Commentaries On The Seven Stanzas And Their Terms, According To Their Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas (part 2)

Even the teaching about the septenary constitution of the sidereal bodies and of the macrocosm—from which the septenary division of the microcosm, or man—has until now been among the most esoteric. In olden times it used to be divulged only at Initiation together with the most sacred figures of the cycles. Now, as stated in one of the Theosophical journals, the revelation of the whole system of cosmogony had not been contemplated, nor even thought for one moment possible, [pg 192] at a time when a few scraps of information were sparingly given out, in answer to letters, written by the author of Esoteric Buddhism, in which he put forward a multiplicity of questions. Among these were questions on such problems as no Master, however high and independent he might be, would have the right to answer, and thus divulge to the world the most time-honoured and archaic of the mysteries of the ancient college-temples. Hence only a few of the doctrines were revealed in their broad outlines, while details were constantly withheld, and all the efforts made to elicit more information about them were systematically eluded from the beginning. This was perfectly natural. Of the four Vidyâs, out of the seven branches of Knowledge mentioned in the Purânas—namely, Yajna Vidyâ, the performance of religious rites in order to produce certain results; Mahâ Vidyâ, the great (magic) knowledge, now degenerated into Tântrika worship; Guhya Vidyâ, the science of Mantras and their true rhythm or chanting, of mystical incantations, etc.; Âtmâ Vidyâ, or the true spiritual and divine Wisdom—it is only the last which can throw final and absolute light upon the teachings of the three first named. Without the help of Âtmâ Vidyâ, the other three remain no better than surface sciences, geometrical magnitudes having length and breadth, but no thickness. They are like the soul, limbs and mind of a sleeping man, capable of mechanical motions, of chaotic dreams and even sleep-walking, of producing visible effects, but stimulated only by instinctual not intellectual causes, least of all by fully conscious spiritual impulses. A good deal can be given out and explained from the three first-named sciences. But unless the key to their teachings is furnished by Âtmâ Vidyâ, they will remain for ever like the fragments of a mangled text-book, like the adumbrations of great truths, dimly perceived by the most spiritual, but distorted out of all proportion by those who would nail every shadow to the wall.

Then, again, another great perplexity was created in the minds of students by the incomplete exposition of the doctrine of the evolution of the Monads. To be fully realized, both this process and that of the birth of the Globes must be examined far more from their metaphysical aspect, than from what one might call a statistical standpoint, involving figures and numbers which are rarely permitted to be widely used. Unfortunately, there are few who are inclined to handle these doctrines only metaphysically. Even the best of the Western writers upon our doctrine declares in his work, when speaking of the evolution of the [pg 193] Monads, that “on pure metaphysics of that sort we are not now engaged.” And in such case, as the Teacher remarks in a letter to him: “Why this preaching of our doctrines, all this uphill work and swimming ‘in adversum flumen’? Why should the West ... learn ... from the East ... that which can never meet the requirements of the special tastes of the æsthetics?” And he draws his correspondent's attention “to the formidable difficulties encountered by us [the Adepts] in every attempt we make to explain our metaphysics to the Western mind.”

And well he may; for outside of metaphysics, no Occult philosophy, no Esotericism is possible. It is like trying to explain the aspirations and affections, love and hatred, the most private and sacred workings in the soul and mind of a living man, by an anatomical description of the thorax and brain of his dead body.

Let us now examine two tenets mentioned above, but hardly alluded to in Esoteric Buddhism, and supplement them as far as lies in our power.

Additional Facts And Explanations Concerning The Globes And The Monads.

Two statements made in the above work must be noticed and the author's opinions quoted. The first is as follows:

The spiritual Monads ... do not fully complete their mineral existence on Globe A, then complete it on Globe B, and so on. They pass several times round the whole circle as minerals, and then again several times round as vegetables, and several times as animals. We purposely refrain for the present from going into figures, etc., etc.

That was a wise course to adopt in view of the great secrecy maintained with regard to figures and numbers. This reticence is now partially relinquished; but it would perhaps have been better had the real numbers concerning Rounds and evolutional gyrations been either entirely divulged at the time, or entirely withheld. Mr. Sinnett understood this difficulty well when saying:

For reasons which are not easy for the outsider to divine, the possessors of Occult knowledge are especially reluctant to give out numerical facts relating to cosmogony, though it is hard for the uninitiated to understand why they should be withheld.

[pg 194]

That there were such reasons is evident. Nevertheless, it is to this reticence that most of the confused ideas of some Eastern as well as Western pupils are due. The difficulties in the way of the acceptance of the particular tenets under consideration seemed great, just because of the absence of any data to go upon. But there it was. For, as the Masters have many times declared, the figures belonging to the Occult calculations cannot be given—outside the circle of pledged Chelâs, and not even these can break the rules.

To make things plainer, without touching upon the mathematical aspects of the doctrine, the teaching given may be expanded and some obscure points solved. As the evolution of the Globes and that of the Monads are so closely interblended, we will make of the two teachings one. In reference to the Monads, the reader is asked to bear in mind that Eastern philosophy rejects the Western theological dogma of a newly-created soul for every baby born, a dogma as unphilosophical as it is impossible in the economy of Nature. There must be a limited number of Monads, evolving and growing more and more perfect, through their assimilation of many successive Personalities, in every new Manvantara. This is absolutely necessary in view of the doctrines of Rebirth and Karma, and of the gradual return of the human Monad to its source—Absolute Deity. Thus, although the hosts of more or less progressed Monads are almost incalculable, they are still finite, as is everything in this Universe of differentiation and finiteness.

As shown in the double diagram of the human Principles and the ascending Globes of the World-Chains, there is an eternal concatenation of causes and effects, and a perfect analogy which runs through, and links together, all the lines of evolution. One begets the other—Globes as Personalities. But, let us begin at the beginning.

The general outline of the process by which the successive Planetary Chains are formed has just been given. To prevent future misconceptions, some further details may be offered which will also throw light on the history of Humanity on our own Chain, the progeny of that of the Moon.

In the accompanying diagram, Fig. 1 represents the Lunar Chain of seven Globes at the outset of its seventh or last Round; while Fig. 2 represents the Earth Chain which will be, but is not yet in existence. The seven Globes of each Chain are distinguished in their cyclic order [pg 195] by the letters A to G, the Globes of the Earth Chain being further marked by a cross, the symbol of the Earth.

Now, it must be remembered that the Monads cycling round any septenary Chain are divided into seven Classes or Hierarchies, according to their respective stages of evolution, consciousness and merit. Let us follow, then, the order of their appearance on Globe A, in the First Round. The time-spaces between the appearances of these Hierarchies on any one Globe are so adjusted, that when Class 7, the last, appears on Globe A, Class 1, the first, has just passed on to Globe B; and so on, step by step, all round the Chain.

Again, in the Seventh Round of the Lunar Chain, when Class 7, the last, quits Globe A, that Globe, instead of falling asleep, as it had done in previous Rounds, begins to die (to go into its Planetary Pralaya); and in dying it transfers successively, as just said, its principles, or life-elements and energy, etc., one after the other, to a new laya-centre, which commences the formation of Globe A of the Earth Chain. A similar process takes place for each of the Globes of the Lunar Chain, one after the other, each forming a fresh Globe of the Earth Chain. [pg 196] Our Moon was the fourth Globe of the series, and was on the same plane of perception as our Earth. But Globe A of the Lunar Chain is not fully “dead,” till the first Monads of the first Class have passed from Globe G or Z, the last of the Lunar Chain, into the Nirvâna which awaits them between the two Chains; and similarly for all the other Globes as stated, each giving birth to the corresponding Globe of the Earth Chain.

