STANZA XII
THE FIFTH RACE AND ITS DIVINE INSTRUCTORS
————
§§ (47) The remnants of the first two races disappear for ever. Groups of the various Atlantean races saved from the Deluge along with the Forefathers of the Fifth. (48) The origins of our present Race, the Fifth. The first divine Dynasties. (49) The earliest glimmerings in History, now pinned to the allegorical chronology of the Bible, and “universal” History slavishly following it. — The nature of the first instructors and civilizers of mankind.
————
47. FEW (men ) REMAINED. SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED, REMAINED. THE MOON-COLOURED (of the primitive Divine Stock ) WERE GONE FOR EVER (a )....
48. THE FIFTH RACE PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK (remained ). IT WAS RULED BY HER FIRST DIVINE KINGS.
49. THE “SERPENTS” WHO RE-DESCENDED; WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH (Race ), WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT (b )....
(a ) This verse (47) relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with it, but living and ever-recurring tradition does. History — or what is called history — does not go further back than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub-race, a “few thousands” of years. It is the sub-divisions of this first sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race which are referred to in the sentence, “Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red, remained.” The “moon coloured” (i.e ., the First and the Second Races) were gone for ever — ay, without leaving any traces whatever; and that, so far back as the third “Deluge” of the Third Lemurian race, that “Great Dragon,” whose tail sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this is the true meaning of the Verse in the COMMENTARY which says:
The GREAT DRAGON has respect but for the ‘SERPENTS’ of WISDOM, the Serpents whose holes are now under the triangular stones ,” i.e ., “the Pyramids, at the four corners of the world.”
(b ) This tells us clearly that which is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the Commentaries; namely, that the Adepts or “Wise” men of the three Races (the Third, Fourth and the Fifth) dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind of pyramidal structure, if not actually under a pyramid. For such “pyramids” existed in the four corners of the world and were never the monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though until found scattered all over the two Americas, under and over ground, beneath and amidst virgin forests, as in plain and vale, they were supposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If the true geometrically correct pyramids are no longer found in European regions, many of the supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triangular, pyramidal and conical menhirs in the Morbihan, and Brittany generally; many of the Danish tumuli and even of the “giant tombs” of Sardinia with their inseparable companions, the nuraghi , are so many more or less clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first settlers on the newly-born continent and isles of Europe, the — “some yellow, some brown and black, and some red” — races that remained after the submersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands (850,000 years ago), with the exception of Plato’s Atlantean island, and before the arrival of the great Aryan races; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the East. Those who can hardly accept the antiquity of the human race so far back as the 57,000 years assigned by Dr. Dowler to the skeleton found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi, will, of course, reject these facts. But they may find themselves mistaken some day. It is the foolish self-glorification of the Arcadians who styled themselves proselhvnoi — older than the moon — and of the people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the sun appeared in heaven, that we may disparage, not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at the universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones of the mammoth and mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make away with the difficulty that, of all the mammalians, man is the only one whom science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal frames, from the giant homo diluvii to the creature between 5 and 6 feet that he is now.
But the “Serpents of Wisdom” have preserved their records well, and the history of the human evolution is traced in heaven as it is traced on underground walls. Humanity and the stars are bound together indissolubly, because of the intelligences that rule the latter.
Modern symbologists may scoff at this and call it “fancy,” but “it is unquestionable that the Deluge has (ever) been associated in the legends of some Eastern peoples not only with the Pyramids, but also with the constellations,” writes Mr. Staniland Wake (“The Great Pyramid ”). The “Old Dragon” is identical with the “great Flood,” says Mr. Proctor (inKnowledge ,” Vol. I., p . 243): “We know that in the past the constellation of the Dragon was at the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples... the Dragon would be the uppermost or ruling constellation... it is singular how closely the constellations... correspond in sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded respecting the (Biblical) Flood.”
The Astronomical Dragon
The reasons for this singularity have been made clear in this work. But it shows only that there were several Deluges mixed up in the memories and traditions of the sub-races of the Fifth Race. The first great “Flood” was astronomical and cosmical, while several others were terrestrial . Yet, this did not prevent our very learned friend Mr. Gerald Massey — an Initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still only a Self -initiate — from declaring and insisting that the Atlantean submersion and Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people; and that Atlantis was no better than an astronomical allegory . Nevertheless, the great Zodiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and one can hardly interfere with the other; and it stands also to reason that every student of Occultism knows what that astronomical and zodiacal allegory means. Smith shows in the Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of it. Its “twelve cantos ” refer to the “annual course of the Sun through the twelve months of the year. Each tablet answers to a special month, and contains a distinct reference to the animal forms in the signs of the Zodiac”; the eleventh canto being “consecrated to Rimmon, the God of storms and of rain, and harmonizes with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac — Aquarius, or the Waterman” (Nineteenth Century , 1882, p . 236). But even this is preceded in the old records by the pre- astronomical Cosmic FLOOD, which became allegorized and symbolized in the above Zodiacal or Noah’s Flood. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. The Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the Great Dragon (the constellation), the “Dragons of Wisdom,” or the great Initiates of the Third and Fourth Races, and the Floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine reminder of the great Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of Universal History, however, are said to have had their beginnings with the Third Sub-race of the Fourth Root-race or the Atlanteans. When was it? Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of the Zodiacal calculations in Egypt, the poles have been thrice inverted .
We will presently return once more to this statement. Such symbols as are represented by the Signs of the Zodiac — a fact which offers a handle to materialists upon which to hang their one-sided theories and opinions — have too profound a signification, and their bearing upon our Humanity is too important to suffer dismissal in a few words. Meanwhile, we have to consider the meaning of that other statement which mentions (verse 48) the first divine Kings , who are said to have “redescended,” guided and instructed our Fifth Race after the last deluge! We shall consider this last claim historically in the sections that follow, but must end with a few more details on the subject of “Serpents.”
The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further elucidation requires proofs obtained from ancient, mediæval, and modern works that have treated of these subjects. All such evidence has now to be gathered in, collated and brought together in better order, so as to compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical proofs. And as the manifold meaning of the weird symbol — so often referred to and suggestive of the “tempter of man” in the orthodox light of the church — can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to exhaust the subject by every available proof at this juncture, even at the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made out by our theologians and some pious symbologists as indissolubly connected with the grotesque personage called devil , and every proof to the contrary has been hitherto as invariably rejected and ignored; therefore, the occultist must neglect nothing which may tend to defeat this conspiracy of slander. It is proposed to divide the subjects involved in these three last verses into several groups, and examine them in this final chapter as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more details may thus be added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the most disputed tenets of Occultism and the Esoteric Doctrine — the bulk of which will be found in Part II. on Symbology.
————
Serpents and Dragons under Different Symbolisms
The name of the Dragon in Chaldea was not written phonetically, but was represented by two monograms, probably meaning, according to the Orientalists, “the scaly one.” “This description,” very pertinently remarks G. Smith, “of course might apply either to a fabulous dragon, a serpent, or a fish,” and we may add: “It applies in one case to Makara , the tenth Zodiacal sign, meaning in Sanskrit a non-descript amphibious animal, generally called Crocodile, and really signifying something else. (Vide Part II., “The Mysteries of the Hebdomad .”) This, then, is a virtual admission that the Assyriologists, at all events, know nothing certain as to the status of the “Dragon” in ancient Chaldea, whence the Hebrews got their symbolism, only to be afterwards robbed of it by the Christians, who made of the “Scaly one” a living entity and a maleficent power.
A specimen of Dragons, “winged and scaled,” may be seen in the British Museum. Representing the events of the Fall according to the same authority, there are also two figures sitting on each side of a tree, and holding out their hands to the “apple,” while at the back of the “Tree” is the Dragon- Serpent. Esoterically, the two figures are two “Chaldees” ready for initiation, the Serpent symbolising the “Initiator”; while the jealous gods, who curse the three, are the exoteric profane clergy. Not much of the literal “Biblical event” there, as any occultist can see.
“The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom,” says the Stanza; thus proving the correctness of our explanation of the two figures and the “Serpent.”
The Serpents who redescended .... who taught and instructed ” the Fifth Race. What sane man is capable of believing in our day that real serpents are hereby meant? Hence the rough guess, now become almost an axiom with the men of science, that those who wrote in antiquity upon various sacred Dragons and Serpents either were superstitious and credulous people, or were bent upon deceiving those more ignorant than themselves. Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from the profane.
“Terrible are the gods when they manifest themselves” — those gods whom men call Dragons . And Ælianus, treating in his “De Natura Animalium ” of these Ophidean symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he understood well the nature of this most ancient of symbols. Thus he most pertinently explains with regard to the above Homeric verse — “For the Dragon, while sacred and to be worshipped, has within himself something still more of the divine nature of which it is better (for others?) to remain in ignorance” (Book xi., ch. 17).
This “Dragon” having a septenary meaning, the highest and the lowest may be given. The former is identical with the “Self-born,” the Logos (the Hindu Aja ). He was the second person of the Trinity, the SON, with the Christian Gnostics called the Naasenians, or Serpent-Worshippers. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.* Its seven “stars” are the seven stars held in the hand of the “Alpha and Omega” in Revelation . In its most terrestrial meaning, the term “Dragon” was applied to the Wise men.
This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and mysterious, and may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern day it so jars on the Christian ear that it can hardly escape, all civilization notwithstanding, being regarded as a direct denunciation of the most cherished Christian dogmas, the subject of which required, to do it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma.
Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in Heaven originate with St. John, and in his Revelation? Emphatically we answer — No. His “Dragon” is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean magic.
To demonstrate the negation the reader is asked to examine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its several aspects.
————
The Sidereal and Cosmic Glyphs
Every astronomer — besides Occultists and Astrologers — knows that, figuratively, the astral light, the milky way, and also the path of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, as well as the circles of the Sidereal or Tropical year, were always called “Serpents” in the allegorical and mystic phraseology of the adepts.
This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a “Dragon”: “Chozzar , called by the profane Neptune” (Peratæ Gnostics); the “Good and Perfect Serpent,” the Messiah of the Naaseni, whose symbol in Heaven is Draco .
But one ought to discriminate between the characters of this symbol. For instance: Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret Doctrine; and when, as an example, we read in the Vendidad complaints uttered against the “Serpent,” whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal spring of Airyana-Vaêgô, changing it into winter, generating disease and death, at the same time as mental and psychic consumption, every occultist knows that the Serpent alluded to is the north pole, as also the pole of the heavens.* The latter produces the seasons according to the angle at which it penetrates the centre of the earth. The two axes were no more parallel ; hence the eternal spring of Airyana Vaêgô by the good river Dâitya had disappeared, and “the Aryan Magi had to emigrate to Sagdiani” — say the exoteric accounts. But the esoteric teaching states that the pole had passed through the equator, and that the “land of bliss” of the Fourth Race, its inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo-Aryans of the post-diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognise the mountains, on the summits of which their forefathers had met before the Flood , and conversed with the pure “Yazathas” (celestial Spirits of the Elements), whose life and food they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein (Revue Archeologique , 8 th year , 1885), “the Vendidad seems to point out a great change in the atmosphere of central Asia; strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a whole range of mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kara-Korum chain.”
The Egyptians, according to Eusebius, who for once (and for a wonder) wrote the truth, symbolised Kosmos by a large fiery circle, representing a serpent with a hawk’s head lying across its diameter. “Here we have the pole of the earth within the plane of the ecliptic, attended with all the fiery consequences that must arise from such a state of the heavens: when the whole Zodiac in 25,000 (odd) years, must have reddened with the solar blaze, and each sign must have been vertical to the polar region.” (See MackeysSphinxiad .”)
Meru — the abode of the gods — was placed, as before explained, in the North Pole, while Pâtâla , the nether region, was supposed to lie in the South. As each symbol in esoteric philosophy has seven keys , geographically, Meru and Pâtâla have one significance and represent localities; while astronomically, they have another, and mean “the two poles,” which meanings ended by their being often rendered in exoteric sectarianism — the “Mountain” and the “Pit,” or Heaven and Hell. If we hold at present only to the astronomical and geographical significance, it may be found that the ancients knew the topography and nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern astronomers; they had reasons, and good ones for naming one the “Mountain ” and the other the “Pit .” As the author just quoted half explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same: “Heli-on is the Sun in the highest ” (Helios, Heli-on, the “most high”); “and Acheron is 32 deg. above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded the southern pole, being therefore called the PIT, while observing, toward the Northern pole that a certain circuit in the heavens always appeared above the horizon — they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the high abode of the Gods, these were said to ascend and descend periodically; by which (astronomically) the Zodiacal gods were meant, the passing of the original North Pole of the Earth to the South Pole of the heaven.” “In that age,” adds the author of that curious work, the “Sphinxiad ” and of “Uranias Key to the Revelations ” — “at noon, the ecliptic would be parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from the North Pole to the north horizon; crossing the eight coils of the Serpent (eight sidereal years, or over 200,000 solar years), which would seem like an imaginary ladder with eight staves reaching from the earth up to the pole, i.e ., the throne of Jove. Up this ladder, then, the Gods, i.e ., the signs of the Zodiac, ascended and descended. (Jacob’s ladder and the angels).... It is more than 400,000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this ladder.”....
This is an ingenious explanation, even if it is not altogether free from occult heresy. Yet it is nearer the truth than many of a more scientific and especially theological character. As just said, the Christian trinity was purely astronomical from its beginning, which made Rutilius say — of those who euhemerized it —“Judæa gens, radix stultorum .”
But the profane, and especially the Christian fanatics, ever in search of scientific corroboration for their dead-letter texts, will persist in seeing in the celestial pole the true Serpent of Genesis, Satan, the Enemy of mankind, instead of what it is — a cosmic metaphor. When the gods are said to forsake the earth , it does not only mean the gods, protectors and instructors, but also the minor gods — the regents of the Zodiacal signs. Yet, the former, as actual and existing Entities which gave birth to, nursed, and instructed mankind in its early youth, appear in every Scripture, in that of the Zoroastrians as much as in the Hindu Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura-Mazda, the “Lord of Wisdom,” is the synthesis of the Amshaspends (or Amesha- Spenta —“Immortal Benefactors”),* the “Word,” however, or the Logos and its six highest aspects in Mazdyanism. These “Immortal Benefactors” are described in Zamyad yasht as the “Amesha-Spentas, the shining, having efficacious eyes, great, helpful.... imperishable and pure which are all seven of like mind, like speech, all seven doing alike.... which are the creators and destroyers of the creatures of Ahura-Mazda, their creators and overseers, their protectors and rulers....”
These few lines alone indicate the dual and even the triple character of the Amshaspends, our Dhyan-Chohans or the “Serpents of Wisdom.” They are identical with, and yet separate from Ormazd (Ahura-Mazda). They are also the Angels of the Stars of the Christians — the Stary-azatas of the Zoroastrians — or again the seven planets (including the sun) of every religion. The epithet — “the shining having efficacious eyes” — proves it. This on the physical and sidereal planes. On the spiritual, they are the divine powers of Ahura-Mazda; but on the astral or psychic plane again, they are the “Builders,” the “watchers,” the Pitar (fathers), and the first Preceptors of mankind.
When mortals shall have become sufficiently spiritualised, there will be no more need of forcing them into a correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men will know then, that there never yet was a great World-reformer, whose name has passed into our generation, who (a ) was not a direct emanation of the LOGOS (under whatever name known to us), i.e ., an essential incarnation of one of “the seven,” of the “divine Spirit who is sevenfold”; and (b ) who had not appeared before, during the past Cycles. They will recognise, then, the cause which produces in history and chronology certain riddles of the ages; the reason why, for instance, it is impossible for them to assign any reliable date to Zoroaster, who is found multiplied by twelve and fourteen in the Dabistan ; why the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up in their numbers and individualities; why Krishna and Buddha speak of themselves as re-incarnations, i.e ., Krishna is identified with the Rishi Narâyana, and Gautama gives a series of his previous births; and why the former, especially, being “the very supreme Brahmô,” is yet called Amsámsávatara —“a part of a part” only of the Supreme on Earth. Finally, why Osiris is a great God, and at the same time a “prince on Earth,” who reappears in Thoth-Hermes, and why Jesus (in Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognised, cabalistically, in Joshua, the Son of Nun, as well as in other personages. The esoteric doctrine explains it by saying that each of these (as many others) had first appeared on earth as one of the seven powers of the LOGOS, individualized as a God or “Angel” (messenger); then, mixed with matter, they had re-appeared in turn as great sages and instructors who “taught the Fifth Race,” after having instructed the two preceding races, had ruled during the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn under various circumstances for the good of mankind, and for its salvation at certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had become truly only “the parts of a part” on earth, though de facto the One Supreme in Nature.
