very gradually. The (pre ?) Adamic and post-Adamic races were giants; their ethereal counterparts may possibly be liliputians — beauteous, luminous, diaphanous — but will assuredly be giants in mind” (p. 671, art. by Visconde de Figaniere, F.T.S. ).

* It may be objected that this is a contradiction. That, as the first Root- Race appeared 300,000,000 years after the vegetation had evolved, the seed of vegetable life could not be in the First Race. We say it could; for up to man’s appearance in this Round, the vegetation was of quite another kind than it is now, and quite ethereal, this for the simple reason that no grass or plants could have been physical, before there were animal or other organisms to breathe out the carbonic acid which vegetation has to imbibe for its development, its nutrition and growth. They are inter-dependent in their physical and achieved forms.

† “Visconde de Figaniere, F.T.S.” (The Theosophist , Aug. 1887, page 676.)

‡ It is stated in the Zohar that the “primordial worlds” (sparks) could not continue because man was not as yet . “The human form contains everything; and as it did not as yet exist, the worlds were destroyed.”

* This is the meaning when the allegory and symbol are opened and read by means of the human key, or the key to terrestrial anthroposophy. This interpretation of the “ark” symbolism does not in the least interfere with its astronomical, or even theogonic keys; nor with any of the other six meanings. Nor does it seem less scientific than the modern theories about the origin of man. As said, it has seven keys to it, like the rest.

† Vendidad Sadah, See also Bund. XV .; and J. Darmesteter’s translation of the Vendidad . “Sacred Books of the East.”

* See “Kabbalah Unveiled ” by S. McGregor Mathers, p . 104.

† Darwinian Evolutionists who are so wont to refer to the evidence of reversion to type — the full meaning of which, in the case of human monsters, is embraced in the esoteric solution of the embryological problem — as proof of their arguments, would do well to inquire into those instances of modern giants who are often 8, 9, and even 11 feet high. Such reversions are imperfect, yet undeniable reproductions of the original towering man of primeval times.

* See “Mythical Monsters ,” by Ch. Gould, from whose interesting and scientific volume a few passages are quoted further on. See in Mr. Sinnett’s “Occult World ,” the description of a cavern in the Himalayas filled with relics of human and animal giant bones.

† Viz., the third eye was at the back of the head. The statement that the latest hermaphrodite humanity was “four-armed,” unriddles probably the mystery of all the representations and idols of the exoteric gods of India. On the Acropolis of Argos, there was a zovanon, a rudely carved wooden statue (attributed to Dædalus), representing a three-eyed colossus, which was consecrated to Zeus Triopas (three-eyed). The head of the “god” has two eyes in its face and one above on the top of the forehead. It is considered the most archaic of all the ancient statues (Schol. Vatic. ad Eurip. Troad . 14).

* The Inner sight could henceforth be acquired only through training and initiation, save in the cases of “natural and born magicians,” sensitives and mediums, as they are called now.

† This expression “petrified” instead of “ossified” is curious. The “back eye,” which is of course the pineal gland , now so-called, the small pea-like mass of grey nervous matter attached to the back of the third ventricle of the brain, is said to almost invariably contain mineral concretions and sand , and “nothing more.” (Vide Infra .)

* “Deeply placed within the head, covered by thick skin and muscles, true eyes that cannot see are found in certain animals,” also, says Hæckel: “Vertebrate... blind moles and field mice, blind snakes and lizards.... They shun daylight... dwelling under the ground. They were not originally blind but have evolved from ancestors that lived in the light and had well-developed eyes. The atrophied eye beneath the opaque skin may be found in these blind beings in every stage of reversion.” (“Sense Organs ,” Hæckel .) And if two eyes could become so atrophied in lower animals, why not one eye — the pineal gland — in man, who is but a higher animal in his physical aspect?

* The “Nervous Ether” of Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S. — the nerve-aura of occultism. The “animal spirits” (?) are equivalent to the currents of nerve-auric compound circulation.