Further, when Globe A of the new Chain is ready, the first Class or Hierarchy of Monads from the Lunar Chain incarnate upon it in the lowest kingdom, and so on successively. The result of this is, that it is only the first Class of Monads which attains the human state of development during the first Round, since the second Class, on each Globe, arriving later, has not time to reach that stage. Thus the Monads of Class 2 reach the incipient human stage only in the Second Round, and so on up to the middle of the Fourth Round. But at this point—and on this Fourth Round in which the human stage will be fully developed—the “door” into the human kingdom closes; and henceforward the number of “human” Monads, i.e., Monads in the human stage of development, is complete. For the Monads which had not reached the human stage by this point, will, owing to the evolution of Humanity itself, find themselves so far behind, that they will reach the human stage only at the close of the Seventh and last Round. They will, therefore, not be men on this Chain, but will form the Humanity of a future Manvantara, and be rewarded by becoming “men” on a higher Chain altogether, thus receiving their Karmic compensation. To this there is but one solitary exception, and for very good reasons, of which we shall speak farther on. But this accounts for the difference in the Races.

It thus becomes apparent how perfect is the analogy between the processes of Nature in the cosmos and in the individual man. The latter lives through his life-cycle, and dies. His higher principles, corresponding in the development of a Planetary Chain to the cycling Monads, pass into Devachan, which corresponds to the Nirvâna and states of rest intervening between two Chains. The man's lower principles are disintegrated in time, and are used by Nature again for the formation of new human principles; the same process also taking place in the disintegration and formation of Worlds. Analogy is thus the surest guide to the comprehension of the Occult teachings.

This is one of the “seven mysteries of the moon,” and it is now [pg 197] revealed. The seven “mysteries” are called by the Japanese Yamabooshis, the mystics of the Lao-Tze sect and the ascetic monks of Kioto, the Dzenodoo—the “Seven Jewels”; only, the Japanese and the Chinese Buddhist ascetics and Initiates are, if possible, even more reticent in giving out their “Knowledge” than are the Hindûs.

But the reader must not be allowed to lose sight of the Monads, and must be enlightened as to their nature, as far as permitted, without trespassing upon the highest mysteries, of which the writer does not in any way pretend to know the last or final word.

The Monadic Host may be roughly divided into three great Classes:

1. The most developed Monads—the Lunar Gods or “Spirits,” called, in India, the Pitris—whose function it is to pass in the First Round through the whole triple cycle of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, in their most ethereal, filmy, and rudimentary forms, in order to clothe themselves in, and assimilate, the nature of the newly formed Chain. They are those who first reach the human form—if there can be any form in the realm of the almost subjective—on Globe A, in the First Round. It is they, therefore, who lead and represent the human element during the Second and Third Rounds, and finally evolve their shadows at the beginning of the Fourth Round for the second Class, or those who come behind them.

2. Those Monads that are the first to reach the human stage during the three and a half Rounds, and to become “men.”

3. The laggards, the Monads which are retarded, and which will not reach, by reason of Karmic impediments, the human stage at all during this Cycle or Round, save one exception which will be spoken of elsewhere, as already promised.

We are forced to use above the misleading word “men,” and this is a clear proof of how little any European language is adapted to express these subtle distinctions.

It stands to reason that these “men” did not resemble the men of to-day, either in form or nature. Why then, it may be asked, call them “men” at all? Because there is no other term, in any Western language, which approximately conveys the idea intended. The word “men” at least indicates that these beings were “manus,” thinking entities, however they differed in form and intellection from ourselves. But in reality they were, in respect of spirituality and intellection, rather “gods” than “men.”

The same difficulty of language is met with in describing the [pg 198] “stages” through which the Monad passes. Metaphysically speaking, it is of course an absurdity to talk of the “development” of a Monad, or to say that it becomes “man.” But any attempt to preserve metaphysical accuracy of language, in the use of such a tongue as the English, would necessitate at least three extra volumes of this work, and would entail an amount of verbal repetition which would be wearisome in the extreme. It stands to reason that a Monad cannot either progress or develop, or even be affected by the changes of state it passes through. It is not of this world or plane, and may only be compared to an indestructible star of divine light and fire, thrown down on to our Earth, as a plank of salvation for the Personalities in which it indwells. It is for the latter to cling to it; and thus partaking of its divine nature, obtain immortality. Left to itself the Monad will cling to no one; but, like the plank, be drifted away to another incarnation, by the unresting current of evolution.

Now the evolution of the external form, or body, round the astral, is produced by the terrestrial forces, just as in the case of the lower kingdoms; but the evolution of the internal, or real, Man is purely spiritual. It is now no more a passage of the impersonal Monad through many and various forms of matter—endowed at best with instinct and consciousness on quite a different plane—as in the case of external evolution, but a journey of the “Pilgrim-Soul” through various states of not only matter, but of self-consciousness and self-perception, or of perception from apperception.

The Monad emerges from its state of spiritual and intellectual unconsciousness; and, skipping the first two planes—too near the Absolute to permit of any correlation with anything on a lower plane—it gets directly into the plane of Mentality. But there is no plane in the whole universe with a broader margin, or a wider field of action, in its almost endless gradations of perceptive and apperceptive qualities, than this plane, which has in its turn an appropriate smaller plane for every “form,” from the Mineral Monad up to the time when that Monad blossoms forth by evolution into the Divine Monad. But all the time it is still one and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations, throughout its ever succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or partial or total obscuration of matter—two polar antitheses—as it ascends into the realms of mental spirituality, or descends into the depths of materiality.

To return to Esoteric Buddhism. The second statement is with [pg 199] regard to the enormous period intervening between the mineral epoch, on Globe A, and the man epoch, the term “man epoch” being used because of the necessity of giving a name to that fourth kingdom which follows the animal, though in truth the “man” on Globe A, during the First Round, is no man, but only his prototype, or dimensionless image, from the astral regions. The statement runs as follows:

The full development of the mineral epoch on Globe A, prepares the way for the vegetable development, and, as soon as this begins, the mineral life-impulse overflows into Globe B. Then, when the vegetable development on Globe A is complete and the animal development begins, the vegetable life-impulse overflows to Globe B, and the mineral impulse passes on to Globe C. Then finally comes the human life impulse on Globe A.

And so it goes on for three Rounds, when it slackens, and finally stops at the threshold of our Globe, in the Fourth Round; because the human period (of the true physical men to be), the seventh, is now reached. This is evident, for as said:

... There are processes of evolution which precede the mineral kingdom, and thus a wave of evolution, indeed several waves of evolution, precede the mineral wave in its progress round the spheres.

And now we have to quote from another article, “The Mineral Monad,” in Five Years of Theosophy:

There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementals, or nascent centres of forces—from the first stage of differentiation of [from] Mûlaprakriti [or rather Pradhâna, Primordial Homogeneous Matter] to its third degree—i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning point in the degrees of the “Monadic Essence,” considered as an evolving energy. Three stages [sub-physical] on the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages on the objective physical side—these are the [first or preliminary] seven links of the evolutionary chain.

“Preliminary” because they are preparatory, and though belonging in fact to the natural, they would be more correctly described as the sub-natural evolution. This process makes a halt in its stages at the third, at the threshold of the fourth stage, when it becomes, on the plane of natural evolution, the first really manward stage, thus forming [pg 200] with the three elemental kingdoms, the ten, the Sephirothal number. It is at this point that begins:

A descent of spirit into matter equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a reäscent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organism—up to Nirvâna, the vanishing point of differentiated matter.