This is the metaphysics of Theogony. And, as every “Power” among the SEVEN has (once individualized) in his charge one of the elements of creation, and rules over it,* hence the many meanings in every symbol, which, unless interpreted according to the esoteric methods, generally lead to an inextricable confusion.
Does the Western Kabalist — generally an opponent of the Eastern Occultist — require a proof? Let him open Eliphas Levi’s Histoire de la Magic ,” p. 53, and carefully examine his “Grand Symbole Kabalistique ” of the Zohar. He will find, on the engraving given, a white man standing erect and a black woman upside down, i.e ., standing on her head, her legs passing under the extended arms of the male figure, and protruding behind his shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on each side. Eliphas Levi makes of it, God and Nature; or God, “light,” mirrored inversely in “Nature and Matter,” darkness. Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as emblematical cosmogony goes. Nor has he invented the symbol any more than the Kabalists have: the two figures in white and black stone have existed in the temples of Egypt from time immemorial — agreeably to tradition; and historically — ever since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them. Therefore the symbol must have been in existence since nearly 2,500 years ago. This, at the very least, for that Persian sovereign, who was a son of Cyrus the Great, succeeded his father in the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two Kabiri personifying the opposite poles . Herodotus (Thalia , No. 77) tells posterity that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he went into an inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought a man erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate “the passing of the original North Pole of the Earth to the South Pole of the Heaven,” as perceived by Mackey.* But they represented also the poles inverted , in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, bringing each time as a result the displacement of the Oceans, the submersion of the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial regions, and vice versa . These Kabirim were the “Deluge” gods.
This may help us to get at the key of the seemingly hopeless confusion among the numbers of names and titles given to one and the same gods, and classes of gods. Faber showed already, at the beginning of this century, the identity of the Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscuri, Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei Dactyli, Lares, Penates, Manes, Titans, and Aletæ with the KABIRI . And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the Rishis and our Dhyan Chohans, who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri-Titans were seven great gods: cosmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because, perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected (a ) with At-al-as “the divine Sun,” and (b ) with tit “the deluge.” But this, if true, is only the exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on the appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe-inspiring great gods — the Dioscuri ,* the deities surrounded with the darkness of occult nature — become the Idei (or Idæic finger) with the adept-healer by metals. The true etymology of the name lares (now signifying “ghosts”) must be sought in the Etruscan word “lars ,” “conductor,” “leader.” Sanchoniathon translates the word Aletæ as fire worshippers, and Tabor believes it derived from Al-Orit , “the god of fire.” Both are right, as in both cases it is a reference to the Sun (the highest God), toward whom the planetary gods “gravitate” (astronomically and allegorically) and whom they worship. As Lares , they are truly the Solar Deities, though Faber’s etymology, who says that “lar ” is a contraction of “El-Ar ,” the solar deity, is not very correct. They are the “lares,” the conductors and leaders of men. As Aletæ , they were the seven planets — astronomically; and as Lares , the regents of the same, our protectors and rulers — mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic worship, as also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, their attributes being recognised in these two capacities by the name of the temples to which they respectively belonged, and those of their priests. They all belonged, however, to the Septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyan Chohans. The Sabeans, who worshipped the “regents of the Seven planets” as the Hindus do their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes (Enoch or Enos ) as the highest among the planetary gods. Seth and Enos were borrowed from the Sabeans and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but the truth can still be traced about them even in Genesis . Seth is the “progenitor” of those early men of the Third Race in whom the “Planetary” angels had incarnated — a Dhyan Chohan himself, who belonged to the informing gods; and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch) or Hermes, was said to be his son — because it was a generic name for all the early Seers (“Enoichion”). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set , as the founder of Sabeanism; and therefore that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idris (Hermes or Enoch), (See Vyse , “Operations ,” Vol. II., p . 358); that thither Sabeans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers seven times a day, turning to the North (the Mount Meru, Kaph, Olympus, etc., etc.) (See Palgrave, Vol. II., p . 264). Abd Allatif says curious things about the Sabeans and their books. So does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 200 years later. While the latter maintains “that each pyramid was consecrated to a star ” (a star regent rather), Abd Allatif assures us “that he had read in Sabean books that one pyramid was the tomb of Agathodæmon and the other of Hermes” (Vyse, Vol. II., p . 342). “Agathodæmon was none other than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hermes was his son,” adds Mr. Staniland Wake in “The Great Pyramid ,” p. 57.
Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples they were the great Cosmic Gods (the seven and the forty-nine Sacred Fires), in the Grecian fanes their rites became mostly phallic, therefore to the profane, obscene. In the latter case they were 3 and 4, or 7 — the male and female principles — (the crux ansata ); this division showing why some classical writers held that they were only three, while others named four. And these were — the Kabiri — Axieros (in his female aspect, Demeter); Axio-Kersa (Persephone)* ; Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or Kadmilos (Hermes — not the ithyphallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus (II. 51) but “he of the sacred legend,” explained only during the Samothracian mysteries). This identification, due, according to the Scholiast Apollon (Rh. I. 217), to an indiscretion of Mnaseas, is none at all, as names alone do not reveal much. There were still others again who maintained, being as right in their way, that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. The two personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial, and the pole of the heavens — astronomically, as also the physical and the spiritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus, the Bimater , with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read esoterically to understand the allegory. The parts played in the event by the fire, water, earth, etc., in the many versions, will show how “the father of the gods” and the “merry God of the wine” were also made to personify the two terrestrial Poles. The telluric, metalline, magnetic, electric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions and references to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In astronomy, the poles are indeed the “heavenly measure” (vide note supra ); and so are the Kabiri Dioscuri , as will be shown, and the Kabiri-Titans, to whom Diodorus ascribes the invention of fire * and the art of manufacturing iron. Moreover, Pausanias shows that the original Kabiric deity was Prometheus. (I. ix. p. 751.)
But the fact that, astronomically, the Titans-Kabirim were also the generators and regulators of the seasons, and cosmically the great Volcanic Energies, the gods presiding over all the metals and terrestrial works, does not prevent them from being, in their original divine characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, brought light to the world, and endowed humanity with intellect and reason. They are pre-eminently in every theogony — especially in the Hindu — the sacred divine fires, 3, 7, or 49, according as the allegory demands it. Their very names prove it, as they are the Agni-putra (Sons of the Fire) in India, and the genii of the fire under numerous names in Greece and elsewhere. Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name Kabeiron meaning “the powerful through fire,” from the Greek wordKaivw “to burn.” The Semitic Kabirim , “the powerful, the mighty, and the great,” answering to the Greekmegavloi dunatoi;, are later epithets. They were universally worshipped, and their origin is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia, Phœnicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was always connected with fire; their temples ever built in the most volcanic localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to Chthonian divinities. Therefore Christianity has made of them infernal gods .
They are truly “the great, beneficent and powerful Gods,” as Cassius Hermone calls them (See Macrob. Sat. I., iii., c. 4, p . 376). At Thebes, Kore and Demeter, the Kabirim , had a sanctuary (Pausan. IX . 22; 5), and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter their holy precincts (Herodotus I. ii., c . 37). But we must not lose sight, at the same time, of the fact that the title of Kabiri was a generic one; that the Kabiri (the mighty gods as well as mortals), were of both sexes, as also terrestrial, celestial and kosmic. That, while in their later capacity of the Rulers of sidereal and terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon (as it is now regarded) was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in the beginning of times, the rulers of mankind. When incarnated as Kings of the “divine Dynasties,” they gave the first impulse to civilizations, and directed the mind with which they had endued men to the invention and perfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the memory of nations. To them — the Kabiri or Titans — is ascribed the invention of letters (the Devanagari , or the alphabet and language of the gods), of laws and legislature; of architecture, as of the various modes of magic, so-called; and of the medical use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus, Asclepius, all those demi-gods and heroes, to whom is ascribed the revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers — too zealous for plain truth — would force posterity to see only pagan copies of one and sole prototype, named Noah — are all generic names.
It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed, by producing corn or wheat, the great boon of agriculture. What Isis-Osiris, the once living Kabiria, has done in Egypt, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; they all belong to one class.
That the Serpents were ever the emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by the caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the god of wisdom, with Hermes, and so on. The two serpents, entwined around the rod, are phallic symbols of Jupiter and other gods who transformed themselves into snakes for purposes of seducing goddesses — but only in the unclean fancies of profane symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury in his psychopompic character, conducting and guiding with the caduceus the souls of the dead to Hades and even raising the dead to life with it, is simply a very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret Wisdom: the black and the white magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding the Soul after death, and its power to call to life that which is dead — a very deep metaphor if one thinks over its meaning. Every people of antiquity reverenced this symbol, with the exception of Christians, who chose to forget the brazen Serpent of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and prudence of the Serpent by Jesus himself, “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate successors of the “Serpents” or Initiates, who ruled the early races of the Fifth Humanity. The Emperor’s throne is the “Dragon’s Seat,” and his dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the Dragon. The aphorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the “Dragon” is a human, albeit divine , Being. Speaking of the “Yellow Dragon,” the chief of the others, the Twan-ying-tu, says: “His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable... he does not go in company and does not live in herds (he is an ascetic). He wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes, fulfilling the decree (Karma); at the proper seasons if there is perfection he comes forth, if not he remains (invisible).”... And Kon-fu-tyu is made to say by Lu-lan, “The Dragon feeds in the pure water of Wisdom and sports in the clear waters of Life.”
————
Our Divine Instructors
Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan isle are not the only record that is left of the deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell “Maurigosima,” for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their own. Kæmpfer, in his “Japan ” (Appendix, p . 13), gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiru-un, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the divine dynasties of Kings as much as those of any other nations.
At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution — spiritual, psychic, intellectual and physical — of human beings, just as given in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.
Our races — they all show — have sprung from divine races, by whatever name they are called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy —their “divine man” and demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil — the creative god and the “Gods of the ghost-world”; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim, or again with Manco Capac and his Peruvian progeny — the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either the seven and ten Rishis-Manus and Prajâpatis the seven and ten Ki-y; or ten and seven Amshaspends* (six exoterically), ten and seven Chaldean Anedots, ten and seven Sephiroth, etc., etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyan-Chohans of the Esoteric doctrine, or the “Builders” of the Stanzas (Book I.). From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato and Panadores, all tell us of seven divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual gods who descend from their celestial abode and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as “gods” and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as “divine-Kings and Rulers.” But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Bosuage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that science flourished in their country only since Isis-Osiris, whom they continue to adore as gods, “though they had become Princes in human form.” And he adds of Osiris-Isis (the divine androgyne: — “It is said that this Prince (Isis-Osiris) built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.”
When Abul-Feda says in his “Historia Anteislamitica ” (Fleisher, p . 16) that the Sabean language was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch) — he means by “Sabean language” astronomy. In the “Melelwa Nohil” (MS. 47 in Nic. Cat .) Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account (See Col. Vyses 2nd Vol. of thePyramids of Ghizeh ,” p . 364, MS . 785, Uris Cat .) Agathodæmon is mentioned as a “King of Egypt .” Celepas Geraldinus gives curious traditions about Henoch. He calls him the “divine giant.” In the “Book of the various names of the Nile ,” the same author (the historian Ahmed-Ben-Yusouf Eltiphas) tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth (become later the Egyptian Typhon, Set), had been one of the seven angels (or Patriarchs in the Bible): then he became a mortal and Adam’s son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris) “the author of thirty books, was Sabæan by origin” (i.e ., belonging to the Saba , “a Host”); “having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed 140 cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.” Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes — or rather one, who appeared — as some Manus and Rishis did — in several different characters. In the Burham-i-Kati he is mentioned as “Hormig,” a name of the planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot. The Hermes of Oriental tradition, worshipped at Phineata and said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, civilized it under the name of Thoth. But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences from latent to active potency, i.e ., with having been the first to teach magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia , and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.
Not only Herodotus — the “father of History” — tells us of the marvellous dynasties of gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the dynasties of demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but the whole series of classics support him; Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., etc., repeat the same, and never vary the order given.
“It is, indeed,” as Creuzer shows: —
“From the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.” “In the system of the ancient priests (Hierophants and Adepts) all things without exception, gods, the genii, manes (souls), the whole world, are conjointly developed in Space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of Spirits.... “*
There were more efforts made by the modern historians (French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly) to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never be more unwilling than was Eratosthenes 260 years B.C. to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognise its truth. For this, the great astronomer is treated with great contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho became with them “a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis” (Freret ). “All those historians and priests,” justly remarks the demonologist, de Mirville, “so veracious when repeating stories of human kings and men, suddenly become extremely suspicious no sooner do they go back to their gods .”... But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (Manetho’s above all), and that of Ptolemy. In the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all, in the words of the Egyptologist, de Rouge: —
“... Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the whole truth.... It was the remains of a list of dynasties embracing the furthest mythoic times, or the REIGN OF THE GODS AND HEROES.... At the very outset of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that so far back already as the period of Ramses, those mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the gods Seb, Osiris, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.” (Ann. de Philologie Chretienne , Vol. XXXII., p. 442).
The synchronistic tables of Manetho, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and was kept secret from the profane multitudes.
Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before Europe did; nevertheless it appeared later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. That the whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea, was known firstly through Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and all the Greeks; and, secondly, through geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island; and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their gods from the North-east.
When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, which records the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between the Lion and Libra , has found its Œdipus, who understood the riddle of these signs, and justified the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus that: — (a ) The poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided; and (b ) That even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic, as the Initiates taught.
Bailly had not sufficient words at his command to express his surprise at the sameness of all such traditions about the divine races. “What are finally,” he exclaims, “all those reigns of Indian Devas and Persian Peris? .... Or, those reigns and dynasties of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven , quite distinct from the Ti-hoang , the Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang the King’s men, a distinction which is in perfect accord with that other one made by the Greeks and the Egyptians, in enumerating their dynasties of Gods, of demi- gods, and of mortals .“*
“Now,” says Panadoras, “it is before that time (Menes), that the reign of the seven gods who rule the world took place . It was during that period that those benefactors of humanity descended on Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.”
Nearly five hundred years before the actual era, Herodotus was shown by the priests of Egypt the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs -piromis (the archi-prophets or Maha- Chohans of the temples), born one from the other (without the intervention of woman) who had reigned before Menes, their first human King. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five in number, each of which had his name, his history and his annals . And they assured Herodotus* (unless the most truthful of historians, the “Father of History,” is now accused of fibbing, just in this instance ) that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of the three dynasties that preceded the human — namely, the DYNASTIES OF THE GODS, that of demi- gods, and of the Heroes, or giants. These “three dynasties” are the three Races.
Translated into the language of the Esoteric doctrine, these three dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of Kimpurushas, and of Danavas and Daityas — otherwise gods, celestial spirits, and giants or Titans. “Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of gods, as men, in Bharata- Varsha!” exclaim the incarnated gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. Bharata is India, but in this case it symbolized the chosen land in those days, and was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dwipa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) works par excellence ; the land of initiation and of divine knowledge.
Can one fail to recognise in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, being almost unacquainted with the Aryan Hindu philosophies, little known in his day, he wrote: —
“We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, the natural good sense and the upright judgment of the ancient peoples, quite foreign to our entirely material ideas upon celestial mechanics and physical sciences... could not see in the stars and planets only that which we see: namely, simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; but they saw in them living bodies, animated by spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature.... This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature , from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together... ” (“Egypte ,” pp . 450 to 455.)
It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the universe — of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.
Occultists believe in “spirits,” because they feel (and some see) themselves surrounded on every side by them.* Materialists do not. They live on this earth, just as, in the world of insects and even of fishes, some creatures live surrounded by myriads of their own genus , without seeing, or so much as sensing them.
Plato is the first sage among the classics who speaks at length of the divine Dynasties, and locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Bailly was not the first nor last to believe the same, and he had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher. This learned Jesuit writes in “Œdipus Ægyptiacus ” (Vol . I., p. 70): —
“I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this (dynasties and the Atlantis) as pure fables (meras nugas ) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.....”