* Let us remember that the First Race is shown in Occult sciences as spiritual within and ethereal without; the second , psycho-spiritual mentally, and ethero-physical bodily; the third , still bereft of intellect in its beginning, is astro-physical in its body, and lives an inner life, in which the psycho-spiritual element is in no way interfered with as yet by the hardly nascent physiological senses. Its two front eyes look before them without seeing either past or future. But the “third eye” “embraces ETERNITY .“

† But in a very different manner to that pictured by Hæckel as an “evolution by natural selection in the struggle for existence ” (“Pedigree of Man .“ “Sense Organs ,” p. 335). The mere “thermal sensibility of the skin,” to hypothetical light-waves, is absurdly incompetent to account for the beautiful combination of adaptations present in the eye. It has, moreover, been previously shown that “natural Selection” is a pure myth when credited with the origination of variations (vide infra, Part III., on Darwinian mechanical causation ); as the “survival of the fittest” can only take place after useful variations have sprung up, together with improved organisms. Whence came the “useful variations,” which developed the eye? Only from “blind forces... without aim, without design?” The argument is puerile. The true solution of the mystery is to be found in the impersonal Divine Wisdom, in its IDEATION — reflected through matter.

‡ Palæontology has ascertained that in the animals of the Cenozoic age — the Saurians especially, such as the antediluvian Labyrinthodon , whose fossil skull exhibits a perforation otherwise inexplicable — the third, or odd eye must have been much developed. Several naturalists, among others E. Korscheldt, feel convinced that whereas, notwithstanding the opaque skin covering it, such an eye in the reptiles of the present period can only distinguish light from darkness (as the human eyes do when bound with a handkerchief, or even tightly closed), in the now extinct animals that eye functioned and was a real organ of vision.

* Karma is a word of many meanings, and has a special term for almost every one of its aspects. It means, as a synonym of sin, the performance of some action for the attainment of an object of worldly , hence selfish , desire, which cannot fail to be hurtful to somebody else. Karman is action, the Cause; and Karma again is “the law of ethical causation”; the effect of an act produced egotistically, when the great law of harmony depends on altruism.

* Objectors to the doctrine of Karma should recall the fact that it is absolutely out of the question to attempt a reply to the Pessimists on other data. A firm grasp of the principles of Karmic Law knocks away the whole basis of the imposing fabric reared by the disciples of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.

* The doctrine and theology of Calvinists. “The purpose of God from eternity respecting all events” (which becomes fatalism and kills free will, or any attempt of exerting it for good)...” It is the pre-assignment or allotment of men to everlasting happiness or misery” (Catechism). A noble and encouraging Doctrine this!

* Some theosophists, in order to make Karma more comprehensible to the Western mind, as being better acquainted with the Greek than with Aryan philosophy, have made an attempt to translate it by Nemesis . Had the latter been known to the profane in antiquity, as it was understood by the Initiate, this translation of the term would be unobjectionable. As it is, it has been too much anthropomorphised by Greek fancy to permit our using it without an elaborate explanation. With the early Greeks, “from Homer to Herodotus, she was no goddess, but a moral feeling rather,” says Decharme; the barrier to evil and immorality. He who transgresses it, commits a sacrilege in the eyes of the gods, and is pursued by Nemesis. But, with time, that “feeling” was deified, and its personification became an ever-fatal and punishing goddess. Therefore, if we would connect Karma with Nemesis, it has to be done in the triple character of the latter, viz., as Nemesis, Adrasteia and Themis. For, while the latter is the goddess of Universal Order and Harmony, who, like Nemesis, is commissioned to repress every excess, and keep man within the limits of Nature and righteousness under severe penalty, Adrasteia —“the inevitable” — represents Nemesis as the immutable effect of causes created by man himself. Nemesis, as the daughter of Dike , is the equitable goddess reserving her wrath for those alone who are maddened with pride, egoism, and impiety. (See Mesomed. Hymn. Nemes., V. 2. Brunck, Analecta II. p . 292; Mythol. de la Grece Antique, p . 304.) In short, while Nemesis is a mythological, exoteric goddess, or Power, personified and anthropomorphised in its various aspects, Karma is a highly philosophical truth, a most divine noble expression of the primitive intuition of man concerning Deity. It is a doctrine which explains the origin of Evil, and ennobles our conceptions of what divine immutable justice ought to be, instead of degrading the unknown and unknowable Deity by making it the whimsical, cruel tyrant, which we call Providence.