Therefore it becomes evident, why that which is pertinently called in Esoteric Buddhism “wave of evolution,” and “mineral, vegetable, animal and man-impulse,” stops at the door of our Globe, at its Fourth Cycle or Round. It is at this point that the Cosmic Monad (Buddhi) will be wedded to, and become the vehicle of, the Âtmic Ray; i.e., Buddhi will awaken to an apperception of it (Âtman), and thus enter on the first step of a new septenary ladder of evolution, which will lead it eventually to the tenth, counting from the lowest upwards, of the Sephirothal Tree, the Crown.

Everything in the Universe follows analogy. “As above, so below”; Man is the microcosm of the Universe. That which takes place on the spiritual plane, repeats itself on the cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of abstraction; corresponding to the highest must be the lowest; the material to the spiritual. Thus, corresponding to the Sephirothal Crown, or Upper Triad, there are the three elemental kingdoms, which precede the mineral, and which, using the language of the Kabalists, answer in the cosmic differentiation to the Worlds of Form and Matter, from the Super-Spiritual to the Archetypal.

Now what is a Monad? And what relation does it bear to an Atom? The following reply is based upon the explanations given in answer to these questions in the above-cited article, “The Mineral Monad,” written by the author. To the second question it is answered:

None whatever to the atom or molecule as at present existing in the scientific conception. It can neither be compared with the microscopic organisms, once classed among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable, and classed among algæ; nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics. Physically or constitutionally the Mineral Monad differs, of course, from the Human Monad, which is not physical, nor can its constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements.

In short, as the Spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose Rays, nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the “Individual Monads” of men, so the Mineral Monad—being at the opposite curve of the circle—is also One, and from it proceed the [pg 201] countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as individualized.

Otherwise how could one account for, and explain mathematically, the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four kingdoms? The Monad is the combination of the last two principles in man, the sixth and the seventh, and, properly speaking, the term “Human Monad” applies only to the Dual Soul (Âtmâ-Buddhi), not to its highest spiritual vivifying principle, Âtmâ, alone. But since the Spiritual Soul, if divorced from the latter (Âtmâ), could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called.... Now the Monadic, or rather Cosmic, Essence, if such a term be permitted, in the mineral, vegetable and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles, from the lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity, trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a “Mineral Monad,” the more correct phraseology in Physical Science, which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it “the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called ‘the Mineral Kingdom’.”The atom, as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined after æons to blossom into a man. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy, which itself has not yet become individualized; a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The Ocean of Matter does not divide into its potential and constituent drops, until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual Monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Kosmos, in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists, while accepting this thought for convenience sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the concrete from the abstract, by terms of which the “Mineral, Vegetable, Animal Monad,” etc., are examples. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The “Monadic Essence” begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual consciousness in the vegetable kingdom. As the Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the Spiritual Essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad—not the atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence.

Leibnitz conceived of the Monads as elementary and indestructible units, endowed with the power of giving and receiving with respect to other units, and thus of determining all spiritual and physical phenomena. It is he who invented the term apperception, which together with nerve- (not perception, but rather) sensation, expresses the [pg 202] state of the Monadic consciousness through all the kingdoms up to Man.

Thus it may be wrong, on strictly metaphysical lines, to call Âtmâ-Buddhi a Monad, since in the materialistic view it is dual and therefore compound. But as Matter is Spirit, and vice versâ; and since the Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable apart from each other; so in the case of Âtmâ-Buddhi. The latter being the vehicle of the former, Buddhi stands in the same relation to Âtmâ, as Adam-Kadmon, the Kabalistic Logos, does to Ain Suph, or Mûlaprakriti to Parabrahman.

And now a few words more on the Moon.

What, it may be asked, are the “Lunar Monads,” just spoken of? The description of the seven Classes of Pitris will come later, but now some general explanations may be given. It must be plain to everyone that they are Monads, who, having ended their Life-Cycle on the Lunar Chain, which is inferior to the Terrestrial Chain, have incarnated on the latter. But there are some further details which may be added, though they border too closely on forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The last word of the mystery is divulged only to Adepts, but it may be stated that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing then that there are seven Earths, so there are seven Moons, the last alone being visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Mâyâ, a reflection, just as man's body is. “The real Sun and the real Moon are as invisible as the real man,” says an Occult maxim.

And it may be remarked, en passant, that those Ancients were not so foolish after all who first started the idea of “Seven Moons.” For though this conception is now taken solely as an astronomical measure of time, in a very materialized form, yet underlying the husk there can still be recognized the traces of a profoundly philosophical idea.

In reality the Moon is the satellite of the Earth in one respect only, viz., that physically the Moon revolves round the Earth. But in every other respect, it is the Earth which is the satellite of the Moon, and not vice versâ. Startling as the statement may seem, it is not without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by the cyclic changes in many forms of disease, which coincide with the lunar phases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in the phenomena of human conception and gestation. The importance of the Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient religion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked [pg 203] by many observers of psychical and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the Earth's action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist, that this fact alone is sufficient evidence that the Moon is truly the Earth's satellite on other planes of action, one may reply by asking whether a mother, who walks round and round her child's cradle, keeping watch over the infant, is the subordinate of her child or dependent upon it? Though in one sense she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older and more fully developed than the child she watches.

It is, then, the Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as well in the formation of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The Lunar Monads, or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man himself. They are the Monads, who enter on the cycle of evolution on Globe A, and who, passing round the Chain of Globes, evolve the human form, as has just been shown. At the beginning of the human stage of the Fourth Round on this Globe, they “ooze out” their astral doubles, from the “ape-like” forms which they had evolved in the Third Round. And it is this subtle, finer form, which serves as the model round which Nature builds physical man. These Monads, or Divine Sparks, are thus the Lunar Ancestors, the Pitris themselves; for these Lunar Spirits have to become “men,” in order that their Monads may reach a higher plane of activity and self-consciousness, i.e., the plane of the Mânasa-Putras, those who endow the “senseless” shells, created and informed by the Pitris, with “mind,” in the latter part of the Third Root-Race.

In the same way, the Monads, or Egos, of the men of the Seventh Round of our Earth, after our own Globes A, B, C, D, etc., parting with their life-energy, will have informed, and thereby called to life, other laya-centres, destined to live and act on a still higher plane of being—in the same way will the Terrene Ancestors create those who will become their superiors.

It now becomes plain, that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme for the formation of the three periodical Upâdhis; or rather three separate schemes of evolution, which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point. These are the Monadic (or Spiritual), the Intellectual, and the Physical Evolutions. These three are the finite aspects, or the reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion, of Âtmâ, the seventh, the One Reality.

[pg 204]

1. The Monadic, as the name implies, is concerned with the growth and development into still higher phases of activity of the Monads, in conjunction with:

2. The Intellectual, represented by the Mânasa-Dhyânis (the Solar Devas, or the Agnishvatta Pitris), the “givers of intelligence and consciousness” to man, and:

3. The Physical, represented by the Chhâyâs of the Lunar Pitris, round which Nature has concreted the present physical body. This body serves as the vehicle for the “growth,” to use a misleading word, and the transformations—through Manas, and owing to the accumulation of experiences—of the Finite into the Infinite, of the Transient into the Eternal and Absolute.

Each of these three systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of the highest Dhyânis or Logoi. Each is represented in the constitution of Man, the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm; and it is the union of these three streams in him, which makes him the complex being he now is.

Nature, the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve Intelligence unaided; she can only create “senseless forms,” as will be seen in our Anthropogenesis. The Lunar Monads cannot progress, for they have not yet had sufficient touch with the forms created by “Nature,” to allow of their accumulating experiences through its means. It is the Mânasa-Dhyânis who fill up the gap, and they represent the evolutionary power of Intelligence and Mind, the link between Spirit and Matter—in this Round.