As de Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his Meropis , made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as the priests of Sais did when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, and containing two countries inhabited by two races —a fighting, warrior race, and a pious, meditative race,* which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities. The pious “city” was continually visited by the gods ; the belligerent “city” was inhabited by various beings invulnerable to iron, liable to be mortally wounded only by stone and wood.” De Rougemont treats this as a pure fiction of Theopompus (“Peuple Primitif ,” vol. iii . 157) and even sees a fraud (supercherie ) in the assertion of the Saitic priests. This was denounced by the “Demonologists” as illogical. In the words of De Mirville: — “A supercherie which was based on a belief, the product of faith of the whole antiquity; a supposition which yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (the Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing some of its lands at a small distance from Cadiz and the strait of Calpetus), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, the great trans- oceanic land situated beyond that Atlantis and which “is reached” it said — “by the islands not of the blessed, but of the good spirits e;udaimovnia (our ‘Iles Fortunees ’) —such a supposition can never be an universal chimera.” (A word onAtlantis ,” p . 29.)
It is certain that, whether “chimera” or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source: the universal tradition about the third great continent which perished some 850,000 years ago.§ A continent inhabited by two distinct races; distinct physically and especially morally; both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature; mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. Whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a fiction? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of a holy island beyond the sun (Tcheou ), and beyond which were situated the lands of the immortal men? (See de Rougemont, ibid .) Do they not still believe that the remnants of those immortal men — who survived when the holy island had become black with sin and perished — have found refuge in the great desert of Gobi, where they still reside invisible to all, and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?
“If one has to lend ear to traditions,” writes the very unbelieving Boulanger, (“Regne des Dieux ,” Introduction )... “the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and demi-gods; and still earlier and beyond they place the marvellous reign of the gods and all the fables of the golden age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas communicated by them were once universally admitted and revered by all the peoples; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, which we accept no longer because we do not understand them now , must have had motives for believing in them furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, and which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in his fourth book of Laws , says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth a certain form of government under which man was very happy. As it is the golden age he refers to, or to that reign of gods so celebrated in ancient fables.... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce this fable into a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, in heaven and on earth , and the present state of things is one of the results (Karma ). Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the Sun, of Saturn’s reign, and of a thousand other matters that remained scattered about in human memory; but one never hears anything of the EVIL which has produced those revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them . Yet.... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power....”
That evil , Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the golden age, there was naught but happiness on earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice filling forthwith the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the god used the same means we use ourselves with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd, i.e., a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature . It is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal King or prince but — “Spirits and geniidaimoneß of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”
It was god, the Logos (the synthesis of the Host) who thus presiding over the genii, became the first shepherd and leader of men.* When the world had ceased to be so governed and the gods retired, “ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind.” “Left to their own resources and industry, inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them....”(“De Legibus ” 1, iv .; in Crit. and in Politic ).
And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.
Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by theLords of Wisdomfor the benefit of those they ruled — from other lokas (spheres)... ” say the Commentaries. Now: “The earliest inventions (?) of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made... The first use of fire , and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all, the processes by which the various cereals were first developed out of some wild grasses (?) — these are all discoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare . They are all unknown to history — all lost in the light of an EFFULGENT DAWN.” (“Unity of Nature ,” Argyll.)
This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it is asserted that there are no grains and fruits unknown to earth , then we may remind the reader that wheat has never been found in the wild state: it is not a product of the earth . All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was that cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat being placed even with their mummies, and found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember: — “The servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo.... wheat seven cubits high .” (“Book of the Dead ,” chap. xcix ., 33; and clvi ., 4.) The reader is referred to Stanza VII., Verse 3, Book I., wherein this verse is explained in another of its meanings, and also to the “Book of the Dead ,” chap. cix ., v. 4 and 5 .
“I am the Queen of these regions,” says the Egyptian Isis; “I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the dog... (Dog-star)... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.” (Book I., chap. XIV. *
Sirius was called the dog-star . It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great instructor of mankind, before other Buddhas.
The book of the Chinese Y-King, attributes the discovery of agriculture to “the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”
“Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see.... They are all blind since they remain ignorant how much the world is full of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places” (Zohar, Part I., col . 177.)
The “Sons of God” have existed and do exist. From the Hindu Brahmâputras and Manasaputras (Sons of Brahmâ and Mind-born sons) down to the Bne-aleim of the Jewish Bible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is independent criticism so called, or “internal evidence” (based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics), in the face of the universal testimony, which never varied throughout the historical cycles? Read esoterically the sixth chapter of Genesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, only changing slightly its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with the Zohar . “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that when ‘the Sons of God ’ (bne- aleim ) “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” (or giants).
What does this sentence “and also after that” signify unless it means when explained: “There were giants in the earth BEFORE, i.e ., before the sinless sons of the Third Race; and also after that when other sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on earth (as Daksha did, when he saw that his Manasaputras would not people the earth)”? And then comes a long break in this chapter vi. of Genesis, between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the “mighty men”.... men of renown, among whom is placed Nimrod the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” that “god saw that the wickedness of man was great,” nor in the builders of Babel, for this was after the Deluge; but in the progeny of the giants who produced monstra quædam de genere giganteo , monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on earth by a few miserable dying- out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.
And if we are taken to task by theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse was ever a dilemma, not alone for the men of science and Biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Peronne puts it: — “Either they (the B’ne-aleim) were good angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (angels) and in this case could not be called bne-aleim , the “sons of God .” (Prælectiones theol. ch . ii.) This Biblical riddle — “the real sense of which no author has ever understood,” as candidly confessed by Fourmont* — can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through the Zohar to the Western, and the Book of Dzyan to the Eastern. What the former says we have seen; what the Zohar tells us is this: Bne-aleim was a name common to the Malachim (the good Messengers) and to the Ischin (“the lower angels”) (Rabbi Parcha ).
We may add for the benefit of the demonologists that their Satan, “the adversary,” is included in Job among the sons of God or bne-aleim who visit their father.” (Chapter i .) But of this later on.
Now the Zohar says that the Ischin , the beautiful Bne-aleim , were not guilty, but mixed themselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so . (Book of Ruth and Schadash ; fol . 63, col . 3; Amsterdam edition ). Elsewhere the same volume shows these bne-aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the “Thrones” (Zohar, part iii., col . 113. But see also 1st vol . 184). It also explains that the Ischin, “men-spirits,” viri spirituales , now that men can see them no longer, help magicians to produce, through their science, homunculi which are not small men but “men smaller (in the sense of inferiority ) than men.” Both show themselves under the form that the Ischin had then, i.e ., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.
But Azazel, whom the Church dogma will associate with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is a mystery , as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed in Maimonides, “In More Nevochim ” (chapter xxvi., p . 8). “There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.” And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican and one who ought to know, says — we have quoted him before — that “this venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile ) has become through the pen of Biblical scholars, a devil , a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goat” (Sagra Scrittura ). Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name as Spencer does, from Ajal (separated) and El (god), hence “one separated from God,” the DEVIL. In the Zohar, Azazel is rather the Sacrificial victim than the “formal adversary of Jehovah,” as Spencer would have it (II., pp . 14, 29).
The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on that “Host” by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his “host” are simply the Hebrew “Prometheus,” and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. The Zohar shows the Ischin chained on the mountain in the desert, allegorically; thus simply alluding to those “spirits” as being chained to the earth during the cycle of incarnation. Azazel (or Azaziel) is one of the chiefs of the “transgressing” angels in Enoch , who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azaziel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?) to make one see what is behind him (viz ., “magic mirrors ”). Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of magic; Barkayal, astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamial, astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the moon. “These seven were the first instructors of the Fourth man” (i.e ., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning all that its dead-letter expresses?
It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between divine wisdom, nous , and its earthly reflection, Psuche , or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven —because the divine MONAD had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform the animal of clay into an immortal god . For, as Eliphas Levi tells us, “the angels aspire to become men; for the perfect man, the man-god, is above even angels.” On Earth — because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of matter.
Strange to say, the Occult teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous archangel with the Christians, and the man-like God with the Hindus, which represent matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolics conceal it still more. For the former explains many a saying in the Bible and even in the New Testament which have hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect god, and created the greatest evil and curse on earth — belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is opened with the key to its metaphysical symbolism now restored; while that of theological interpretation shows the gods and the archangels standing as symbols for the dead letter or dogmatic religions, and as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.
Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in “Isis Unveiled,” and a still greater number of references to this mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all: that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion — pre-eminently the Christian — points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is in reality, the highest divine Spirit — (occult Wisdom on Earth) — in its naturally antagonistic character to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves; the Church which calls itself the bride of Christ, and the trustee at the same time of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master “get thee behind me Satan” was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old “Law of Moses” which Christ openly repudiated: both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of esoteric (because divine ) Wisdom. Whenever anathematizing the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis — the Agathodæmon — Christos, or the theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of Genesis — they are moved by the same Spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus by saying to him “Say we not well thou hast a devil?”
Read the account about Indra (Vayu) in the Rig-Veda , the occult volume par excellence of Aryanism, and then compare it with the same in the Purânas — the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom religion. In the Rig Veda Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In the Purânas Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma juice, in the terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the “enemies of the gods” — the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent- gods, and of Vritri, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindu Pantheon — the chief of the militant Host. Turning to the Bible, we find Satan, one of the “Sons of God” (Job. i . 6), becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon in its infernal, evil sense. But in the Kabala (“Book of Numbers ”) Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the slayer of the Dragon . How is this? For it is said that Tselem (the image) reflects alike Michael and Samael who are one . Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neschamah (Soul) and Nephesch (life). In the “Chaldean Book of Numbers” Samael is the concealed (occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher terrestrial Wisdom, both emanating from the same source but diverging after their issue from the mundane soul , which on Earth is Mahat (intellectual understanding, or Manas (the seat of Intellect). They diverge, because one (Michael) is influenced by Neschamah, while the other (Samael) remains uninfluenced . This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit ofthe Church; which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form (hence by dogma), forthwith made of Samael-Satan (the most wise and spiritual spirit of all) — the adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the DEVIL!
————
The Origin of the Satanic Myth
Let us then fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret initiations among the profane, and was established universally through the once universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and the Buddhist countries, “Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God ” (“Archæology ,” Vol. xxv., p. 220, London). In the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship crossed over with its Sun-gods into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the gods of Stonehenge we recognise the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kaliya, Osiris and Typhon are all one under many names — the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is “one as God,” or his “Double,” for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the Cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the “War of Heaven,” its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts. The following are the proofs: —
We find (a ) the priests assuming the name of the gods they served; (b ) the “Dragons” held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c ) the hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the “Sons of the Dragon” and “Serpents”; thus the teachings of the Secret Doctrine are thereby corroborated.
There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldea, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of them were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Lybian desert, and were known as the Serpents catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the sacred mysteries of the kuklos anagkes , the “Unavoidable Cycle,” more generally known as “the circle of necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every soul after the bodily death, and when it has been judged in the Amenthian region.
In de Bourbourg’s book, Votan , the Mexican demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was a snake’s hole, “un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself “a son of the snakes,” or a serpent. (“Die Phoinizier,” 70.)
This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the snakes hole is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, as of Babylon, generally styled themselves the “Sons of the Serpent- god,” or “Sons of the Dragon,” during the mysteries.
“The Assyrian priest bore always the name of his god,” says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves snakes. “I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,” they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the serpent’s mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the highest god — the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognised as El Elion.* Besides the surname of serpents, they were called the “builders,” the “architects”; for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even nowthe pulverised remains of them “frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,” says Taliesin.
De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-Cohuatl , or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. “I am Hivim,” they say. “Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (snake). I am a snake myself, for I am a Hivim.” (“Cartas,” 51; “Isis Unveiled ,” Vol. I., 553, et seq .)
Furthermore, the “War in Heaven” is shown, in one of its significations, to have meant and referred to those terrible struggles in store for the candidate for adeptship, between himself and his (by magic) personified human passions, when the inner enlightened man had to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the “Dragon-Slayer,” as having happily overcome all the temptations; and a “Son of the Serpent” and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in a new body, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity. (See Part II. on the Satanic Myth.)
Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon — the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the dark side of Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura-mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of adeptship and initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where any one can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.
Rahu, mythologically is a Daitya —a giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon or Serpent’s tail. During the churning of the Ocean, when the gods produced amrita — the water of Immortality — he stole some of it, and drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon’s head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon’s tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Rahu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable had another mystic meaning, since Rahu , the Dragon’s head, played a prominent part in the mysteries of the Sun’s (Vikârttanas ) initiation, when the candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.
The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Tiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas —the Hindu King-Snakes, who dwelled in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Sesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the dragon serpent oracle , all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliest Purânas. The children of Surasa are the “mighty Dragons.” The Vayu Purâna replacing “Surasa” (of Vishnu Purâna) by Danayas or Danavas —the descendants of Danu by the sage Kasyapa — and those Danavas being the giants (or Titans) who warred against the gods, they are thus shown identical with the “Dragons” and “Serpents” of Wisdom.
By simply comparing the Sun-gods of every country, one may find their allegories agreeing perfectly with one another; and the more the allegorical symbol is occult the more its corresponding symbol in other systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance — the old Aryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes — we select several Sun-gods and dragons at random, these will be found copied from each other.
Let us take Agni the fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Karttikeya from the Hindus; the Greek Apollo; and Mikael , the “Angel of the Sun,” the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics “the saviour” — and proceed in order.
(1) Agni — the fire-god — is called in the Rig-Veda Vaiswanara. Now Vaisvanara is a Danava — a giant-demon,* whose daughters Puloma and Kalaka are the mothers of numberless Danavas (30 millions), by Kasyapa, and live in Hiranyapura , “the golden city ,” floating in the air . Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kasyapa; and Kasyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the fire-god, or Sun (Kasyapa-Aditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Karttikeya (god of War, the six-faced planet Mars astronomically), a Kumâra, or virgin-youth, born of Agni for the purpose of destroying Taraka, the Danava Demon, the grandson of Kasyapa by Hiranyaksha, his son,* whose (Taraka’s) yogi austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the gods, who feared such a rival in power. While Indra, the bright god of the Firmament, kills Vritra (or Ahi), the Serpent-Demon — for which feat he is called Vritra-han , “the destroyer of Vritra”; he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or gods) against other gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is entitled Jishnu , “leader of the celestial Host.” Karttikeya is found bearing the same titles. For killing Taraka, the Danava, he is Taraka-Jit, “Vanquisher of Taraka,”Kumâra Guha ,” “the mysterious Virgin-youth” “Siddha-Sena ” —“the leader of the Siddhas”; and Saktidhara — “Spear-holder.”
(2.) Now take Apollo, the Grecian sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Karttikeya, and even Kasyapa- Aditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the “angel of the Sun,” who is “like,” and “one with, God.” Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except the abuse of human authority and power, perhaps.
Apollo is Helios (the Sun), Phoibus-Apollo (“the light of life and of the World”§ ) who arises out of the golden-winged cup (the sun); hence he is the sun-god par excellence . At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,* * and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy — like Karttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Taraka, the too holy and wise demon . Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria —“the golden star island,” the “earth which floats in the air,” which is the Hindu golden Hiranyapura ; “he is called the pure, a;gno;ß, Agnus Dei (the Indian Agni , as Dr. Kenealy thinks), and in the primal myth he is exempt “from all sensual love” (“Book of God ,” p. 88). He is, therefore, a Kumâra , like Karttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the “red Dragon,” connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, who wants to attack the woman in child-birth (See Revelation xii .), as Python attacks Apollo’s mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the spirit of Homer’s allegories, ever had a real inkling of the esoteric meaning of the Iliad and Odyssey , he would have understood St. John’s “Revelation ,” and even the Pentateuch, better than he does. For the way to the Bible lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindu and Chaldean religious symbols.
The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in ch. xii. of St. John’s Revelations , and comes from the Babylonian legends without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story had its origin in the allegories of the Aryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith (See “The Chaldean account of Genesis,” p. 304) is sufficient to disclose the source of the xii. chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:
“Our... fragment refers to the creation of mankind , called Adam; as (the man) in the Bible, he is made perfect... but afterwards joins with the dragon of the Deep, the animal of Tiamat, the Spirit of Chaos, and offends against his god, who curses him , and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of Humanity.”*
“This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.”
“The gods have weapons forged for them, and Merodach (the archangel Michael in Revelation ) undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragons. The war, which is described with spirit, ends, of course, in the triumph of the principles of Good.....”
This war of gods with the powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Aryan adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge. (See the last pages of Vol. I., “Isis Unveiled ,” Atlantis.)
The symbols of the dragons and “War in Heaven” have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But it had also a Cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra . In the Vedas this Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the god compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-Han or “the slayer of Vritra,” as Michael is called the Conqueror and “Slayer of the Dragon.” Both these “Enemies” are then the “Old Dragon” precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.