* Pralaya — a word already explained — is not a term that applies only to every “Night of Brahmâ,” or the world’s dissolution following every Manvantara, equal to 71 Maha-yugas. It applies also to each “obscuration” as well, and even to every Cataclysm that puts an end, by Fire or by Water in turn, to each Root-Race. Pralaya is a term like that of “Manu” — the generic name for the Sishtas , who, under the appellation of “King,” are shown in the Purânas as preserved “with the seed of all things in an ark from the waters of that flood” (or the fires of a general volcanic conflagration, the commencement of which we already see for our Fifth- Race in the terrible earthquakes and eruptions of these late years, and especially in the present one).... which in the season of a pralaya overspreads the world” (the Earth). (See Preface, p. lxxxi ., to Wilson’s “Vishnu Purâna .”) Time is only a form of “Vishnu” — truly, as Parasâra says in that Purâna. In the Hindu Yuga Kalpa, we have the regular descending series 4, 3, 2, with ciphers multiplied as occasion requires for esoteric purposes, but not, as Wilson and other Orientalists thought, for “sectarian embellishments.” A Kalpa may be an age, a “Day” of Brahmâ, or a sidereal Kalpa, astronomical and earthly. Those calculations are found in all the Purânas, but some differ — as for instance, “the year of the seven Rishis, 3,030 mortal years, and the year of Dhruva, 9,090 in the Linga Purâna,” which are again esoteric, and which do represent actual (secret) chronology. As said in the Brahmâ Vaivarta: “Chronologers compute a Kalpa by the life of Brahmâ. Minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are numerous.” “Minor Kalpas” denote here every period of destruction, as was well understood by Wilson himself, who explains the latter as “those in which the Samvarta wind or other destructive agents operate” (Vishnu Purâna, p . 54, vol. I .).

* An intuition and a presentiment of the Sishtas may be found in Mr. Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism, “Fifth Edition. See in it Annotations — the “Noah’s Ark Theory” pp. 146, 147.

† The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by Virâj, and that he then produced the ten Prajâpatis, who again produced seven Manus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other Manus (Manu, I , 33-36) relates to other still earlier mysteries, and is at the same time a blind with regard to the doctrine of the Septenary chain, and the simultaneous evolution of seven humanities, or MEN. However, the present work is written on the records of Cis-Himalayan Secret Teachings, and Brahmanical esoteric philosophy may now differ in form as the Kabala does. But they were identical in hoary antiquity.

‡ There is another esoteric reason besides this one for it. A Vaivasvata is the seventh Manu, because this our Round, although the Fourth, is in the preseptenary Manvantara, and the Round itself is in its seventh stage of materiality or physicality. The close of its middle racial point occurred during the Fourth Root Race, when man and all nature reached their lowest state of gross matter. From that time, i.e ., from the end of the three and a half races, humanity and nature entered on the ascending arc of their racial cycle.

§ The interval that precedes each Yuga is called a Sandhya , composed of as many hundreds of years as there are thousands in the yuga; and that which follows the latter is named Sandhyamsa , and is of similar duration, we are told in Vishnu Purâna . “The interval between the Sandhya and the Sandhyamsa is the yuga denominated Krita, Treta, etc., etc. The (four) Krita, Treta, Dwapara, and Kali constitute a great age, or aggregate of four ages: a 1000 such aggregates are a Day of Brahma; and 14 Manus reign within that term .” Now had we to accept this literally then there would be only one Manu for every 4,320,000,000 of years. As we are taught that it took 300,000,000 of years for the two lower kingdoms to evolve, and that our humanity is just 18 and some odd millions old — where were the other Manus spoken of, unless the allegory means what the esoteric doctrine teaches us about the 14 being each multiplied by 49.