Also it must be borne in mind that the Monads which enter upon the evolutionary cycle upon Globe A, in the first Round, are in very different stages of development. Hence the matter becomes somewhat complicated. Let us recapitulate.

The most developed, the Lunar Monads, reach the human germ-stage in the First Round; become terrestrial, though very ethereal, human beings towards the end of the Third Round, remaining on the Globe through the “obscuration” period, as the seed for future mankind in the Fourth Round, and thus become the pioneers of Humanity at the beginning of this, the present Fourth Round. Others reach the human stage only during later Rounds, i.e., in the second, third or first half of the Fourth Round. And finally the most retarded of all—i.e., those still occupying animal forms after the middle turning-point of the Fourth Round—will not become men at all during this Manvantara. [pg 205] They will reach to the verge of Humanity only at the close of the Seventh Round, to be, in their turn, ushered into a new Chain, after Pralaya, by older pioneers, the progenitors of Humanity, or the Seed-Humanity (Shishta), viz., the men who will be at the head of all at the end of these Rounds.

The student scarcely needs any further explanation on the part played by the Fourth Globe and the Fourth Round in the scheme of evolution.

From the preceding diagrams, which are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to Rounds, Globes or Races, it will be seen that the fourth member of a series occupies a unique position. Unlike the others, the Fourth has no “sister” Globe on the same plane as itself, and it thus forms the fulcrum of the “balance” represented by the whole Chain. It is the sphere of final evolutionary adjustments, the world of the Karmic scales, the Hall of Justice, where the balance is struck which determines the future course of the Monad during the remainder of its incarnations in the Cycle. And therefore is it that, after this central turning-point has been passed in the Great Cycle—i.e., after the middle point of the Fourth Race in the Fourth Round on our Globe—no more Monads can enter the human kingdom. The door is closed for this Cycle, and the balance struck. For were it otherwise—had there been a new soul created for each of the countless milliards of human beings that have passed away, and had there been no reïncarnation—it would become difficult indeed to provide room for the disembodied “spirits”; nor could the origin and cause of suffering ever be accounted for. It is the ignorance of the Occult tenets, and the enforcement of false conceptions under the guise of religious education, which have created Materialism and Atheism as a protest against the asserted divine order of things.

The only exceptions to the rule just stated are the “dumb races,” whose Monads are already within the human stage, in virtue of the fact that these “animals” are later than, and even half descended from, man; their last descendants being the anthropoid and other apes. These “human presentments” are in truth only the distorted copies of the early humanity. But this will receive full attention in the next volume.

As the Commentary, broadly rendered, says:

1. Every Form on earth, and every Speck [atom] in Space strives in its efforts towards self-formation to follow the model placed for it in the “Heavenly Man.”... Its (the atom's) involution and evolution, its [pg 206]external and internal growth and development, have all one and the same object—Man; Man, as the highest physical and ultimate form on this Earth; the “Monad,” in its absolute totality and awakened condition—as the culmination of the divine incarnations on Earth.

2. The Dhyânis [Pitris] are those who have evolved their Bhuta [Doubles] from themselves, which Rûpa [Form] has become the vehicle of Monads [Seventh and Sixth principles] that had completed their cycle of transmigration in the three preceding Kalpas [Rounds]. Then, they [the Astral Doubles] became the men of the first Human Race of the Round. But they were not complete, and were senseless.

This will be explained in the sequel. Meanwhile man—or rather his Monad—has existed on Earth from the very beginning of this Round. But, up to our own Fifth Race, the external shapes which covered those divine Astral Doubles, have changed and consolidated with every sub-race; the form and physical structure of the fauna changing at the same time, as they had to be adapted to the ever-changing conditions of life on this Globe, during the geological periods of its formative cycle. And thus will they go on changing with every Root-Race, and every chief sub-race, down to the last one of the Seventh in this Round.

3. The inner, now concealed, man, was then [in the beginnings] the external man. The progeny of the Dhyânis [Pitris], he was “the son like unto his father.” Like the lotus, whose external shape assumes gradually the form of the model within itself, so did the form of man in the beginning evolve from within without. After the cycle in which man began to procreate his species after the fashion of the present animal kingdom, it became the reverse. The human fœtus follows now in its transformations all the forms that the physical frame of man assumed, throughout the three Kalpas [Rounds], during the tentative efforts at plastic formation around the Monad, by senseless, because imperfect, matter, in her blind wanderings. In the present age, the physical embryo is a plant, a reptile, an animal, before it finally becomes man, evolving within himself his own ethereal counterpart, in his turn. In the beginning it was that counterpart [astral man] which, being senseless, got entangled in the meshes of matter.

But this “man” belongs to the Fourth Round. As shown, the Monad had passed through, journeyed and been imprisoned in, every transitional form, throughout every kingdom of nature, during the three preceding Rounds. But the Monad which becomes human, is not the Man. In this Round—with the exception of the highest mammals after man, [pg 207] the anthropoids destined to die out in this our race, when their Monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms, or the highest elementals, of the Sixth and the Seventh Races, and then into the lowest human forms in the Fifth Round—no units of any of the kingdoms are animated any longer by Monads destined to become human in their next stage, but only by the lower elementals of their respective realms. These “elementals” will become human Monads, in their turn, only at the next great planetary Manvantara.

And in fact the last human Monad incarnated before the beginning of the Fifth Root-Race. Nature never repeats herself; therefore the anthropoids of our day have not existed at any time since the middle of the Miocene period, when, like all cross breeds, they began to show a tendency, more and more marked as time went on, to return to the type of their first parent, the gigantic black and yellow Lemuro-Atlantean. To search for the “missing link” is useless. To the Scientists of the closing Sixth Root-Race, millions and millions of years hence, our modern races, or rather their fossils, will appear as those of small insignificant apes—an extinct species of the genus homo.

Such anthropoids form an exception because they were not intended by Nature, but are the direct product and creation of “senseless” man. The Hindûs attribute a divine origin to the apes and monkeys, because the men of the Third Race were gods from another plane, who had become “senseless” mortals. This subject had already been touched upon in Isis Unveiled, twelve years ago, as plainly as was then possible. The reader is there referred to the Brâhmans, if he would know the reason of the regard they have for the monkeys.

He [the reader] would perhaps learn—were the Brâhman to judge him worthy of an explanation—that the Hindû sees in the ape but what Manu desired he should: the transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family—a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the latter. He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the educated “heathen”the spiritual or inner man is one thing, and his terrestrial physical casket another. That physical nature, that great combination of correlations of physical forces, ever creeping on towards perfection, has to avail herself of the material at hand; she models and remodels as she proceeds, and, finishing her crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit tabernacle for the overshadowing of the Divine Spirit.

Moreover, a German scientific work is mentioned in a footnote on the same page. It says that:

A Hanoverian Scientist has recently published a work entitled, Ueber die [pg 208]Auflösung der Arten durch Natürliche Zucht-wahl, in which he shows, with great ingenuity, that Darwin was wholly mistaken in tracing man back to the ape. On the contrary, he maintains that it is the ape which is evolved from man. He shows that, in the beginning, mankind were, morally and physically, the types and prototypes of our present race and of our human dignity, by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial development, nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur of ideal conceptions. This is a purely Brâhmanic, Buddhistic and Kabalistic doctrine. His book is copiously illustrated with diagrams, tables, etc. It asserts that the gradual debasement and degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced throughout ethnological transformations down to our time. And, as one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized man of the present day will at last, under the action of the inevitable law of necessity, be also succeeded by like descendants. If we may judge of the future by the actual present, it certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and materialistic a race should end as Simia rather than as Seraphs.