The Zend-Avestic Amshaspends are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, when one reads the Vendidad . Thus in Fargard XIX ., ii. 13 (42), Zarathustra is told by Ahura Mazda to “invoke the Amesha Spenta who rule over the seven Karshvares * of the Earth”; which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven spheres of our planetary chain, to the seven planets, the seven heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal world. In the same Fargard (ii. and iii.), in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathustra appeals to them in these words: “I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks” (42 Vendid. Saddh ). The “Sravah” — a word which the Orientalists have given up as one “of unknown meaning” — means the same Amshaspends, but in their highest occult meaning. The “Sravah ” are the noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspends, the souls or spirits of those manifested Powers; and “their sons and their flock” refers to the planetary angels and their sidereal flock of stars and constellations. “Amshaspend” is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathustra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as “thou, the maker of the material world.” Ormazd is the father of our earth (Spenta Armaiti), and she is referred to, when personified, as “the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda” (Fargard , XIX. ii.), who is also the creator of the Tree (of occult and spiritual knowledge and wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Caresma is taken. But the occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.
Samael or Satan, the seducing Serpent of Genesis, and one of the primeval angels who rebelled, is the name of the “Red Dragon.” He is the Angel of Death , the Talmud saying that “the Angel of Death and Satan are the same,” and, killed by Michael, he is once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer; but see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom , the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic demon of drought, as Vritra; “Simoom is called Atabutos ” or— Diabolos , the devil.
Typhon, or the Dragon Aphophis — the Accuser in the “Book of the Dead” — is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent’s head with a spear; and Typhon is the all- destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set —he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,* whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent. (See Lenoir’s “Du Dragon de Metz.”)
Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their “Slayers” are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun- gods or creative powers. In the “Book of the Dead” those principles are called “the Sons of Rebellion.” (See also “Egyptian Pantheon ,” pp. 20, 23 .) “In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called the deceiving Serpent (Verse 54).... calls the Sons of Rebellion in Air , and when they arrive to the East of Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World” (v. 49, “Book of the Dead ,” xvii.).
In the Scandinavian Eddas the “War” of the Ases with the Hrim-thurses (frost-giants), and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the “wolf” who comes out of “Darkness” — is the repetition of the same myth. The “evil Spirits,” having begun by being simply the emblems of Chaos, became euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in the most civilized and learned races of this globe — since its creation as alleged — and became a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it: “The evil principles (Spirits) emblems of Chaos” (in Chaldea and Assyria as in Egypt, we see).. “resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.” (“Assyrian Discoveries,” p. 403.) This is only another version of the Hindu “War in Heaven,” between Soma, the moon, and the gods — Indra being the atmospheric Vul; which shows it plainly to be both a Cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest theogony as taught in the Mysteries.
It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of powers now called Evil , can be seen the best; as it is they who divulged the esoteric nature of the Jewish Substitute for AIN-SOPH in their teachings; of the true meaning of which, while the Rabbins concealed it, the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves as wise as the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil one ; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of “the Brotherhood of the Serpent,” have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem of WISDOM, the divine Sophia (and a type of the all-good, not the all-bad), were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol; and as a Dragon it had never been anything else than a symbol of the manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. The Draco volans , the flying Dragon of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal; but those who have faith in the Occult teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying Dragons, or a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as the prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.* The Jews had worshipped the latter idol themselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, turned round, and called that symbol of the great or Higher God of every other nation — a Devil, and their own usurper — the “One God.”
The appellation Sa’tan, in Hebrew satan , “an adversary” (from the verb shatana , “to be adverse,” to persecute) belongs by right to the first and cruelest “adversary of all the other gods ” — Jehovah, not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, “the adversary of men.” This dogma, based as it is on chapter iii. of Genesis , is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first to create that original and hence-forward universal tempter of man — the woman? Not the serpent surely, but the “Lord God” himself, who, saying: — “It is not good that the man should be alone” — made woman, and “brought her unto the man” (18-22). If the unpleasant little incident that followed was and is still to be regarded as the “original sin,” then it exhibits the Creator’s divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam (of chap. 1.) to have been left either “male and female,” or “alone.” It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the “agent provocateur ,” and the Serpent — only a prototype of Azazel , “the scapegoat for the sin of (the God of) Israel,” the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master’s and Creator’s blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity in Genesis in their dead-letter sense. Those who read them esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypothesis; they know how to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.
There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a blind created purposely by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own property.* But the following statement is made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters of Genesis variously as “God,” the “Lord God,” and “Lord” simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah . There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the Kabala, Jehovah appearing only in chapter iv., in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed into mankind —male and female, jah-veh. The “Serpent,” moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who, promising the woman that if they ate of the forbidden fruit “ye shall not surely die ,” kept his promise, and made man immortal in his incorruptible nature . He is the Iao of the mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne creators of men. Chapter iii. contains (esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the “Boneless” gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the “Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male part of Adam the dual man, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her “Abel,” the first natural woman, and sheds the Virgin blood . Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of verse i. (chapter iv., Genesis), in the original Hebrew text; and the Rabbins teaching that “Kin (Cain), the Evil, was the Son of Eve by Samael, the devil who took Adam’s place”; and the Talmud adding that “the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same” —(Babba Battra, 16a ) — it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or “Jah-hovah”) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular. There is no Devil, no Evil, outside mankind to produce a Devil . Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the manifested universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of Day, and Death for that of Life — that man may live for ever .
Satan represents metaphysically simply the reverse or the polar opposite of everything in nature.* He is the “adversary,” allegorically, the “murderer,” and the great Enemy of all , because there is nothing in the whole universe that has not two sides — the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and the rationale of certain early Christian sects — called heretical and viewed as the abomination of the times — will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of SATANIANS came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the CAINITES came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) ISCARIOTES; the true character of the treacherous apostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of Humanity.
As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-Baoth was regarded by most of them as the god of Moses, and was held as a proud, ambitious, and impure spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the highest God , though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brethren Elohim ; the latter representing the all- embracing, manifested deity only in their collectivity, since they were the fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or EVIL. (SeeIsis Unveiled ,” II, 184). They taught that Turbo and Adonai were “names of Jao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda Baoth” (Codex Nazaræus ). (See Part II ., “The Fallen Angels .”) This amounted in their language to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that — “Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”
The fallen Angels are made in every ancient system the prototypes of fallen men — allegorically, and, those men themselves —esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the “Beni-Elohim,” the sons of God, among whom is Satan — in the Semitic traditions; war in heaven between Thraetaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil, “of the Iranians with the Aryan Brahmins of India.” And the conflict of the gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War — the Mahabhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the Combatants, gods and demons, adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans, simply in order to connect EVIL personified with the Serpent of Genesis, and thus prove the new dogma.*
————
Noah Was a Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been a Demon
It matters little whether it is Isis, or Ceres — the “Kabiria” — or again the Kabiri, who have taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolising all the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either a myth along with the others, or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc. — then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, and along with it all the patriarchs — the antediluvian and pre-Atlantean Titans. As now discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the god of power and generation , and of the first (sexual) bloodshed. Tubal-Cain is a Kabir, “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”; or — if this will please better — he is one with Hephæstos or Vulcan; Jabal is taken from the Kabiri — instructors in agriculture, “such as have cattle,” and Jubal is “the father of all those who handle the harp,” he, or they who fabricated the harp for Kronos and the trident for Poseidon.
The history or “fables” about the mysterious Telchines — fables echoing each and all the archaic events of our esoteric teachings — furnish us with a key to the origin of Cains genealogy (Genesis , ch. iii.); they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies “the accursed blood” of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines — it is argued — the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah?
The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteans also. “Like Lemnos and Samothrace,” says Decharme, “Rhodes, the birth-place of the Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation.” (Genii of Fire, p . 271.) The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like Samothrace (of the Kabiri) it is connected in the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present.
But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs contain, poetized, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies — those of Seth and Cain* — and the further attempt, as futile, to show them real, historical men, has only led to more serious inquiries into the history of the Past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed revelation . For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Kronos-Saturn is proved also.
That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Bryant (SeeAnalysis of Ancient Mythology ,” Vol. II., p . 760) concurs with all those who are of opinion, that Sydic, or Sadic, was the patriarch Noah (as also Melchizedek); and that the name by which he is called, or Sadic, corresponds to the character given of him in Genesis , chap. vi., 9. “He was , Sadic, a JUST man, and perfect in his generation. All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and through his sons transmitted to posterity.” (See New Encyclopædia by Abraham Rees , F.R.S.)
Now it is Sanchoniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchizedek). True enough, this information, having descended to us through Eusebius (Preparatio Evangelica ), may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than likely that he dealt with Sanchoniathon’s works as he has with Manetho’s Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic, Kronos, or Saturn with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah’s characteristic as a just man , and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek, King of Salem, and priest of the high god, after “his own order” (See Hebrews, ch. v . 6, and vii. 1, et seq .); and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they became rabbinically and KABALISTICALLY .
Speaking of Adam, Kain, Mars, etc., as personifications , we find the author of “The Source of Measures ” enunciating our very esoteric teachings in his Kabalistic researches. Thus he says: —
“Now Mars was the lord of birth and of death , of generation and of destruction , of ploughing , of building , of sculpture or stone-cutting, of Architecture .... in fine, of all.... ARTS. He was the primeval principle , disintegrating into the modification of two opposites for production . Astronomically, too,* he held the birthplace of the day and year, the place of its increase of strength, Aries , and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the house of Venus , and that of the Scorpion . He, as birth , was good; as death , was Evil. As good , he was light; as bad , he was night . As good , he was man ; as bad , he was woman . He held the cardinal points, and as Cain , or Vulcan , or Pater Sadic , or Melchizadek , he was lord of the Ecliptic , or balance , or line of adjustment , and therefore was THE JUST ONE. The ancients held to there being seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadik, the Just or Right One , was lord of the eighth, which was Mater Terra . (“Source of Measures,” p. 186-70.)
This makes their functions plain enough after they had been degraded, and establishes the identity.
The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead letter and within the period of Biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to follow that deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that there were “two distinct races of Kabiri,” the first consisting of Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionysus of Mnaseas; the second, “of the children of Shem, are the Kabiri of Sochoniston, while their father Sydyk is consequently the Scriptural Shem.” (Append. de Cabiris, ap. Orig. gent. p . 364, 376, and the latter statement on p . 357.)
The Kabirim, “the mighty ones,” are identical with our primeval Dhyan-Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the rulers and instructors of the primeval races, which are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the divine Dynasties.
————
The Oldest Persian Traditions about the Polar and the Submerged Continents
Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognisable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Persia on the other — a country ever at war with the former — there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to allow such coincidence to be due to simple chance. This was well proven by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every available source, to compare the better those of the Magi with the so-called Grecian “fables.”
Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal History. The stories of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table are also fairy tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the History of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel of the history and the pre-historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says as follows:
Before the creation of Adam , two races lived and succeeded each other on Earth; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000, during the existence of the former. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but wiser and kinder.
Here we recognize the Atlantean giants and the Aryans, or the Râkshasas of the Ramayana and the children of Bharata Varsha, or India; the ante- and the post-diluvians of the Bible.
Gyan (or rather Gnan, true or occult Wisdom and knowledge), also called Gian-ben-Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.* He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic, the sorcery of the Devs. Gian-ben-Gian had reigned 2,000 years when Iblis , the devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Devs and scatter them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, produced on the principles of astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis , who was an agent of Fate (or Karma).* They count ten kings in their last metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam. These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given by Berosus.
Distorted as those legends are now found, one can hardly fail to identify them with the Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew traditions. The latter, disdaining in its exclusiveness to speak of pre-adamite nations, yet allows these to be clearly inferred, by sending out Cain — one of the two only living men on earth — into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city (Gen. iv .), etc.
Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the 9,000 years, which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. “First of all,” we read in “Critias” that “one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsed since the war of the nations , which lived above and outside the Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this side.”
In “Timæus ” Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Aryans were 200,000 years old when the first great “island” or continent was submerged, there hardly seems any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldea and Persia, through whose exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to posterity. Thus, one finds the Hebrews calling a week “seven days,” and “a week of years” when each of its days represents 360 solar years, and the whole “week” is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years — in their secret calculations of the Sods. We of the present times call an age a century . They of Plato’s day, the initiated writers, at any rate, meant by a millenium, not a thousand but 100,000 years; Hindus, more independent than any, never concealed their chronology. Thus, when saying 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time — i.e , from the first appearance of the Aryan race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato’s small island of Atlantis, the Aryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yug, and was the Mahabhâratean war so famous in Indian History. Such blending of the events and epochs, and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that had elapsed, according to the statement made by the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures given. The latter event has never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because isolated; for, being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era.
History, for the first time, catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great mysteries through Herodotus, if we do not take into account the Bible, and its queer chronology.* And how little Herodotus could tell is confessed by himself when speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Sais, in the sacred precinct of Minerva. There, he says “behind the chapel... is the tomb of One, whose name I consider it impious to divulge ... In the enclosure stand large obelisks and there is a lake near, surrounded with a stone wall formed in a circle . In this lake they perform by night, that person’s adventures, which they call Mysteries: on these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the particulars of them, I must observe a discreet silence ” (ii . 170).
On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred with the ancients, as that of their cycles and computations. From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods , that Tantalus was plunged into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them. Sigalions (images of Harpocrates) were in every temple — especially in those of Isis and Serapis — each pressing a finger to the lips; while the Hebrews taught that to divulge, after initiation into the Rabbinical mysteries, the secrets of Kabala, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: it was punishable by death.
And yet, we Europeans accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that it has influenced and coloured ever since all our conceptions of science and the duration of things!
The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as some think; whereas, they are only transformed. They are ever speaking of, and describing the mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein the statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call them Sulimans (Solomons), or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy-two kings of that name.* Three among them reigned for 1,000 years each. (Herbelot, p . 829.)
Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, died murdered by his giant brother. The father had a perpetual fire preserved on the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence — the origin of fire-worship, as some Orientalists think.
Then came Huschenk , the prudent and the wise. It was his dynasty which re-discovered metals and precious stones, which had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the earth; how to make brass-work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work called “Eternal Wisdom,” and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and Ispahan, though they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is built on six other older cities, so these just- named cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend.
In the same tradition that wise prince is credited with having made war against the giants on a twelve-legged horse, whose birth is attributed to the amours of a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This dodecaped was found on the “dry island” or new continent; much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No giants could withstand his tremendous power. Notwithstanding, this king of kings was killed by an enormous rock thrown at him by the giants from the great mountains of Damavend .
Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has the best of, and who kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelled in the mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev-bend , the conqueror of the giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc., etc. Like his grand-sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far more rare and rapid — a bird called Simorgh-Anke . A marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious. (See Orient. Collect. ii ., 119.) What says that Persian Phœnix? It complains of its old age, for it is born cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (also Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied esoterically will give us again 840,000 years. (Orient. Collect. ii., 119 et seq .) Simorgh is born with the last deluge of the pre-Adamites, says the “romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif”! (Tales of Derbent .)
What says the “Book of Numbers”? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the lunar Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris) and his three Sons — Ka-yin, Habel, and Seth — represent the three races, as already explained. Noah-Xisuthrus represents in his turn (in the cosmo-geological key) the 3rd Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which uncovered the “nakedness ” of the Parent Race, and of the “Mindless,” i.e ., committed sin.
Tahmurath visits on his winged steed (Ahriman) the Mountains of Koh-Kaf or Kaph . He finds there the Peris ill- treated by the giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch . Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana* , whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the dry island, i.e ., the new continent of Europe. After him came Giamschid, who builds Esikekar , or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and believes himself, in his great pride, immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate punishes him, he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of Dhulkarnayn “the two horned.” But this epithet has no connection with the “two- horned” gentleman of the cloven foot. The “two-horned” is the epithet given in Asia, uncivilized enough to know nothing of the attributes of the devil, to those conquerors who have subdued the world from the East to the West.
Then come the usurper Zohac , and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad , who founded a new dynasty.
Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. What are the mountains of Kaf to begin with?
Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, it is far beyond these mountains to the North, that legend places the Devs and Peris; the latter the remote ancestors of the Parses or Farses. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the Fortunate Islands , wherein bubbles, from the beginning of life on earth, the fountain of life (Herbelot, p. 593 ; Armenian Tales, p. 35 ). But the legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first dry island (continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the mountains of Koh-kaf, “the stony girdle that surrounds the world.” A journey of seven months’ duration will bring him who is possessed of “Soliman’s ring” to that “fountain,” if he keeps on journeying North straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying therefore from Persia straight north , will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the west, to Nova Zemblia; and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic circle would land one between 60 and 45 degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zemblia and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapedian horse of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath (or Taimuraz), upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.*
Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow- capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus, there is a great continent now concealed from all . That it is reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve-legged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will twelve wings ; or by those who have the patience to wait for the good pleasure of Simorgh-anke , who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the “dry island” and its severed parts. This relates, of course, to the seventh race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric cycle.