* The words “creation,” “dissolution,” etc., do not render correctly the right meaning of either Manvantara or Pralaya. The Vishnu Purâna enumerates several: The dissolution of all things is of four kinds, Parasâra is made to say: — Naimittika (occasional), when Brahmâ slumbers (his night, when, “At the end of this day occurs a re-coalescence of the Universe , called Brahmâ’s contingent re-coalescence,” because Brahmâ is this universe itself); “Prakritika (elemental), when the return of this universe to its original nature is partial and physical; Atyantika (absolute), identification of the embodied with the incorporeal Supreme spirit — Mahatmic state, whether temporary or until the following Maha Kalpa: also absolute obscuration — as of a whole — planetary chain, etc.; and Nitya (perpetual) Mahapralaya for the Universe, death —for man, nitya is the extinction of life, like the extinction of a lamp,” also “in sleep at night.” Nitya Sarga is “constant or perpetual creation,” as Nitya pralaya is “constant or perpetual destruction of all that is born.” “That which ensues after a minor dissolution is called ephemeral creation... This is Samyama” (production, existence, and dissolution) (Vishnu Purâna, Book I., ch. vii .) The subject is so difficult that we are obliged to repeat our statements.

† But see the superb definitions of Parabrahmam and the Logos in Mr. Subba Row’s Lectures on the Bhagavat Gitâ in the early numbers of the Theosophist of 1887, Feb., March, April, and May.

* See preceding foot-note.

† See Manu I ., 32, 33. Vaiswanara is, in another sense, the living magnetic fire that pervades the manifested solar system. It is the most objective (to us the reverse) and ever present aspect of the ONE LIFE, for it is the Vital Principle. (See Theosophist, July , 1883, p . 249). It is also a name of Agni .

* This — in the period of Secondary creation, so called. Of the Primary , when Earth is in possession of the three Elemental Kingdoms, we cannot speak for several reasons, one of which is, that, unless one is a great seer, or naturally intuitional, he will be unable to realise that which can never be expressed in any existing terms.

† Hippocrates said that number seven “By its occult virtues tended to the accomplishment of all things, to be the dispenser of life and fountain of all its changes.” The life of man he divided into seven ages (Shakespeare), for “As the moon changes her phases every seven days, this number influences all sublunary beings,” and even the Earth, as we know. With the child, it is the teeth that appear in the seventh month and he sheds them at seven years; at twice seven puberty begins, at three times seven all our mental and vital powers are developed, at four times seven he is in his full strength, at five times seven his passions are most developed, etc., etc. Thus for the Earth. It is now in its middle age, yet very little wiser for it. The Tetragrammaton , the four-lettered sacred name of the Deity, can be resolved on Earth only by becoming Septenary through the manifest triangle proceeding from the concealed Tetraktis . Therefore, the number seven has to be adopted on this plane. As written in the Kabala “The greater Holy Assembly” v. 1161: — “For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save (what they derive) from the seventh . For all things depend from the SEVENTH.”

* Says St. Augustin of Jesus, “For he is a fish that lives in the midst of waters.” Christians called themselves little fishes— pisciculi —in their sacred mysteries. “So many fishes bred in the water, and saved by one great fish ,” says Tertullian of the Christians and Christ and the Church.

† “Esoteric Buddhism ,” p . 55

‡ This event, the destruction of the famous island of Ruta and the smaller one Daitya , which occurred 850,000 years ago in the later Pliocene times, must not be confounded with the submersion of the main continent of Atlantis during the Miocene period. Geologists cannot place the Miocene only so short a way back as 850,000 years; whatever they do, it is several million years ago that the main Atlantis perished.

* Mr. Huxley divides those races into the quintuple group of Australioids, Negroids, Mongoloids, Xanthochroics and Melanochroics — all issuing from imaginary Anthropoids. And yet, while protesting against those who say “that the structural differences between man and apes are small and insignificant,” and adding that “every bone of the gorilla bears a mark by which it can be distinguished from a corresponding human bone,” and that “in the present state of creation, at least, no intermediary being fills the gap which separates the man from the troglodyte” — the great anatomist goes on speaking of the Simian characteristics in Man! (See de Quatrefages ’ “The Human Species ,” p . 113.)