But though the apes descend from man, it is certainly not the fact that the human Monad, which has once reached the level of humanity, ever incarnates again in the form of an animal.

The cycle of “metempsychosis” for the human Monad is closed, for we are in the Fourth Round and the Fifth Root-Race. The reader will have to bear in mind—at any rate one who has made himself acquainted with Esoteric Buddhism—that the Stanzas which follow in this volume and the next speak of the evolution in our Fourth Round only. The latter is the cycle of the turning-point, after which, matter, having reached its lowest depths, begins to strive onward and to become spiritualized, with every new race and with every fresh cycle. Therefore the student must take care not to see contradiction where there is none, for in Esoteric Buddhism Rounds are spoken of in general, while here only the Fourth, or our present Round, is meant. Then it was the work of formation; now it is that of reformation and evolutionary perfection.

Finally, to close this digression anent various, but unavoidable, misconceptions, we must refer to a statement in Esoteric Buddhism, which has produced a very fatal impression upon the minds of many Theosophists. One unfortunate sentence, from the work just referred to, is constantly brought forward to prove the materialism of the doctrine. The author, referring to the progress of organisms on the Globes, says that:

The mineral kingdom will no more develop the vegetable ... than the Earth was able to develop man from the ape, till it received an impulse.

[pg 209]

Whether this sentence renders the thought of the author literally, or is simply, as we believe it is, a lapsus calami, may remain an open question.

It is really with surprise that we have ascertained the fact, that Esoteric Buddhism was so little understood by some Theosophists, as to have led them into the belief that it thoroughly supported Darwinian evolution, and especially the theory of the descent of man from a pithecoid ancestor. As one member writes: “I suppose you realize that three-fourths of Theosophists and even outsiders imagine that, as far as the evolution of man is concerned, Darwinism and Theosophy kiss one another.” Nothing of the kind was ever realized, nor is there any great warrant for it, so far as we know, in Esoteric Buddhism. It has been repeatedly stated, that evolution as taught by Manu and Kapila was the groundwork of the modern teachings, but neither Occultism nor Theosophy has ever supported the wild theories of the present Darwinists—least of all the descent of man from an ape. Of this, more hereafter. But one has only to turn to p. 47 of the work named, to find the statement that:

Man belongs to a kingdom distinctly separate from that of the animals.

With such a plain and unequivocal statement before him, it is very strange that any careful student should have been so misled, unless he is prepared to charge the author with a gross contradiction.

Every Round repeats the evolutionary work of the preceding Round, on a higher scale. With the exception of some higher anthropoids, as just mentioned, the Monadic inflow, or inner evolution, is at an end till the next Manvantara. It can never be too often repeated that the full-blown human Monads have to be first disposed of, before the new crop of candidates appears on this Globe at the beginning of the next Cycle. Thus there is a lull; and this is why, during the Fourth Round, man appears on Earth earlier than any animal creation, as will be described.

But it is still urged that the author of Esoteric Buddhism has “preached Darwinism” all along. Certain passages would undoubtedly seem to lend countenance to this inference. Besides which, the Occultists themselves are ready to concede partial correctness to the Darwinian hypothesis, in later details, bye-laws of evolution, and after the midway point of the Fourth Race. Of that which has taken place, Physical Science can really know nothing, for such matters lie entirely outside of its sphere of investigation. But what the Occultists have never admitted, nor will they ever admit, is that man was an ape in [pg 210]this or any other Round; or that he ever could be one, however much he may have been “ape-like.” This is vouched for by the very authority from whom the author of Esoteric Buddhism got his information.

Thus to those who confront the Occultists with these lines from the above-named volume:

It is enough to show that we may as reasonably—and that we must, if we would talk about these matters at all—conceive a life-impulse giving birth to mineral forms, as of the same sort of impulse concerned to raise a race of apes into a race of rudimentary men.

To those who bring this passage forward as showing “decided Darwinism,” the Occultists answer by pointing to the explanation of the Master, Mr. Sinnett's Teacher, which would contradict these lines, were they written in the spirit attributed to them. A copy of this letter was sent to the writer, together with others, two years ago (1886), with additional marginal remarks, to quote from, in the Secret Doctrine.

It begins by considering the difficulty experienced by the Western student, in reconciling some facts, previously given, with the evolution of man from the animal, i.e., from the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and advises the student to hold to the doctrine of analogy and correspondences. Then it touches upon the mystery of the Devas, and even Gods, having to pass through states, which it was agreed to refer to as “Immetallization, Inherbation, Inzoönization and finally Incarnation,” and explains this by hinting at the necessity of failures even in the ethereal races of Dhyân Chohans. Concerning this it says:

“These ‘failures’ are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyân Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms....”

After which, a hint only is given about the mystery contained in the allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be expanded and explained in Volume II. When Karma has reached them at the stage of human evolution:

“They will have to drink it to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with the elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop little by little the full type of humanity.”

These Dhyân Chohans, as we see, do not pass through the three kingdoms as do the lower Pitris; nor do they incarnate in man until the Third Root Race. Thus, as the teaching stands:

“Round I. Man in the First Round and First Race on Globe D, our [pg 211]Earth, was an ethereal being (a Lunar Dhyâni, as man), non-intelligent but super-spiritual; and correspondingly, on the law of analogy, in the First Race of the Fourth Round. In each of the subsequent races and sub-races, ... he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly ethereal.... He is sexless, and, like the animal and vegetable, he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarser surroundings.

“Round II. He [man] is still gigantic and ethereal, but growing firmer and more condensed in body; a more physical man yet still less intelligent than spiritual (1), for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than is the physical frame....

“Round III. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first the form of a giant-ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than spiritual. For, on the downward arc, he has now reached a point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality (2). In the last half of the Third Round, his gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves in texture, and he becomes a more rational being, though still more an ape than a Deva.... [All this is almost exactly repeated in the Third Root-Race of the Fourth Round.]

“Round IV. Intellect has an enormous development in this Round. The [hitherto] dumb races acquire our [present] human speech on this Globe, on which, from the Fourth Race, language is perfected and knowledge increases. At this half-way point of the Fourth Round [as of the Fourth, or Atlantean, Root-Race], humanity passes the axial point of the minor manvantaric cycle ... the world teeming with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease....”

This is from the authentic letter; what follows are the later remarks and additional explanations traced by the same hand in the form of footnotes.

“(1) ... The original letter contained general teaching—a ‘bird's-eye view’—and particularized nothing.... To speak of ‘physical man,’while limiting the statement to the early Rounds, would be drifting back to the miraculous and instantaneous ‘coats of skin.’... The first ‘Nature,’ the first ‘body,’ the first ‘mind’ on the first plane of perception, on the first Globe in the first Round, is what was meant. For Karma and evolution have:

‘... centred in our make such strange extremes,

From different Natures marvellously mixed ...’

“(2) Restore: he has now reached the point [by analogy, and as the [pg 212]Third Root Race in the Fourth Round], where his [the angel-man's] primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent human mentality, and you have the true version on your thumb-nail....”

These are the words of the Teacher; text, words and sentences in brackets, and explanatory footnotes. It stands to reason that there must be an enormous difference in such terms as “objectivity” and “subjectivity,” “materiality” and “spirituality,” when the same terms are applied to different planes of being and perception. All this must be taken in its relative sense. And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left to his own speculations, an author who, however eager to learn, was yet quite inexperienced in these abstruse teachings, has fallen into an error. Nor was the difference between the Rounds and the Races sufficiently defined in the letters received, since nothing of the kind had been required before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would have found out the difference in a moment. Moreover, to quote from a letter of the Master:

“The teachings were imparted under protest.... They were, so to say, smuggled goods ... and when I remained face to face with only one correspondent, the other, Mr. ... had so far tossed all the cards into confusion, that little remained to be said without trespassing upon law.”