It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth century A.D., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first in a country beyond the Ocean , a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldean (Cosmas Indicopleustes in Collect. nova Patrum, t . ii, p . 188; also see Journ . des Savants, Suppl . 1707, p . 20.) He says:The lands we live in are surrounded by the ocean, but beyond that ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky ; and it is in this land that man was created and lived in paradise. During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his posterity now inhabits .” (Ibid .) The twelve-legged horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the dry island. (Supra, p . 154.)
The “Christian topography” of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, now, moreover, corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a “dry island” beyond the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer.
In the first beginnings of (human) life, the only dry land was on the Right end * of the sphere, where it (the globe) is motionless . The whole earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid .... There man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara . There was eternal spring in darkness . (But) that which is darkness to the man of today, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the gods rested, and Fohat § reigns ever since .... Thus the wise fathers say that man is born in the head of his mother (earth), and that her feet at the left end generated (begot) the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon .... Between the first and second (races) the eternal central (land) was divided by the water of life .**
It flows around and animates her (mother earth’s) body. Its one end issues from her head ; it becomes foul at her feet (the Southern Pole). It gets purified (on its return) to her heart — which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then (in the beginnings) was not yet born. For it is in the belt of mans dwelling (the earth) that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes . During the first and second (races) the belt was covered with the great waters . (But) the great mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head-gear (the cap). She travailed harder for the third (race) and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the world .‡‡ She broke toward the setting sun from her neck * downward (to the south west), into many lands and islands, but the eternal land (the cap) broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the world. All these perished (in their turn). Then appeared the abode of the wicked (the Atlantis). The eternal land was now hid, for the waters became solid (frozen) under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragons mouth ,” etc., etc .
This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of human life its root -continent, so to speak, already existed; that part of the world now known as Asia being only cut off from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters.
If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachable mirage to the few arctic travellers who perceived it.
During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the “head” from the neck. Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most northern part of Spitzbergen on Mercator’s Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin’s Bay and the neighbouring islands and promontories. There it hardly reached, southward, the 70th degree of latitude; here —it formed the horse-shoe continent of which the commentary speaks; of the two ends of which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the 50th degree a little south west, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race — Lemuria was formed (Vide supra ). When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared.
Western Speculations Founded on the Greek and Purânic Traditions
Thus it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have reached the profane historian, Rudbeck, a Swedish scientist, tried to prove about two centuries ago that Sweden was the Atlantis of Plato. He thought, even, that he had found in the configuration of ancient Upsala, the situation and measurements given by the Greek sage of the capital of “Atlantis.” As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so was Bailly likewise, and still more. For Sweden and Norway had formed part and parcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just as Eastern and Western Siberia and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the Asiatic. Only, once more, when was it? We can find it out approximately only by studying the Purânas , if we will have nought to do with the Secret teachings.
Three quarters of a century have already elapsed since Captain (now Colonel) Wilford brought forward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the “White Island,” the Atala of the Purânas. This was sheer nonsense, as the Atala is one of the seven dwipas , or islands, belonging to the nether lokas, one of the seven regions of Pâtâla (the antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford* shows, the Purânas place it “on the seventh zone or seventh climate,” — rather, on the seventh measure of heat: which thus locates it between the latitudes of 24 and 28 degrees north. It is then to be sought on the same degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the 50th and 60th degrees of latitude. Wilford speaks of it as Atala , Atlantis, the white island. And in vol. viii. of Journal of Asiatic Researches, p. 280, its enemy is called the “White Devil,” the demon of terror . For he says: “In their (the Hindu and Mahomedan) romances, we see Kai-caus going to the mountain of ‘As-burj, at the foot of which the Sun sets,’ to fight the Dev-Sefid , or white devil, the Taradaitya of the Purânas , whose abode was on the seventh stage of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the Buddhists, or the White Island.”
Now here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx’s riddle, the wrong solution of which will ever destroy their authority, if not their persons, in the eyes of every Hindu scholar, even those who are not initiates. For there is not a statement in the Purânas — on the conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations — which has not several meanings, and does not apply to both the physical and the metaphysical worlds. If the old Hindus divided the face of the globe geographically into seven zones, climates, dwipas, and into seven hells and seven heavens, allegorically, that measure of seven did not apply in both cases to the same localities. It is the north pole, the country of “Meru,” which is the seventh division, as it answers to the Seventh principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the occult calculation, for it represents the region of Atma, of pure soul, and Spirituality. Hence Pushkara is shown as the seventh zone , or dwipa, which encompasses the Kshira Ocean, or Ocean of milk (the ever- frozen white region) in the Vishnu (and other) Purânas (Book II ch. iv .). And Pushkara, with its two Varshas , lies directly at the foot of Meru. For it is said that “the two countries north and south of Meru are shaped like a bow ,”.. and that “one half of the surface of the earth is on the south of Meru and the other half on the north of Meru— beyond which is half of Pushkara ” (Vishnu Purâna, Asiatic Researches, etc .). Geographically, then, Pushkara is America, Northern and Southern; and allegorically it is the prolongation of Jambu-dwipa* in the middle of which stands Meru, for it is the country inhabited by beings who live ten thousand years, who are free from sickness or failing; where there is neither virtue nor vice, caste or laws, for these men are “of the same nature as the Gods,” (Vishnu Purâna, Book II. ch. iv.). Wilford is inclined to see Meru in Mount Atlas, and locates there also the Loka-lokas. Now Meru, we are told, which is the Swar -loka, the abode of Brahmâ, of Vishnu, and the Olympus of Indian exoteric religions, is described geographically as “passing through the middle of the earth-globe, and protruding on either side” (Sûrya Siddhanta, v. 5, Whitneys trans .). On its upper station are the gods, on the nether (or South pole) is the abode of demons (hells). How can then Meru be Mount Atlas? Besides which, Taradaitya, a demon, cannot be placed on the seventh zone if the latter is identified with the “white” Island, which is Sveta- dwipa , for reasons given in the foot-note. (Vide infra .)
Wilford accuses the modern Brahmans “of having jumbled them (islands and countries) all together” (A.R. III. 300); but he jumbled them still more. He believes that as the Brahmanda and Vayu Purânas divide the old continent into seven dwipas, said to be surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond which lie the regions and mountains of Atala (ibid ), hence “most probably the Greeks divided the nation of Atlantis, which, as it could not be found after having once been discovered, they conceived to have been destroyed by some shock of nature.”
Finding certain difficulties in believing that the Egyptian priests, Plato, and even Homer, had all built their notions of Atlantis on Atala — a nether region located at the Southern pole — we prefer holding to the statements given in the secret books. We believe in the seven “continents,” four of which have already lived their day, the fifth still exists, and two are to appear in the future. We believe that each of these is not strictly a continent in the modern sense of the word, but that each name, from Jambu down to Pushkara,* refers to the geographical names given (i.) to the dry lands covering the face of the whole earth during the period of a Root-Race, in general; and (ii.) to what remained of these after a geological (race) Pralaya — as “Jambu,” for instance: and (iii.) to those localities which will enter, after the future cataclysms, into the formation of new universal “continents,” peninsulas, or dwipas — each continent being, in one sense, a greater or smaller region of dry land surrounded with water. Thus, that whatever “jumble” the nomenclature of these may represent to the profane, there is none, in fact, to him who has the key.
Thus, we believe we know that, though two of the Purânic “islands” — the sixth and seventh “continents” — are yet to come, nevertheless there were , or there are , lands which will enter into the composition of the future dry lands, of new earths whose geographical faces will be entirely changed, as were those of the past. Therefore we find in the Purânas that Sâka-dwipa is (or will be) a continent, and that Sankha-dwipa, as shown in the Vayu Purâna, is only “a minor island,” one of the nine divisions (to which Vayu adds six more) of Bharata Varsha. Because Sankha-dwipa was peopled by “Mlechchhas (unclean foreigners), who worshipped Hindu divinities,” therefore they were connected with India. This accounts for Sankhasura, a King of a portion of Sankha-dwipa, who was killed by Krishna; that King who resided in the palace “which was an ocean shell, and whose subjects lived in shells also,” says Wilford.
“On the banks of the Nile§ (?) there were frequent contests between the Devatas (divine beings, demi-gods) and the Daityas (giants); but the latter tribe having prevailed, their King, Sankhasura, who resided in the Ocean, made frequent incursions in the night” (As. Res ., Vol. III. 225.)
It is not on the banks of the Nile , but on the coasts of Western Africa, south of where now lies Morocco, that these battles took place. There was a time when the whole of the Sahara desert was a sea, then a continent as fertile as the Delta, and then, only after another temporary submersion, it became a desert similar to that other wilderness, the desert of Shamo or Gobi. This is shown in Purânic tradition, for on the same page as above cited, it is said: “The people were between two fires; for, while Sankhasura was ravaging one side of the continent, Krauncha (or Cracacha), King of Kraunch, used to desolate the other; both armies... thus changed the most fertile regions into a savage desert .”
That not only the last island of Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large continent, first divided, and then broken later on into seven peninsulas and islands (called dwipas ), preceded Europe, is sure. It covered the whole of the North and South Atlantic regions, as well as portions of the North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the Indian Ocean (relics of Lemuria). The claim is corroborated by Indian Purânas, Greek writers, and Asiatic, Persian, and Mohammedan traditions. Wilford, who confuses sorely the Hindu and the Mussulman legends, shows this, however, clearly. (See Vol. VIII., X. and XI. Of Asiatic Researches .) And his facts and quotations from the Purânas give direct and conclusive evidence that the Aryan Hindus and other ancient nations were earlier navigators than the Phœnicians, who are now credited with having been the first seamen that appeared in the post- diluvian times. This is what is given in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, III., pp . 325, et seq.: —
“In their distress the few nations who survived (in the war between Devatas and Daityas) raised their hands to Bhagavan, ‘Let him who can deliver us... be our King’; using the word I’ T (a magic term not understood by Wilford, evidently) which re-echoed through the whole country.”
Then comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kali are strangely agitated, “when there appeared from the waves.. a man, afterwards called I’ T, at the head of a numerous army, saying abhayan , no fear”... and scattered the enemy. “The King I’ T,” explains Wilford, “is a subordinate incarnation of M’rira” (Mrida , a form of Rudra, probably?) who “re-established peace and prosperity throughout all Sankha- dwipa, through Barbaradesa , Hissast’han and Awasthan or Arabia.. ” etc., etc.
Surely, if the Hindu Purânas give a description of wars on continents and islands situated beyond Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean; if their writers speak of Barbaras and other people such as Arabs — they who were never known to navigate, or cross the Kala pani (the black waters of the Ocean) in the days of Phœnician navigation — then their Purânas must be older than those Phœnicians (placed at from 2,000 to 3,000 years B.C.). At any rate those traditions must have been older;* as —
“In the above accounts,” writes an adept, “the Hindus speak of this island as existing and in great power; it must, therefore, have been more than eleven thousand years ago .” But another calculation and proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindu Aryans who knew of (because they had once dwelt in it) and described the last surviving island of Atlantis — or rather of that remnant of the Eastern portion of that continent which had perished soon after the upheaval of the two Americas* — the two Varshas of Pushkara. This may be demonstrated, moreover, on an astronomical calculation by an adept who criticises Wilford. For recalling what the Orientalist had brought forward concerning the Mount Ashburj “at the foot of which the sun sets,” where was the war between the Devatas and the Daityas, he says: —
“We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lost island, and of the remaining Mount Ashburj. It was on the seventh stage of the world, i.e ., in the seventh climate (which is between the latitude of 24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north)... This island, the daughter of the Ocean, is frequently described as lying in the West; and the sun is represented as setting at the foot of its mountain (Ashburj, Atlas, Teneriffe or Nila, no matter the name), and fighting the white Devil of the ‘White Island.’ ”
Now, considering this statement from its astronomical aspect, and knowing that Krishna is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God; and that he is said to have killed Dev- Sefid, the white giant — a possible personification of the ancient inhabitants at the foot of the Atlas — perchance Krishna may be only a representation of the vertical beams of the Sun? Those inhabitants (the Atlantides) are, we have seen, accused by Diodorus of daily cursing the Sun , and ever fighting his influence. This is an astronomical interpretation of course. But it will now be proved that Sankhasura, and Sancha dwipa, and all their history, is also geographically and ethnologically Plato’s “Atlantis” in Hindu dress.
It was just remarked that since, in the Purânic accounts, the island is still existing , then those accounts must be older than the 11,000 years elapsed since Sancha dwipa, or the Poseidonis of Atlantis, disappeared. Is it not barely possible that Hindus should have known the island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical demonstrations, which make this quite plain if one assumes, according to the said adept, that “at the time when the summer tropical ‘colure’ passed through the Pleiades , when cor-Leonis would be upon the equator; and when Leo was vertical to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island of Atlantis at noon .”
This explains, perhaps, why the Singhalese, the heirs of the Râkshasas and Giants of Lanka, and the direct descendants of Singha , or Leo , became connected with Sancha dwipa or Poseidonis (Plato’s Atlantis). Only, as shown by Mackey’s “Sphinxiad ,” this must have occurred about 23,000 years ago, astronomically ; at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must have been rather more than 27 degrees, and consequently Taurus must have passed over “Atlantis” or “Sancha dwipa.” And that it was so is clearly demonstrated.
The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bharata to Sancha to meet Rishabha (Taurus ) every Kalpa. But when those of the White Island (who descended originally from Sveta dwipa),* who had mixed with the Daityas (giants) of the land of iniquity, had become black with Sin, then Nandi remained for ever in theWhite Island ” (or Sveta dwipa.) “Those of the Fourth World (race) lost AUM” —say the Commentaries .
Asburj (or Azburj), whether the peak of Teneriffe or not, was a volcano, when the sinking of the “western Atala” (or hell) began, and those who were saved told the tale to their children. Plato’s Atlantis perished between water below and fire above; the great mountain vomiting flames all the while. “The ‘fire-vomiting Monster’ survived alone out of the ruins of the unfortunate island.”
Do the Greeks, accused of borrowing a Hindu fiction (Atala), and inventing from it another (Atlantis), stand also accused of getting their geographical notions and the number seven from them? (Vide in Part II. the several sections on the SEPTENATE in nature.)
“The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt that it did once,” says Proclus, “for Marcellus, who wrote a history of Ethiopian affairs, says that such, and so great an island once existed, and this is evidenced by those who composed histories relative to the external sea. For they relate that in this time there were seven islands in the Atlantic sea sacred to Proserpine; and besides these, three of immense magnitude, sacred to Pluto... Jupiter... and Neptune. And, besides this, the inhabitants of the last island (Poseidonis) preserved the memory of the prodigious magnitude of the Atlantic island as related by their ancestors, and of its governing for many periods all the islands in the Atlantic sea. From this isle one may pass to other large islands beyond, which are not far from the firm land, near which is the true sea.”
“These seven dwipas (inaccurately rendered islands) constitute, according to Marcellus, the body of the famous Atlantis,” writes Wilford himself..... This evidently shows that Atlantis is the old continent .... The Atlantis was destroyed after a violent storm (?): this is well known to the Purânics, some of whom assert that in consequence of this dreadful convulsion of nature, six of the dwipas disappeared”... (xi ., 27).
Enough proofs have now been given to satisfy the greatest sceptic. Nevertheless, direct proofs based on exact science are also added. Volumes might be written, however, to no purpose for those who will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their respective authorities.
Hence the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon, the mount in the land of Mizpeth — meaning “anathema,” “destruction” — is the same as Mount Armon. As a proof of this, Josephus is often quoted, as affirming that still in his own day enormous bones of giants were daily discovered on it. But it was the land of Balaam the prophet, whom the “Lord loved well”; and so mixed up are facts and personages in the said scholiasts’ brains, that, when the Zohar explains the “birds” which inspired Balaam to mean “Serpents,” to wit, the wise men and adepts at whose school he had learnt the mysteries of prophecy — the opportunity is again taken of showing Mount Hermon inhabited by the “winged dragons of Evil, whose chief is Samael” (the Jewish Satan).
“It is to those unclean spirits chained on Mount Hermon of the Desert, that the scapegoat of Israel, who assumed the name of one of them (Azaz(y)el), was sent” (Spencer ).
We say it is not so. The Zohar has the following explanation on the practice of magic which is called in Hebrew Nehhaschim , or the “Serpents’ Works.” It says (Part III. col. 302 ) : —“It is called nehhaschim , because the magicians (practical Kabalists) work surrounded by the light of the primordial serpent , which they perceive in heaven as a luminous zone composed of myriads of small stars”... which means simply the astral light , so called by the Martinists, by Eliphas Levi, and now by all the modern Occultists. (Vide Sections about.)
————
The “Curse” from a Philosophical Point of View
The foregoing teachings of the SECRET DOCTRINE, supplemented by universal traditions, must now have demonstrated that the Brâhmanas and Purânas, the Yâthâs and other Mazdean Scriptures, down to the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, and finally to the Jewish Sacred records, all have the same origin. None are meaningless and baseless stories, invented to entrap the unwary profane: all are allegories intended to convey, under a more or less fantastic veil, the great truths gathered in the same field of pre-historic tradition. Space forbids us from entering, in these two volumes, into further and more minute details with respect to the four Races which preceded our own. But before offering to the student the history of the psychic and spiritual evolution of the direct antediluvian fathers of our Fifth (Aryan) humanity, and before demonstrating its bearing upon all the other side branches grown from the same trunk, we have to elucidate a few more facts. It has been shown, on the evidence of the whole ancient literary world, and the intuitional speculations of more than one philosopher and scientist of the later ages, that the tenets of our Esoteric Doctrine are corroborated by inferential as well as by direct proof in almost every case. That neither the “legendary” giants, nor the lost continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding races, are quite baseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume, science will find itself more than once unable to reply; they will, it is hoped, finally dispose of every sceptical remark with regard to the sacred number in nature, and our figures in general. (Vide §§ on the Septenaries .)
Meanwhile, one task is left incomplete: that of disposing of that most pernicious of all the theological dogmas — the CURSE under which mankind is alleged to have suffered ever since the supposed disobedience of Adam and Eve in the bower of Eden.
Creative powers in man were the gift of divine wisdom, not the result of sin. This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, who first curses Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed committed crime, and then blesses his “chosen people” by saying “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Gen. ix . 1). The curse was not brought on mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological law. Nor was the curse of KARMA called down upon them for seeking natural union, as all the mindless animal-world does in its proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the life-essence for no purpose except bestial personal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of Genesis will be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the commencing Fourth Races. In the beginning, conception was as easy for woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that woman should bring forth her young ones “in sorrow.” Since that period, however, during the evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity between its seed, and the “Serpent’s” seed, the seed or product of Karma and divine wisdom. For the seed of woman or lust, bruised the head of the seed of the fruit of wisdom and knowledge , by turning the holy mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the law of Karma “bruised the heel ” of the Atlantean race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind,* until, from the healthy King of animal creation of the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our race, a helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals!*
This is the real CURSE from the physiological standpoint, almost the only one touched upon in the Kabalistic esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its progress hand-in-hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse instead of a blessing — a gift quickened by the “Lords of Wisdom,” who have poured on the human manas the fresh dew of their own spirit and essence. The divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to regret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically depicted by Æschylus, in his “Prometheus Bound,” when, at the close of the first Titanic age (the age that followed that of ethereal man, of the pious Kandu and Pramlocha), nascent, physical mankind, still mindless and (physiologically) senseless, is described as —
“Seeing, they saw in vain;
Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams,
Through the long time all things at random mixed.”
Our Saviours , the Agnishwatta and other divine “Sons of the Flame of Wisdom” (personified by the Greeks in Prometheus ), may well, in the injustice of the human heart, be left unrecognized and unthanked. They may, in our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora’s gift: but to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy, the EVIL ONES, is too heavy a Karma for “Him” “who dared alone “— when Zeus “ardently desired” to quench the entire human race — to save “that mortal race” from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is made to say: —
“From sinking blasted down to Hades’ gloom.
For this by the dire tortures I am bent,
Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold,
I who did mortals pity!.... ”
The chorus remarking very pertinently: —
“Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals....”
Prometheus answers: —
“Yea, and besides ‘twas I that gave them fire.
CHORUS: Have now these short-lived creatures flame-eyed fire?
PROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn..... ”
But, with the arts, the fire received has turned into the greatest curse: the animal element, and consciousness of its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality.* It is this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall. Thus arises the responsibility of free-will; the Titanic passions which represent humanity in its darkest aspect; “the restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires, when, with self- asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the restraints of law.”
Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato’s “Protagoras,” with that “wisdom which ministers to physical well-being,” but the lower aspect of manas of the animal (Kama ) having remained unchanged, instead of “an untainted mind, heaven’s first gift” (Æschylus), there was created the eternal vulture of the ever unsatisfied desire, of regret and despair coupled with “the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals” (p . 556), unto the day when Prometheus is released by his heaven-appointed deliverer, Herakles.
Now Christians — Roman Catholics especially — have tried to prophetically connect this drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake could be made. The true theosophist, the pursuer of divine wisdom and worshipper of ABSOLUTE perfection — the unknown deity which is neither Zeus nor Jehovah — will demur to such an idea. Pointing to antiquity he will prove that there never was an original sin, but only an abuse of physical intelligence — the psychic being guided by the animal, and both putting out the light of the spiritual. He will say, “All ye who can read between the lines, study ancient wisdom in the old dramas — the Indian and the Greek; read carefully the one just mentioned, one enacted on the theatres of Athens 2,400 years ago, namely ‘Prometheus Bound’ ” The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor Æschylus; but, as Bunsen says, it “is older than the Hellenes themselves,” for it belongs, in truth, to the dawn of human consciousness. The Crucified Titan is the personified symbol of the collective Logos, the “Host,” and of the “Lords of Wisdom” or the HEAVENLY MAN, who incarnated in Humanity. Moreover, as his name Pro -me-theus , meaning “he who sees before him” or futurity, shows — in the arts he devised and taught to humanity, psychological insight was not the least. For as he complains to the daughters of Oceanos: —
“Of prophecies the various modes I fixed,
And among dreams did first discriminate
The truthful vision... and mortals
guided To a mysterious art...............
All arts to mortals from Prometheus came...”
Leaving for a few pages the main subject, let us pause and see what may be the hidden meaning of this, the most ancient as it is the most suggestive of traditional allegories. As it relates directly to the early races, this will be no real digression.
The subject of Æschylus’ drama (the trilogy is lost) is known to all cultured readers. The demi-god robs the gods (the Elohim) of their secret — the mystery of the creative fire . For this sacrilegious attempt he is struck down by KRONOS* and delivered unto Zeus, the FATHER and creator of a mankind which he would wish to have blind intellectually, and animal-like; a personal deity, which will not see MAN “like one of us.” Hence Prometheus, “the fire and light-giver,” is chained on Mount Caucasus and condemned to suffer torture. But the triform Fates (Karma), whose decrees, as the Titan says, even Zeus: —
“E’en he the fore-ordained cannot escape... ”
— ordain that those sufferings will last only to that day when a son of Zeus —
“Ay, a son bearing stronger than his sire” (787)
“One of thine (Io’s) own descendants it must be..”(791)
— is born. This “Son” will deliver Prometheus (the suffering Humanity) from his own fatal gift. His name is, “He who has to come.. ”
On the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other allegorical sentence, may be twisted into almost any meaning; namely, on the words pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to Io, the daughter of Inachos, persecuted by Zeus — a whole prophecy is constructed by some Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan: —
“And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks
By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase
Wast hailed as the illustrious spouse of Zeus
. ....... . (v. 853).
.... stroking thee
With touch alone of unalarming hand;
Then thou dark Epaphos shalt bear, whose name
Records his sacred gendering.... ” (870)
This was construed by several fanatics — des Mousseaux and de Mirville amongst others — into a clear prophecy. Io — “is the mother of God,” we are told, and “dark Epaphos” — Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his father, except metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that “Father”; nor has the Christian Saviour hurled his Father down into Hades. Prometheus says, in verse 930, that Zeus will be humbled yet; as for himself: —
”.... such marriage he prepares
Which from his throne of power to nothingness
Shall hurl him down; so shall be all fulfilled
His father Kronos’ curse....
.... Then let him sit
Confiding in his lofty thunder-peals,
And wielding with both hands the fiery bolt;
For these shall not avail, but fail he shall,
A fall disgraceful , not to be endured.... ” (v. 980).
“Dark Epaphos” was the Dionysos-Sabazius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter in the Sabasian Mysteries, during which the “father of the gods,” assuming the shape of a Serpent , begot on Demeter, Dionysos, or the solar Bacchus. Io is the moon, and at the same time the EVE of a new race , and so is Demeter — in the present case. The Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but it does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours who have appeared periodically in various countries and among various nations, in their transitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the mysteries of cyclic transformations, in the series of which mankind, having passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state, from spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the opposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its primitive state, when woman knew no man , and human progeny was created, not begotten .
That state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter shall discover and really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast problem of sex. It will be like “the light that never shone on sea or land,” and has to come to men through the Theosophical Society. That light will lead on and up to the true spiritual intuition . Then (as expressed once in a letter to a theosophist), “the world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs , for the world will have discovered that individuals have it in their own powers to procreate Buddha-like children — or demons .” “When that knowledge comes, all dogmatic religions, and with these the demons, will die out.”
If we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the character of the heroes, the mystery may be unriddled. KRONOS is of course “time” in its cyclic course. He swallows his children — the personal gods of exoteric dogmas included. He has swallowed instead of Zeus, his stone idol; but the symbol has grown, and has only developed in human fancy as mankind was cycling down toward only its physical and intellectual — not spiritual — perfection. When it is as far advanced in its spiritual evolution Kronos will be no longer deceived. Instead of the stone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction itself. Because, the serpent of wisdom , represented in the Sabasian mysteries by the anthropomorphised Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers, will have begotten in Time (Kronos) a progeny — Dionysos-Bacchus or the “dark Epaphos,” the “mighty one” — the race that will overthrow him. Where will he be born? Prometheus traces him to his origin and birth-place in his prophecy to Io. Io is the moon-goddess of generation — for she is Isis and she is Eve, the great mother* He traces the path of the (racial) wanderings as plainly as words can express it. She has to quit Europe and go to Asia’s continent, reaching there the highest of the mountains of Caucasus (737), the Titan telling her: —
“When thou hast crossed the flood, limit betwixt
Two continents, fronting the burning East.” (810)
that she must travel eastward, after passing the “Kimmerian Bosphorus,” and cross what is evidently the Volga and now Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. After this she will encounter “fierce northern blasts” and cross thither to the land of the “Arimaspian host” (east of Herodotus’ Scythia) to —
“Pluto’s gold-abounding flood....”(825)
Which is rightly conjectured by Professor Newman to have meant the Ural, the Arimaspi of Herodotus being “the recognised inhabitants of this golden region.”
And here comes, between verses 825 and 835, a puzzle to all the European interpreters. Says the Titan: —
“To these (Arimaspi and Grypes) approach not; a far
border land
Thou next wilt reach, where dwells a swarthy race
Near the Sun’s founts, where is the Æthiop “river”;
Along its banks proceed till thou attain
The mighty rapids, where from Bybline heights
Pure draughts of sacred water Neilos sends... ”
There IO was ordained to found a colony for herself and sons. Now we must see how the passage is interpreted. As Io is told that she has to travel eastward till she comes to the river Ethiops, which she is to follow till it falls into the Nile — hence the perplexity. “According to the geographical theories of the earliest Greeks” we are informed by the author of the version on “Prometheus Bound”
“This condition was fulfilled by the river Indus. Arrian (vi . i.) mentions that Alexander the Great, when preparing to sail down the Indus (having seen crocodiles in the river Indus, and in no other river except the Nile...), seemed to himself to have discovered the sources of the Nile, as though the Nile, rising from some place in India, and flowing through much desert land, and thereby losing its name Indus, next... flowed through inhabited land, being now called the Nile by the Ethiopians of those parts and afterwards by the Egyptians. Virgil in the 4th Georgic echoes the absolute error” (p. 197, Vol. II .).
Both Alexander and Virgil may have erred considerably in their geographical notions; but the prophecy of Prometheus has not so sinned, in the least — not, at any rate, in its esoteric spirit. When a certain race is symbolised, and events pertaining to its history are rendered allegorically, no topographical accuracy ought to be expected in the itinerary traced for its personification. Yet it so happens, that the river “Ethiops” is certainly the Indus, and it is also the Nil or Nila. It is the river born on the Kailas (heaven) mountain, the mansion of the gods — 22,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was the Ethiops river — and was so called by the Greeks, long before the days of Alexander, because its banks, from Attock down to Sind, were peopled by tribes generally referred to as the Eastern Ethiopians. India and Egypt were two kindred nations, and the Eastern Ethiopians — the mighty builders — have come from India, as is pretty well proved, it is hoped, in “ISIS UNVEILED.” (Vol. I. p. 569-70).
Then why could not Alexander, and even the learned Virgil have used the word Nile or Neilos when speaking of the Indus, since it is one of its names? To this day that river is called, in the regions around Kala-Bagh, nil (blue), and Nilah , “the blue river.” The water here is of such dark blue colour that the name given to it from time immemorial led to a small town on its banks being called by the same name. It exists to this day. Evidently Arrian — who wrote far later than the day of Alexander, and who was ignorant of the old name of the Indus — has unconsciously slandered the Greek conqueror. Nor are our modern historians much wiser, in judging as they do. For they often make the most sweeping declarations on mere appearances, as much as their ancient colleagues ever did in days of old, when no Encyclopædias were yet ready for them.
The race of IO, “the cow-horned maid” is then simply the first pioneer race of the Æthiopians brought by her from the Indus to the Nile (which received its name in memory of the mother river of the colonists from India* ). For does not Prometheus say to Io that the sacred Neilos (the god, not the river) —
... “He to the land, three-cornered , thee shall guide,” — namely, to the Delta , where her sons are foreordained to found —
..... “that far-off colony...” ( v . 830 et seq .).
It is there that a new race (the Egyptians) will begin, and a “female race” (873) which, “fifth in descent” from dark Epaphos —
“Fifty in number shall return to Argos.”
Then one of the fifty virgins will fail through love and shall —
”...A kingly race in Argos bear
........
But from this seed shall dauntless heroes spring,
Bow-famous, who shall free me from these ills.”
When this hero shall arise, the Titan does not reveal; for as he remarks: —
“This, to set forth at large needs lengthy speech.”
But “Argos” is Arghya Varsha , the land of libation of the old Hierophants, whence the deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became ages later that of its neighbour, India — the Arya-varta of old.
That the subject formed part of the Sabasian mysteries is made known by several ancient writers: by Cicero (in Tuscul. Quæst. I, ii. No . 20) and by Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom . I, ii., oper. tom . 1, p. 467 — Ed. Potters ). The latter writers are the only ones who attribute the fact that Æschylus was charged by the Athenians with sacrilege and condemned to be stoned to death, to its true cause. They say that having been himself uninitiated, Æschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his trilogies on a public stage.* But he would have incurred the same condemnation had he been initiated — which must have been the case, as otherwise he must, like Socrates, have had a daimon to reveal to him the secret and sacred allegorical drama of initiation. At all events, it is not the “father of the Greek tragedy” who invented the prophecy of Prometheus; for he only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed by the priests during the MYSTERIA of the Sabasia. The latter, however, is one of the oldest sacred festivals, whose origin is to this day unknown to history. Mythologists connect it through Mithras (the Sun, called Sabasius on some old monuments) with Jupiter and Bacchus. But it was never the property of the Greeks, but dates from days immemorial.
The translators of the drama wonder how Æschylus could become guilty of such “discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the ‘Prometheus Bound’ and that depicted in the remaining dramas.” (Mrs. A. Swanwick .) This is just because Æschylus, like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain the intellectual “Sphinx” of the ages. Between Zeus, the abstract deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter represented during the mysteries no higher a principle than the lower aspect of human physical intelligence — Manas wedded to Kama ; Prometheus — its divine aspect merging into and aspiring to Buddhi — the divine Soul. Zeus was the human soul and nothing more, whenever shown yielding to his lower passions, — the jealous God, revengeful and cruel in its egotism or I-AM-NESS. Hence, Zeus is represented as a serpent — the intellectual tempter of man — which, nevertheless, begets in the course of cyclic evolution the “Man-Saviour,” the solar Bacchus or “Dionysos,” more than a man .