Theosophists “whom it may concern” will understand what is meant.

The outcome of all this is, that nothing had ever been said in the letters to warrant the assurance, that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any Adept believed in, unless metaphorically, the preposterous modern theory of the descent of man from a common ancestor with the ape—an anthropoid of the actual animal kind. To this day the world is more full of ape-like men than the woods are of men-like apes. The ape is sacred in India because its origin is well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a thick veil of allegory. Hanumâna is the son of Pavana (Vâyu, “God of the wind”) by Anjanâ, wife of a monster called Kesarî, though his genealogy varies. The reader who bears this in mind, will find in Volume II, passim, the whole explanation of this ingenious allegory. The “men” of the Third Race (who separated) were “Gods,” by their spirituality and purity, though senseless, and as yet destitute of mind, as men.

These “men” of the Third Race, the ancestors of the Atlanteans, were just such ape-like, intellectually senseless, giants as were those beings, who, during the Third Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it was these Third Race “men” who, through promiscuous [pg 213] connection with animal species lower than themselves, created that missing link which became ages later (in the Tertiary period only), the remote ancestor of the real ape, as we find it now in the pithecoid family.

And if this is found clashing with the statement which shows the animal later than man, then the reader is asked to bear in mind that the placental mammal only is meant. In those days, there were animals of which Zoölogy does not even dream in our own; and the modes of reproduction were not identical with the notions which modern Physiology has upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to touch upon such questions in public, but there is no contradiction or impossibility in this whatever.

Thus the earlier teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, did not teach the evolution of “man” from the “ape.” Nor does the author of Esoteric Buddhism assert it anywhere in his work in so many words; but, owing to his inclination towards Modern Science, he uses language which might perhaps justify such an inference. The man who preceded the Fourth, the Atlantean, Race, however much he may have looked physically like a “gigantic ape”—“the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a man”—was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The Lemuro-Atlantean was a highly civilized Race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better history than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he was higher than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization of the day: at any rate, the Lemuro-Atlantean of the closing Third Race was so.

And now we may return to the Stanzas.

Stanza VI.—Continued.

5. At the Fourth (a), the Sons are told to create their Images. One Third refuses. Two obey.

The Curse is pronounced (b); they will be born in the Fourth, suffer and cause suffering. This is the First War (c).

The full meaning of this Shloka can only be fully comprehended after reading the additional detailed explanations, in the Anthropogenesis and its Commentaries, in Volume II. Between this Shloka and Shloka 4, extend long ages; and there now gleams the dawn and [pg 214] sunrise of another æon. The drama enacted on our planet is at the beginning of its fourth act; but for a clearer comprehension of the whole play the reader will have to turn back before he can proceed onward. For this verse belongs to the general Cosmogony given in the archaic volumes, whereas Volume II will give a detailed account of the “creation,” or rather formation, of the first human beings, followed by the second humanity, and then by the third; or, as they are called, the First, Second, and the Third Root-Races. As the solid Earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its protoplasmic phantom, so did man.

(a) That which is meant by the qualification the “Fourth,” is explained as the Fourth Round, only on the authority of the Commentaries. It can equally mean Fourth Eternity as Fourth Round, or even our Fourth Globe. For, as will repeatedly be shown, the latter is the fourth sphere, on the fourth or lowest plane of material life. And it so happens that we are in the Fourth Round, at the middle point of which the perfect equilibrium between Spirit and Matter had to take place.

It was, as we shall see, at this period—during the highest point of civilization and knowledge, and also of human intellectuality, of the Fourth, Atlantean Race—that, owing to the final crisis of the physiologico-spiritual adjustment of the races, humanity branched off into two diametrically opposite paths: the Right- and the Left-hand Paths of Knowledge or Vidyâ. In the words of the Commentary:

Thus were the germs of the White and the Black Magic sown in those days. The seeds lay latent for some time, to sprout only during the early period of the Fifth [our Race].

Says the Commentary explaining the Shloka:

The Holy Youths [the Gods] refused to multiply and create species after their likeness, after their kind. “They are not fit Forms [Rûpas] for us. They have to grow.” They refuse to enter the Chhâyâs [Shadows or Images] of their inferiors. Thus had selfish feeling prevailed from the beginning, even among the Gods, and they fell under the eye of the Karmic Lipikas.

They had to suffer for it in later births. How the punishment reached the Gods will be seen in Volume II.

It is a universal tradition that, before the physiological “Fall,” propagation of one's kind, whether human or animal, took place through the Will of the Creators, or of their progeny. This was the [pg 215] Fall of Spirit into generation, not the Fall of mortal Man. It has already been stated that, to become self-conscious, Spirit must pass through every cycle of being, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man. Spirit per se is an unconscious negative abstraction. Its purity is inherent, not acquired by merit; hence, as already shown, to become the highest Dhyân Chohan, it is necessary for each Ego to attain to full self-consciousness as a human, i.e., conscious, being, which is synthesized for us in Man. The Jewish Kabalists, arguing that no Spirit can belong to the divine Hierarchy unless Ruach (Spirit) is united to Nephesh (Living Soul), only repeat the Eastern Esoteric teaching:

A Dhyâni has to be an Âtmâ-Buddhi; once the Buddhi-Manas breaks loose from the immortal Âtmâ, of which it (Buddhi) is the vehicle, Âtman passes into Non-Being, which is Absolute Being.

This means that the purely Nirvânic state is a passage of Spirit back to the ideal abstraction of Be-ness, which has no relation to the plane on which our Universe is accomplishing its cycle.

(b) “The Curse is pronounced” does not mean, in this instance, that any Personal Being, God, or Superior Spirit, pronounced it, but simply that the cause, which could but create bad results, had been generated; and that the effects of this Karmic cause could lead the Beings that counteracted the laws of Nature, and thus impeded her legitimate progress, only to bad incarnations, hence to suffering.

(c) “There were many Wars,” all referring to struggles of adjustment, spiritual, cosmical and astronomical, but chiefly to the mystery of the evolution of man, as he is now. The Powers or pure Essences that were “told to create,” relate to a mystery explained, as already said, elsewhere. It is not only one of the most hidden secrets of Nature—that of generation, over whose solution the Embryologists have vainly put their heads together—but likewise a divine function which involves that great religious, or rather dogmatic, mystery, the so-called “Fall” of the Angels. Satan and his rebellious host, when the meaning of the allegory is explained, will thus prove to have refused to create physical man, only to become the direct Saviours and Creators of divine Man. The symbolical teaching is more than mystical and religious, it is purely scientific, as will be seen later on. For, instead of remaining a mere blind functioning medium, impelled and guided by fathomless Law, the “rebellious” Angel claimed and enforced his right of independent judgment and will, his right of free-agency [pg 216] and responsibility, since Man and Angel are alike under Karmic Law.

Explaining Kabalistic views, the author of New Aspects of Life says of the Fallen Angels that:

According to the symbolical teaching, Spirit, from being simply a functionary agent of God, became volitional in its developed and developing action; and, substituting its own will for the divine desire in its regard, so fell. Hence the kingdom and reign of spirits and spiritual action, which flow from and are the product of spirit-volition, are outside, and contrasted with, and in contradiction to, the kingdom of souls and divine action.

So far, so good; but what does the author mean by saying:

When man was created, he was human in constitution, with human affections, human hopes and aspirations. From this state he fell—into the brute and savage.

This is diametrically opposite to our Eastern teaching, and even to the Kabalistic notion, so far as we understand it, and to the Bible itself. This looks like Corporealism and Substantialism colouring Positive Philosophy, though it is rather difficult to feel quite sure of the author's meaning. A fall, however, “from the natural into the supernatural and the animal”—supernatural meaning the purely spiritual in this case—implies what we suggest.

The New Testament speaks of one of these “Wars,” as follows:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon; and the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And the great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.

The Kabalistic version of the same story is given in the Codex Nazaræus, the scripture of the Nazarenes, the real mystic Christians of John the Baptist, and the Initiates of Christos. Bahak Zivo, the “Father of the Genii,” is ordered to construct creatures—to “create.” But, as he is “ignorant of Orcus,” he fails to do so, and calls in Fetahil, a still purer spirit, to his aid, who fails still worse. This is a repetition of the failure of the “Fathers,” the Lords of Light, who fail one after the other.

We will now quote from our earlier volumes:

Then steps on the stage of creation the Spirit (of the Earth so-called, or the [pg 217]Soul, Psyche, which St. James calls “devilish”), the lower portion of the Anima Mundi or Astral Light. [See the close of this Shloka.] With the Nazarenes and the Gnostics this Spirit was feminine. Thus the Spirit of the Earth, perceiving that for Fetahil, the newest man (the latest), the splendour was “changed,” and that for splendour existed “decrease and damage,” she awakes Karabtanos, “who was frantic and without sense and judgment,” and says to him: “Arise, see, the Splendour (Light) of the Newest Man (Fetahil) has failed (to produce or create men), the decrease of this Splendour is visible. Rise up, come with thy Mother (the Spiritus) and free thee from limits by which thou art held, and those more ample than the whole world.” After which, follows the union of the frantic and blind matter, guided by the insinuations of the Spirit (not the Divine Breath but the AstralSpirit, which by its double essence is already tainted with matter); and the offer of the Mother being accepted, the Spiritus conceives “Seven Figures,” and the Seven Stellars (Planets), which represent also the seven capital sins, the progeny of an Astral Soul, separated from its divine source (spirit), and matter, the blind demon of concupiscence. Seeing this, Fetahil extends his hand towards the abyss of matter, and says: “Let the earth exist, just as the abode of the Powers has existed.” Dipping his hand in the chaos, which he condenses, he creates our planet.

Then the Codex proceeds to tell how Bahak Zivo was separated from the Spiritus, and the Genii or Angels from the Rebels. Then (the greatest) Mano, who dwells with the greatest Ferho, calls Kebar Zivo (known also by the name of Nebat Iavar bar Iufin Ifafin), the Helm and Vine of the Food of Life—he being the third Life, and commiserating the rebellious and foolish Genii, on account of the magnitude of their ambition, says: “Lord of the Genii (Æons), see what the Genii (the Rebellious Angels) do, and about what they are consulting. They say: ‘Let us call forth the world, and let us call the “Powers” into existence. The Genii are the Princes (Principes), the Sons of Light, but Thou art the Messenger of Life’.”

And in order to counteract the influence of the seven “badly disposed” principles the progeny of Spiritus, Kebar Zivo (or Cabar Zio), the mighty Lord of Splendour, produces seven other lives (the cardinal virtues), who shine in their own form and light “from on high,” and thus reëstablish the balance between good and evil, light and darkness.

Here one finds a repetition of the early allegorical dual systems, such [pg 218] as the Zoroastrian, and detects a germ of the dogmatic and dualistic religions of the future, a germ which has grown into such a luxuriant tree in ecclesiastical Christianity. It is already the outline of the two “Supremes”—God and Satan. But in the Stanzas no such idea exists.

Most of the Western Christian Kabalists—preëminently Éliphas Lévi—in their desire to reconcile the Occult Sciences with Church Dogmas, did their best to make of the “Astral Light” only and preeminently the Plerôma of the early Church Fathers, the abode of the Hosts of the Fallen Angels, of the Archôns and Powers. But the Astral Light, though only the lower aspect of the Absolute, is still dual. It is the Anima Mundi, and ought never to be viewed otherwise, except for Kabalistic purposes. The difference which exists between its “Light” and its “Living Fire,” ought ever to be present in the mind of the Seer and the Psychic. The higher aspect of this “Light,” without which only creatures of matter can be produced, is this Living Fire, and its Seventh Principle. It is stated in Isis Unveiled, in a complete description of it:

The Astral Light or Anima Mundi is dual and bi-sexual. The (ideal) male part of it is purely divine and spiritual, it is Wisdom, it is Spirit or Purusha; while the female portion (the Spiritus of the Nazarenes) is tainted, in one sense, with matter, is indeed matter, and therefore is evil already. It is the life-principle of every living creature, and furnishes the astral soul, the fluidic perisprit, to men, animals, fowls of the air, and everything living. Animals have only the latent germ of the highest immortal soul in them. This latter will develop only after a series of countless evolutions; the doctrine of which evolutions is contained in the Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man; a man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.”

The seven principles of the Eastern Initiates had not been explained when Isis Unveiled was written, but only the three Kabalistic Faces of the semi-exoteric Kabalah. But these contain the description of the mystic natures of the first Group of Dhyân Chohans in the regimen ignis, the region and “rule (or government) of fire,” divided into three classes, synthesized by the first, which makes four or the “Tetraktys.” If one studies the commentaries attentively, he will find the same progression in the angelic natures, viz., from the passive down to the active; the last of these Beings are as near to the Ahamkâra Element—the region or plane wherein Egoship, or the feeling of I-am-ness, is beginning to be defined—as the first are near to the undifferentiated [pg 219] Essence. The former are Arûpa, incorporeal; the latter, Rûpa, corporeal.

In Volume II of the same work, the philosophical systems of the Gnostics and the primitive Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, are fully considered. They show the views held in those days, outside the circle of Mosaic Jews, about Jehovah. He was identified by all the Gnostics with the evil, rather than with the good principle. For them, he was Ilda-Baoth, the “Son of Darkness,” whose mother, Sophia Achamôth, was the daughter of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom—the female Holy Ghost of the early Christians—Âkâsha; Sophia Achamôth personifying the Lower Astral Light or Ether. The Astral Light stands in the same relation to Âkâsha and Anima Mundi, as Satan stands to the Deity. They are one and the same thing seen from two aspects, the spiritual and the psychic—the super-ethereal, or connecting link between matter and pure spirit—and the physical. Ilda-Baoth—a compound name, made up of Ilda (ילד), child, and Baoth; the latter from בהוצ an egg, and בהות, chaos, emptiness, void, or desolation; or the Child born in the Egg of Chaos, like Brahmâ—or Jehovah, is simply one of the Elohim, the Seven Creative Spirits, and one of the lower Sephiroth. Ilda-Baoth produces from himself seven other Gods, “Stellar Spirits,” or the Lunar Ancestors, for they are all the same. They are all in his own image, the “Spirits of the Face,” and the reflections one of the other, who become darker and more material, as they successively recede from their originator. They also inhabit seven regions disposed like a stair, for its steps mount and descend the scale of spirit and matter. With Pagans and Christians, with Hindûs and Chaldeans, with Greek as with Roman Catholics—the texts varying slightly in their interpretations—they all were the Genii of the seven planets, and of the seven planetary spheres of our septenary Chain, of which Earth is the lowest. This connects the “Stellar” and “Lunar” Spirits with the higher planetary Angels, and the Saptarshis, the Seven Rishis of the Stars, [pg 220] of the Hindûs—as subordinate Angels, or Messengers, to these Rishis, their emanations, on the descending scale. Such, in the opinion of the philosophical Gnostics, were the God and the Archangels now worshipped by the Christians! The “Fallen Angels” and the legend of the “War in Heaven” are thus purely pagan in their origin, and come from India, viá Persia and Chaldea. The only reference to them in the Christian canon is found in Revelation xii, as quoted a few pages back.