Dionysos is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha (the heavenly wise), and with the coming (tenth) Avatar, the glorified Spiritual Christos , who will deliver the suffering Christos (mankind, or Prometheus, on its trial). This, say Brahminical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the latter only occasionally), will happen at the end of Kaliyuga . It is only after the appearance of Kalki-Avatar, or Sosiosh, that man will be born from woman without sin. Then will Brahmâ, the Hindu deity; Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd), the Zoroastrian; Zeus, the Greco-Olympian Don Juan; Jehovah, the jealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their likes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy — vanish and disappear in thin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the dark aspects of all those deities, ever represented as their “twin brothers” and creatures, in exoteric legend, their own reflection on earth — in esoteric philosophy. The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion will be subdued.
There is one eternal Law in nature, one that always tends to adjust contraries and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false gods, and find itself finally — SELF-REDEEMED .
In its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus — his proto- and anti- types being found in every ancient theogony — stands in each of them at the very origin of physical evil, because at the threshold of human physical life. KRONOS is “Time,” whose first law is that the order of the successive and harmonious phases in the process of evolution during cyclic development should be strictly preserved — under the severe penalty of abnormal growth with all its ensuing results. It was not in the programme of natural development that man — higher animal though he may be — should become at once — intellectually, spiritually, and psychically — the demi-god he is on earth, while his physical frame remains weaker and more helpless and ephemeral than that of almost any huge mammal. The contrast is too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its indwelling god. The gift of Prometheus thus became a CURSE — though foreknown and foreseen by the HOST personified in that personage, as his name well shows.* It is in this that rests, at one and the same time, its sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a portion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or Nemesis , preferred free-will to passive slavery, intellectual self- conscious pain and even torture “while myriad time shall flow” — to inane, imbecile, instinctual beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the programme of nature, the heavenly host, “Prometheus,” still sacrificed itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind. But while saving man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the tortures of the self-consciousness of his responsibility — the result of his free will — besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir to. This torture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became henceforward blended with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was still unachieved at that period of formation.
Spiritual evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical, once its homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the chief cause, if not the sole origin of Evil .* The allegory which shows KRONOS cursing Zeus for dethroning him (in the primitive “golden” age of Saturn, when all men were demi-gods), and for creating a physical race of men weak and helpless in comparison; and then as delivering to his (Zeus’) revenge the culprit, who despoiled the gods of their prerogative of creation and who thereby raised man to their level, intellectually and spiritually — is highly philosophical. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus represents the Host of the primeval progenitors, of the PITAR, the “Fathers” who created man senseless and without any mind; while the divine Titan stands for the Spiritual creators, the devas who “fell” into generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger, than the “Prometheans”: therefore, the latter are shown conquered. “The lower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of Zeus,” was on this earth in its own sphere and plane of action; whereas, the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the meshes of matter. They (the inferior “Host”) were masters of all the Cosmic and lower titanic forces; the higher Titan possessed only the intellectual and spiritual fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind: the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance. In every such case one sees once more —
“A god... in fetters, anguish fraught;
The foe of Zeus, in hatred held by all.... ”
A god, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered in self-sacrifice —
“For that to men he bare too fond a mind...”
as the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by Selfishness and Egoism in every instance.
The modern Prometheus has now become Epi-metheus , “he who sees only after the event”; because the universal philanthropy of the former has long ago degenerated into selfishness and self-adoration. Man will rebecome the free Titan of old, but not before cyclic evolution has re-established the broken harmony between the two natures — the terrestrial and the divine; after which he becomes impermeable to the lower titanic forces, invulnerable in his personality, and immortal in his individuality, which cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated from his nature. When man understands that “Deus non fecit mortem ” (Sap. I ., 13), but that man has created it himself, he will re-become the Prometheus before his Fall.
For the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mythos in Greece, the reader is referred to Part II. of this Volume, chapter “A Second Key to Prometheus,” etc. In the said Part — a kind of supplement to the present portion — every additional information is given upon those tenets that will be the most controverted and questioned. This work is so heterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged standards of theology and modern science, that no proof which tends to show that these standards often usurp an illegal authority should be neglected.
————
The Elohim also feared the knowledge of Good and Evil for Adam, and therefore are shown as expelling him from Eden or killing him spiritually .
The story told is, that Taraka (called also Kalabhana), owing to his extraordinary Yoga-powers, had obtained all the divine knowledge of yoga-vidya and occult powers of the gods, who conspired against him. Here we see the “obedient” Host of Archangels or minor gods conspiring against the (future) Fallen angels, whom Enoch accuses of the great crime of disclosing to the world all “the secret things done in heaven.” It is Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Surgal and Uriel who denounced to the Lord God those of their Brethren who were said to have pried into the divine mysteries and taught them to men: by this means they themselves escaped a like punishment. Michael was commissioned to fight the Dragon, and so was Karttikeya, and under the same circumstances. Both are “leaders of the Celestial Host,” both Virgins, both “leaders of Saints,” “Spear-holders” (Saktidhara ), etc., etc. Karttikeya is the original of Michael and St. George, as surely as Indra is the prototype of Karttikeya.
§ The “life and the light” of the material physical world, the delight of the senses — not of the soul. Apollo is pre-eminently the human god, the god of emotional, pomp-loving and theatrical Church ritualism, with lights and music.
— who were called Pitar, as were the divine Pitars of the First Race.
* * This “water” is the blood or fluid of life which animates the earth, compared here to a living body.
† Occult teaching corroborates the popular tradition which asserts the existence of a fountain of life in the bowels of the earth and in the North Pole. It is the blood of the earth, the electromagnetic current, which circulates through all the arteries; and which is said to be found stored in the “navel” of the earth.
‡ Occultism points to the Himalayan chain as that “belt,” and maintains that whether under the water or above, it encircles the globe. The navel is described as situated to the setting sun or to the west of the Himavat in which lie the roots of Meru, which mountain is north of the Himalaya. Meru is not “the fabulous mountain in the navel or centre of the earth,” but its roots and foundations are in that navel, though it is in the far north itself. This connects it with the “central” land “that never perishes”; the land in which “the day of the mortal lasts six months and his night another six months.” As the Vishnu Purâna has it: “for the North of Meru there is, therefore, always night during day in other regions ; for Meru is north of all the dwipas and varshas ” (islands and countries). (Book II., chap. viii .) Meru is therefore neither on Atlas as Wilford suggests, nor, as Wilson tried to show, “absolutely in the centre of the globe,” only because “relatively with the inhabitants of the several portions, to all of whom the East is that quarter where the sun first appears.”
* Even the Commentaries do not refrain from Oriental metaphor. The globe is likened to the body of a woman, “mother earth.” From her neck downward, means from the inland sea now beyond the impassable barrier of ice. The Earth, as Parasâra says: “is the mother and nurse, augmented with all creatures and their qualities, the comprehender of all the worlds.”
“Above this (the Siddha) goes the sun when situated at the equinoxes; they have neither equinoctial shadow nor elevation of the pole (akshonnati , v. 42). In both directions from these are two pole-stars (dhruvatara ), fixed in the midst of the sky;to those who are situated in places of no latitude (niraksha) both these have their place in the horizon. Hence there is (on that land) no elevation of the poles, the two pole-stars being situated in their horizon; but their degrees of colatitude (lumbaka ) are 90; at Meru the degrees of latitude (aksha ) are of the same number.” (43 and 44.)
where Vâch — “the melodious cow” (Rig-Veda) “from whom mankind was produced” (Bhagavata Purâna) is shown in the Aitareya Brâhmana as pursued by her father Brahmâ, who was moved by an illicit passion, and changed her into a deer. Hence Io, refusing to yield to Jupiter’s passion, becomes “horned.” The cow was in every country the symbol of the passive generative power of nature, Isis, Vâch, Venus — the mother of the prolific god of love, Cupid, but, at the same time, that of the Logos whose symbol became with the Egyptians and the Indians — the bull — as testified to by Apis and the Hindu bulls in the most ancient temples. In esoteric philosophy the cow is the symbol of creative nature, and the Bull (her calf) the spirit which vivifies her, or “the Holy Spirit,” as Mr. Kenealy shows. Hence the symbol of the horns. These were sacred also with the Jews, who placed near the altar horns of Shittim wood, by seizing which a criminal ensured his safety.
“Oh! holy Ether, swiftly-winged gales.... Behold what I, a god, from gods endure
.........
And yet what say I? Clearly I foreknew
All that must happen....
.... The Destined it behoves,
As best I may, to bear, for well I wot
How incontestable the strength of Fate.... (105)
“Fate” stands here for KARMA, or Nemesis .
ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE VERSES OF STANZA XII
THE MS. from which these additional explanations are taken belongs to the group called “Tongshaktchi Sangye Songa,” or the Records of the “Thirty-five Buddhas of Confession,” as they are exoterically called. These personages, however, though called in the Northern Buddhist religion “Buddhas,” may just as well be called Rishis, or Avatars, etc., as they are “Buddhas who have preceded Sakyamuni” only for the Northern followers of the ethics preached by Gautama. These great Mahatmas, or Buddhas, are a universal and common property: they are historical sages — at any rate, for all the Occultists who believe in such a hierarchy of Sages, the existence of which has been proved to them by the learned ones of the Fraternity. They are chosen from among some ninety-seven Buddhas in one group, and fifty-three in another,* mostly imaginary personages, who are really the personifications of the powers of the first-named. These “baskets” of the oldest writings on “palm leaves” are kept very secret. Each MS. has appended to it a short synopsis of the history of that sub-race to which the particular “Buddha-Lha” belonged. The one special MS. from which the fragments which follow are extracted, and then rendered into a more comprehensible language, is said to have been copied from stone tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest day of the Fifth Race, who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the chief continents of the Atlantean race. The day when much, if not all, of that which is given here from the archaic records, will be found correct, is not far distant. Then the modern symbologists will acquire the certitude that even Odin, or the god Woden, the highest god in the German and Scandinavian mythology, is one of these thirty-five Buddhas; one of the earliest, indeed, for the continent to which he and his race belonged, is also one of the earliest. So early, in truth, that in the days when tropical nature was to be found, where now lie eternal unthawing snows, one could cross almost by dry land from Norway via Iceland and Greenland, to the lands that at present surround Hudson’s Bay. Just, as in the palmy days of the Atlantean giants, the sons of the “giants from the East,” a pilgrim could perform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara desert, to the lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events which were never written outside the human memory, but which were religiously transmitted from one generation to another, and from race to race, may have been preserved by constant transmission “within the book volume of the brain,” and through countless æons, with more truth and accuracy than inside any written document or record. “That which is part of our souls is eternal,” says Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our souls than that which happens at the dawns of our lives? Those lives are countless, but the soul or spirit that animates us throughout these myriads of existences is the same; and though “the book and volume” of the physical brain may forget events within the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections can never desert the divine soul within us. Its whispers may be too soft, the sound of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical senses; yet the shadow of events that were , just as much as the shadow of the events that are to come , is within its perceptive powers, and is ever present before its mind’s eye.
It is this soul-voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe in tradition more than in written History, that what is said below is all true, and relates to pre-historic facts.
This is what is written in one passage: —
“THE KINGS OF LIGHT HAVE DEPARTED IN WRATH. THE SINS OF MEN HAVE BECOME SO BLACK THAT EARTH QUIVERS IN HER GREAT AGONY.... THE AZURE SEATS REMAIN EMPTY. WHO OF THE BROWN, WHO OF THE RED, OR YET AMONG THE BLACK (races ), CAN SIT IN THE SEATS OF THE BLESSED, THE SEATS OF KNOWLEDGE AND MERCY! WHO CAN ASSUME THE FLOWER OF POWER, THE PLANT OF THE GOLDEN STEM AND THE AZURE BLOSSOM?”
The Oldest Records about Atlantis
The “Kings of Light” is the name given in all old records to the Sovereigns of the divine Dynasties. The “azure seats” are translated “celestial thrones” in certain documents. The “flower of power” is now the Lotus; what it may have been at that period, who can tell.
The writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his people. They had become bereft of their “azure” (celestial) kings, and “they of the Deva hue,” the moon-like complexion, and “they of the refulgent (golden) face” have gone “to the land of bliss, the land of metal and fireʺ; or — agreeably with the rules of symbolism — to the lands lying North and East, from whence “the great waters have been swept away, sucked in by the earth and dissipated in the air.” The wise races had perceived “the black storm-dragons, called down by the dragons of wisdom” — and “had fled, led on by the shining Protectors of the most Excellent Land” — the great ancient adepts, presumably; those the Hindus refer to as their Manus and Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata Manu.
They “of the yellow hue” are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations; and the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There entire new races were born; there they lived and died until the separation of the nations. But this “separation” did not take place either in the localities assigned for it by modern science, nor in the way the Aryans are shown to have divided and separated by Mr. Max Muller and other Aryanists . Nearly two-thirds of one million years have elapsed since that period. The yellow-faced giants of the post-Atlantean day, had ample time, throughout this forced confinement to one part of the world, and with the same racial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, to branch off during a period of nearly 700,000 years into the most heterogeneous and diversified types. The same is shown in Africa; nowhere does a more extraordinary variability of types exist, from black to almost white, from gigantic men to dwarfish races; and this only because of their forced isolation. The Africans have never left their continent for several hundred thousands of years. If to-morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear and other lands to re-emerge instead; and if the African tribes were to separate and scatter on the face of the earth, it is they who, in about a hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured nations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into superior and inferior races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.
Such are the statements made and facts given in the archaic records. Collating and comparing them with some modern theories of Evolution, minus natural selection (Vide “Physiological Selection” by G. J. Romanes, F.R.S.), these statements appear quite reasonable and logical.* Thus, while the Aryans are the descendants of the yellow Adams, the gigantic and highly civilized Atlanto-Aryan race, the Semites — and the Jews along with them — are those of the red Adam; and both de Quatrefages and the writers of the Mosaic Genesis are right. For, could chapter v. of the First Book of Moses be compared with the genealogies found in our Archaic Bible, the period from Adam unto Noah would be found noticed therein, of course under different names, the respective years of the Patriarchs being turned into periods, the whole being shown symbolical and allegorical. In the MS. under consideration many and frequent are the references to the great knowledge and civilization of the Atlantean nations, showing the polity of several of them and the nature of their arts and sciences. If the Third Root-Race, the Lemuro-Atlanteans, are already spoken of as having been drowned “with their high civilizations and gods” (“Esoteric Buddhism,” p. 65), how much more may the same be said of the Atlanteans!
It is from the Fourth Race that the early Aryans got their knowledge of “the bundle of wonderful things,” the Sabha and Mayasabha , mentioned in the Mahabhârata, the gift of Mayâsur to the Pándavas. It is from them that they learnt aëronautics, Viwan Vidya (the “knowledge of flying in air-vehiclesʺ), and, therefore, their great arts of meteorography and meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Aryans inherited their most valuable science of the hidden virtues of precious and other stones, of chemistry, or rather alchemy, of mineralogy, geology, physics and astronomy.
Several times the writer has put to herself the question: “Is the story of Exodus — in its details at least — as narrated in the Old Testament, original? Or is it, like the story of Moses himself and many others, simply another version of the legends told of the Atlanteans?” For who, upon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail to perceive the great similarity of the fundamental features? The anger of “God” at the obduracy of Pharaoh, his command to the “chosen” ones, to spoil the Egyptians, before departing, of their “jewels of silver and jewels of gold” (Exod. xi.); and finally the Egyptians and their Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea (xiv.). For here is a fragment of the earlier story from the Commentary: —
The Doom of Atlantis
... “And the ‘great King of the dazzling Face,’ the chief of all the Yellow-faced, was sad, seeing the sins of the Black-faced .
“He sent his air-vehicles (Viwan) to all his brother-chiefs (chiefs of other nations and tribes) with pious men within, saying: ‘Prepare. Arise ye men of the good law, and cross the land while (yet) dry.’
‘The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the land. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face (the Sorcerers) live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires (the Gnomes and fire Elementals) are preparing their magic Agneyâstra (fire-weapons worked by magic). But the Lords of the Dark Eye (ʺEvil Eyeʺ) are stronger than they (the Elementals) and they are the slaves of the mighty ones. They are versed in Ashtar (Vidya, the highest magical knowledge).* Come and use yours (i.e., your magic powers, in order to counteract those of the Sorcerers). Let every lord of the Dazzling Face (an adept of the White Magic) cause the Viwan of every lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands (or possession), lest any (of the Sorcerers) should by its means escape from the waters, avoid the rod of the Four , (Karmic deities) and save his wicked’ (followers, or people).
‘May every yellow face send sleep from himself (mesmerize?) to every black face. May even they (the Sorcerers) avoid pain and suffering. May every man true to the Solar Gods bind (paralyze) every man under the lunar gods, lest he should suffer or escape his destiny .
‘And may every yellow face offer of his life-water (blood) to the speaking animal of a black face, lest he awaken his master. *
‘The hour has struck, the black night is ready, etc., etc .
........................................
‘Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the great Four. May the Kings of light return.’
“The great King fell upon his dazzling Face and wept ....
“When the Kings assembled the waters had already moved ....
“(But) the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the water mark. Their Kings reached them in their Viwans, and led them on to the lands of Fire and Metal (East and North).”
........................................
Still, in another passage, it is said: —
”.... Stars (meteors) showered on the lands of the black Faces; but they slept .
“The speaking beasts (the magic watchers) kept quiet .
“The nether lords waited for orders, but they came not, for their masters slept .
“The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end of the Earth to the other. High lands remained, the bottom of the Earth (the lands of the antipodes) remained dry. There dwelt those who escaped; the men of the yellow-faces and of the straight eye (the frank and sincere people).
“When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their Viwans in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone.”
Then a passage shows some of the more powerful magicians of the “Dark Face” — who awoke earlier than the others — pursuing those who had “spoilt them” and who were in the rear-guard, for — “the nations that were led away, were as thick as the stars of the milky way,” says a more modern Commentary, written in Sanskrit only.
“Like as a dragon-snake uncoils slowly its body, so the Sons of men, led on by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their folds, and spreading out, expanded like a running stream of sweet waters..... many of the faint-hearted among them perished on their way. But most were saved.”
Yet the pursuers, “whose heads and chests soared high above the water,” chased them “for three lunar terms” until finally reached by the rising waves, they perished to the last man, the soil sinking under their feet and the earth engulfing those who had desecrated her.
This sounds a good deal like the original material upon which the similar story in Exodus was built many hundred thousands of years later. The biography of Moses, the story of his birth, childhood and rescue from the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, is now shown to have been adapted from the Chaldean narrative about Sargon. And if so, the Assyrian tile in the British Museum being a good proof of it, why not that of the Jews robbing the Egyptians of their jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and so on? The gigantic magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the “lords of the Dark Face,” may have become in the later narrative the Egyptian Magi, and the yellow-faced nations of the Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of Jacob, the “chosen people.”... One more statement has to be made: There have been several Divine Dynasties — a series for every Root Race beginning with the Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity. The last Seven Dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldean records belong to the Fifth Race, which, though generally called Aryan, was not entirely so, as it was ever largely mixed up with races to which Ethnology gives other names. It would be impossible, in view of the limited space at our disposal, to go any further into the description of the Atlanteans, in whom the whole East believes as much as we believe in the ancient Egyptians, but whose existence the majority of the Western Scientists deny, as they have denied, before this, many a truth, from the existence of Homer down to that of the carrier pigeon. The civilization of the Atlanteans was greater even than that of the Egyptians. It is their degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato’s Atlantis, which built the first Pyramids in the country, and that certainly before the advent of the “Eastern Æthiopians,” as Herodotus calls the Egyptians. This may be well inferred from the statement made by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the Pyramids that “there are also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which, it is said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be lost.”
These men who “divined the coming of floods” were not Egyptians, who never had any, except the periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last remnants of the Atlanteans, we maintain. Those races which are dimly suspected by Science, and thinking of which Mr. Ch. Gould, the well-known geologist, says: “Can we suppose that we have at all exhausted the great museum of nature? Have we, in fact, penetrated yet beyond its antechambers? Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldea and of China, shadowy mementos of pre-historic man, handed down by tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands from others, which, like the fabled (?) Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization” (“Mythical Monsters,” p . 19).
After this one can turn with more confidence to the words of a Master who wrote, several years before these words were penned by Mr. Gould: — “The Fourth Race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and Roman and even Egyptian civilizations are nothing compared to the civilizations that began with the Third Race” — after its separation.
But if this civilization and the mastery of arts and sciences are denied to the Third and Fourth Races, no one will deny that between the great civilizations of antiquity, such as those of Egypt and India, there stretched the dark ages of crass ignorance and barbarism ever since the beginning of the Christian era up to our modern civilization; during which period all recollection of these traditions was lost. As said in Isis Unveiled: “Why should we forget that, ages before the prow of the adventurous Genoese clove the Western waters, the Phœnician vessels had circumnavigated the globe, and spread civilization in regions now silent and deserted? What archæologist will dare assert that the same hand which planned the Pyramids of Egypt, Karnak, and the thousand ruins now crumbling to oblivion on the sandy banks of the Nile, did not erect the monumental Nagkon-Wat of Cambodia? or trace the hieroglyphics on the obelisks and doors of the deserted Indian village, newly discovered in British Columbia by Lord Dufferin? or those on the ruins of Palenque and Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics we treasure in our museums — last mementos of the long ‘lost arts’ — speak loudly in favour of ancient civilization? And do they not prove, over and over again, that nations and continents that have passed away have buried along with them arts and sciences, which neither the first crucible ever heated in a mediæval cloister, nor the last cracked by a modern chemist, have revived, nor will — at least, in the present century.”
And the same question may be put now that was put then; it may be once more asked: “How does it happen that the most advanced standpoint that has been reached in our times, only enables us to see in the dim distance up the Alpine path of knowledge the monumental proofs that earlier explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached and occupied?
“If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of Luxor — the Tyrian purple; the bright vermilion and dazzling blue which decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on the first day of their application? The indestructible cement of the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking; the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass? And if chemistry is so little able to rival even the early mediæval ages in some arts, why boast of achievements which, according to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of years ago? The more archæology and philology advance, the more humiliating to our pride are the discoveries which are daily made, the more glorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who, perhaps on account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have been until now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire of superstition.”
Among other arts and sciences, the ancients — ay, as a heirloom from the Atlanteans — had those of astronomy and symbolism, which included the knowledge of the Zodiac.
As already explained, the whole of antiquity believed, with good reason, that humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the planets, and these with Zodiacal signs. The whole world’s History is recorded in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt this was proved by the Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sufi , the writer has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of the past, as also of the future , history of our globe. Yet the original records exist, most undeniably.
As Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, nor do they understand those they happen to know (witness Bentley), the reader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to turn to the work of Denon (Travels in Egypt, Vol. II .) in which, if understood , the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs, can be found and examined. Having seen them personally, the writer has no longer need to trust to what other students — who have examined and studied both very carefully — have to say of them. As asserted by the Egyptian Priests to Herodotus, who was informed that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, thus was it found and corroborated by Mackey.* For he states that the Poles are represented on the Zodiacs in both positions, “And in that which shows the Poles (polar axes) at right angles, there are marks which prove that ‘it was not the last time they were in that position; but the first ’ — after the Zodiacs had been traced.” “Capricorn,” he adds, “is represented at the North Pole, and Cancer is divided, near its middle, at the South Pole; which is a confirmation that originally they had their winter when the Sun was in Cancer; but the chief characteristics of its being a monument commemorating the first time that the Pole had been in that position, are the Lion and the Virgin.” (See in Part II., §“A Mystery of the Zodiac.”)
Broadly calculated, it is believed by the Egyptologists that the great Pyramid was built 3,350 B.C. (See Proctor, Knowledge, Vol. I. pp . 242, 400); and that Menes and his Dynasty existed 7 50 years before the Fourth Dynasty (supposed to have built the Pyramids) had appeared (“The Great Pyramid,” Staniland Wake ). Thus 4,100 years B.C. is the age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s declaration that “all the facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians had already made very great progress in the arts of civilization before the age of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley of the Nile” (Rawlinson’s “Herodotus,” vol. ii. p . 345) is very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis. It points to great civilization in prehistoric times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo-Hor (“the servants of Horus”) were the people who had settled in Egypt; and, as M. G. Maspero affirms, it is to this prehistoric race that “belongs the honour... of having founded the principal cities of Egypt, and established the most important sanctuaries.” This was before the great Pyramid epoch, and when Egypt had hardly arisen from the waters. Yet “they possessed the hieroglyphic form of writing special to the Egyptians, and must have been already considerably advanced in civilization.” It was, says Lenormant, “the country of the great prehistoric sanctuaries, seats of the sacerdotal dominion, which played the most important part in the origin of civilization.” What is the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000, at the utmost of 5,000 years B.C. (Maspero). Now it is claimed that it is by means of the cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal year) that the approximate year of the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained. “Assuming that the long narrow downward passage was directed towards the pole star of the pyramid builders, astronomers have shown that.... Alpha Draconis, the then pole-star, was in the required position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in 2,170 B.C. (Proctor, quoted by Staniland Wake.) But we are also told that “this relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an extraordinary one.. it could not occur again for a whole sidereal year” (ibid ). This demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of three sidereal years, the great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years ago, or in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least as readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C.
Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, as on the Dendera Zodiac, the same characteristics of the signs are found. Those who know well the Hindu symbols and constellations, will be able to find out by the description of the Egyptian, whether the indications of the chronological time are correct or not. On the Dendera Zodiac as preserved by the modern Egyptian Coptic and Greek adepts, and explained a little differently by Mackey, the Lion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is almost straight, pointing downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this position agreeing with the original conformation of these constellations. “But in many places we see the Lion (Simha ),” Mackey adds, “with his tail turned up over his back, and ending with a Serpent’s head; thereby showing that the Lion had been ‘inverted’; which, indeed, must have been the case with the whole Zodiac and every other Constellation, when the Pole had been inverted.”
Speaking of the Circular Zodiac, given also by Denon, he says: — There, “the Lion is standing on the Serpent, and his tail forming a curve downward, from which it is found that though six or seven hundred thousand years must have passed between the two positions, yet they had made but little difference between in the constellations of Leo and the Hydra; while Virgo is represented very differently in the two. In the circular Zodiac, the Virgin is nursing her child; but it seems that they had not had that idea when the pole was first within the plane of the Ecliptic; for in this Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see three Virgins between the Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds in her hand an ear of wheat. It is much to be lamented that there is in this Zodiac a breach of the figure in the latter part of Leo and the beginning of Virgo which has taken away one Decan out of each sign.”
Nevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong to three different epochs: namely, to the last three family races of the fourth Sub-race of the Fifth Root-race, each of which must have lived approximately from 25 to 30,000 years. The first of these (the “Aryan-Asiatics”) witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the “giant Atlanteans“* who perished some 850,000 years ago (the Ruta and Daitya Island-Continents) toward the close of the Miocene Age. The fourth sub-race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteans — the Aryo-Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years ago. In order to understand this the reader is asked to glance at the diagram of the genealogical tree of the Fifth Root-Race — generally, though hardly correctly, called the Aryan race, and the explanations appended to it.
Let the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root Races and the evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and concisely in Mr. Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism.”
The Races, Sub-Races, and Family Races
1. There are seven ROUNDS in every manvantara; this one is the Fourth, and we are in the Fifth Root-Race, at present.
2. Each Root-Race has seven sub-races.
3. Each sub-race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be called Branch or “Family” races.
4. The little tribes, shoots, and offshoots of the last-named are countless and depend on Karmic action. Examine the “genealogical tree” hereto appended, and you will understand. The illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist the reader in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the confusion which exists between the terms which have been used at different times for the divisions of Humanity. It is also here attempted to express in figures — but only within approximate limits, for the sake of comparison — the duration of time through which it is possible to definitely distinguish one division from another. It would only lead to hopeless confusion if any attempt were made to give accurate dates to a few; for the Races, Sub-Races, etc., etc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap and are entangled with each other until it is nearly impossible to separate them.
The human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably as an illustration.
The main stem of a tree may be compared to the ROOT-RACE (A).
Its larger limbs to the various SUB-RACES; seven in number (B1, B2).
On each of these limbs are seven BRANCHES, OR FAMILY-RACES. (C).
After this the cactus-plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy “leaves” are covered with sharp spines, each of which may be compared to a nation or tribe of human beings.
Now our Fifth Root-Race has already been in existence — as a race sui generis and quite free from its parent stem — about 1,000,000 years; therefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding Sub-Races has lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each Family-Race has an average existence of about 30,000 years. Thus the European “Family Race” has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or the innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding “season” of three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the comparative approximation of duration between the lives of a “Family-Race” and a “Sidereal year.”
The knowledge of the foregoing, and the accurately correct division, formed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were taught to the disciples, and where they were transmitted by one hierophant to another. Everyone is aware that the European astronomers assign (arbitrarily enough) the date of the invention of the Egyptian Zodiac to the years 2000 or 2400 B.C. (Proctor ); and insist that this invention coincides in its date with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid. This, to an Occultist and Eastern astronomer, must appear quite absurd. The year of the Kaliyuga is said to have begun between the 17th and 18th of February in the year 3102 B.C. Now the Hindus claim that in the year 20400 before Kaliyugam, the origin of their Zodiac coincided with the spring equinox — there being at the time a conjunction of the Sun and Moon — and Bailly proved by a lengthy and careful computation of that date, that, even if fictitious, the epoch from which they had started to establish the beginning of their Kaliyug was very real . That “epoch is the year 3102 before our era,” he writes. (See Part III., Book I . “Hindu Astronomy defended by an Academician“ .) The lunar eclipse arriving just a fortnight after the beginning of the black Age — it took place in a point situated between the Wheat Ear of Virgo and the star Θ (q) of the same constellation. One of their most esoteric Cycles is based upon certain conjunctions and respective positions of Virgo and the Pleiades — (Krittika ). Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern India and Lanka,* the esoteric meaning was evidently identical. The three “Virgins,” or Virgo in three different positions, meant, with both, the record of the first three “divine or astronomical Dynasties,” who taught the Third Root-Race; and after having abandoned the Atlanteans to their doom, returned (or redescended, rather) during the third Sub-Race of the Fifth, in order to reveal to saved humanity the mysteries of their birth-place — the sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical record of the human races and the three Dynasties (Gods, Manes — semi-divine astrals of the Third and Fourth, and the “Heroes” of the Fifth Race), which preceded the purely human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and passages of the Egyptian Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles of course changed the face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed each time. In Mackey’s “Sphinxiad” the speculations of the bold author must have horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, as he says, fantastically enough: —
“But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by those monuments (the Labyrinth, the Pyramids and the Zodiacs) does not exceed five millions of years (which is not so) ; which falls short of the records given us both by the (esoteric) Chinese and Hindus; which latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or eight millions of years ; which I have seen upon a talisman of porcelain.... ”
The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura-Maya, as the modern Hindus still have. As stated in “Esoteric Buddhism ,” the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and “Romans” some thousand years ago, were “remnants of the Atlanto-Aryans,” i.e ., the former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans; the last-named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose sudden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The human Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the knowledge of the Atlanteans, though there was no more Atlantean blood in their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic records. All this has been shown long ago.* And it is just because the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75 and 80,000 years old that the Zodiac of the Greeks is far later. Volney has correctly pointed out in his “Ruins of Empires” (p. 360) that it is only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.
* Gautama Buddha, named Shakya Thub-pa, is the twenty-seventh of the last group, as most of these Buddhas belong to the divine dynasties which instructed mankind.
Of these “Buddhas,” or the “Enlightened,” the far distant predecessors of Gautama the Buddha, and who represent, we are taught, once living men, great adepts and Saints, in whom the “Sons of Wisdom” had incarnated, and who were, therefore, so to speak, minor Avatars of the Celestial Beings — eleven only belong to the Atlantean race, and 24 to the Fifth race, from its beginnings. They are identical with the Tirtankaras of the Jainas.
This may account for the similarity of the artificial mounds in the U. S. of America, and the tumuli in Norway. It is this identity that led some American archæologists to suggest that Norwegian mariners had discovered America some one thousand years ago. (Vide Holmboe’s Traces de Bouddhisme en Norvege , p. 23). There is no doubt that America is that ʺfar distant land into which pious men and heavy storms had transferred the sacred doctrine,” as a Chinese writer suggested by his description to Neumann. But neither Professor Holmboe, of Stockholm, nor the American archæologists, have guessed the right age of the mounds, or the tumuli. The fact that Norwegians may have re-discovered the land that their long-forgotten forefathers believed to have perished in the general submersion, does not conflict with that other fact that the Secret Doctrine of the land which was the cradle of physical man, and of the Fifth Race, had found its way into the so-called New World ages and ages before the “Sacred Doctrine” of Buddhism.
* This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed and answered. See Five Years of Theosophy . (Art. “Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism,” pp . 325-46).
Volney says that, as Aries was in its 15th degree 1447 B.C., it follows that the first degree of “Libra” could not have coincided with the vernal equinox more lately than 15,194 years B.C., to which if you add 1790 since Christ, when Volney wrote this, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the (Greek or rather Hellenic) origin of the Zodiac.