Thus “Satan,” once he ceases to be viewed in the superstitious, dogmatic, unphilosophical spirit of the Churches, grows into the grandiose image of one who makes of a terrestrial, a divine Man; who gives him, throughout the long cycle of Mahâkalpa, the law of the Spirit of Life, and makes him free from the Sin of Ignorance, hence of Death.

6. The Older Wheels rotated downward and upward (a).... The Mother's Spawn filled the whole. There were Battles fought between the Creators and the Destroyers, and Battles fought for Space; the Seed appearing and reäppearing continuously (b).

(a) Here, having finished for the time being with our side-issues—which, however they may break the flow of the narrative, are necessary for the elucidation of the whole scheme—we must return once more to Cosmogony. The phrase “Older Wheels” refers to the Worlds, or Globes, of our Chain as they were during the previous Rounds. The present Stanza, when explained esoterically, is found embodied entirely in Kabalistic works. Therein will be found the very history of the evolution of those countless Globes, which evolve after a periodical Pralaya, rebuilt from old material into new forms. The previous Globes disintegrate and reäppear, transformed and perfected for a new phase of life. In the Kabalah, worlds are compared to sparks which fly from under the hammer of the great Architect—Law, the Law which rules all the smaller Creators.

The following comparative diagram shows the identity between the two systems, the Kabalistic and the Eastern. The three upper are the three higher planes of consciousness, revealed and explained in both [pg 221] schools only to the Initiates; the lower represent the four lower planes—the lowest being our plane, or the visible Universe.

These seven planes correspond to the seven states of consciousness in man. It remains with him to attune the three higher states in himself to the three higher planes in Kosmos. But before he can attempt to attune, he must awaken the three “seats” to life and activity. And how many are capable of bringing themselves to even a superficial comprehension of Âtmâ Vidyâ (Spirit-Knowledge), or what is called by the Sufis, Rohanee!

[pg 222]

(b) “The Seed appearing and reäppearing continuously.” Here “Seed” stands for the “World-Germ,” viewed by Science as material particles in a highly attenuated condition, but in Occult Physics as “spiritual particles,” i.e., supersensuous matter existing in a state of primeval differentiation. To see and appreciate the difference—the immense gulf that separates terrestrial matter from the finer grades of supersensuous matter—every Astronomer, every Chemist and Physicist ought to be a Psychometer, to say the least; he ought to be able to sense for himself that difference in which he now refuses to believe. Mrs. Elizabeth Denton, one of the most learned, and also one of the most materialistic and sceptical women of her age—the wife of Professor Denton, the well-known American Geologist, and the author of The Soul of Things—was, in spite of her scepticism, one of the most wonderful psychometers. This is what she describes in one of her experiments. A particle of a meteorite was placed on her forehead, in an envelope, and the lady, not being aware of what it contained, said:

What a difference between that which we recognize as matter here and that which seems like matter there! In the one, the elements are so coarse and so angular, I wonder that we can endure it at all, much more that we can desire to continue our present relations to it; in the other, all the elements are so refined, they are so free from those great, rough angularities, which characterize the elements here, that I can but regard that as by so much the more than this the real existence.

In Theogony, every Seed is an ethereal organism, from which evolves later on a celestial Being, a God.

In the “Beginning,” that which is called in mystic phraseology “Cosmic Desire” evolves into Absolute Light. Now light without any shadow would be absolute light; in other words, absolute darkness, as Physical Science tries to prove. This “shadow” appears under the form of primordial matter, allegorized—if you will—in the shape of the Spirit of Creative Fire or Heat. If, rejecting the poetical form and allegory, Science chooses to see in this the primordial “fire-mist,” it is welcome to do so. Whether one way or the other, whether Fohat or the famous Force of Science, nameless and as difficult of definition as our Fohat himself, that Something “caused the Universe to move with circular motion,” as Plato has it; or, as the Occult teaching expresses it:

The Central Sun causes Fohat to collect primordial dust in the form of balls, to impel them to move in converging lines and finally to approach [pg 223]each other and aggregate.... Being scattered in Space, without order or system, the World-Germs come into frequent collision until their final aggregation, after which they become Wanderers [Comets]. Then the battles and struggles begin. The older [bodies] attract the younger, while others repel them. Many perish, devoured by their stronger companions. Those that escape become worlds.

When carefully analyzed and reflected upon, this will be found as scientific as Science can make it, even at our late period.

We have been assured, that there exist several modern works of speculative fancy upon such struggles for life in sidereal heaven, especially in the German language. We rejoice to hear it, for ours is an Occult teaching lost in the darkness of archaic ages. We have treated of it fully in Isis Unveiled, and the idea of Darwinian-like evolution, of struggle for life and supremacy, and of the “survival of the fittest,” among the Hosts above as of the Hosts below, runs throughout both the volumes of our earlier work, written in 1876. But the idea is not ours, it is that of antiquity. Even the Purânic writers have ingeniously interwoven allegory with cosmic facts and human events. Any symbologist may discern their astro-cosmical allusions, even though he be unable to grasp the whole meaning. The great “wars in heaven,” in the Purânas; the wars of the Titans, in Hesiod and other classical writers; the “struggles” also between Osiris and Typhon, in the Egyptian myth; and even those in the Scandinavian legends; all refer to the same subject. Northern Mythology refers to it as the battle of the Flames, the sons of Muspel who fought on the field of Wigred. All these relate to Heaven and Earth, and have a double, and often even a triple, meaning and esoteric application to things above as to things below. They severally relate to astronomical, theogonical and human struggles; to the adjustment of orbs, and the supremacy among nations and tribes. The “struggle for existence” and the “survival of the fittest” reigned supreme from the moment that Kosmos manifested into being, and could hardly escape the observant eye of the ancient Sages. Hence the incessant fights of Indra, the God of the Firmament, with the Asuras—degraded from high Gods into cosmic Demons—and with Vritra or Ahi; the battles fought between stars and constellations, between moons and planets—later on incarnated as kings and mortals. Hence also the War in Heaven of Michael and his Host against the Dragon—Jupiter and Lucifer Venus—when [pg 224] a third of the stars of the rebellious Host was hurled down into Space, and “its place was found no more in Heaven.” As we wrote long ago:

This is the basic and fundamental stone of the secret cycles. It shows that the Brâhmans and Tanaïm ... speculated on the creation and development of the world quite in a Darwinian way, both anticipating him and his school in the natural selection, gradual development and transformation of species.

There were old worlds that perished, conquered by the new, etc., etc. The assertion that all the worlds (stars, planets, etc.)—as soon as a nucleus of primordial substance, in the laya (undifferentiated) state, is informed by the freed principles of a just deceased sidereal body—become first comets, and then suns, to cool down to inhabitable worlds, is a teaching as old as the Rishis.

Thus the Secret Books, as we see, distinctly teach an astronomy that would not be rejected even by modern speculation, could the latter thoroughly understand its teachings.

For archaic astronomy and the ancient physical and mathematical sciences expressed views identical with those of Modern Science, and many of far more momentous import. A “struggle for life” and a “survival of the fittest,” in the worlds above and on our planet here below, are distinctly taught. This teaching, however, although it would not be entirely rejected by Science, is sure to be repudiated as an integral whole. For it avers that there are only seven self-born primordial “Gods,” emanated from the trinitarian One. In other words, it means that all the worlds, or sidereal bodies—always on strict analogy—are formed one from the other, after the primordial manifestation at the beginning of the Great Age is accomplished.

The birth of the celestial bodies in space is compared to a multitude of pilgrims at the Festival of the Fires. Seven ascetics appear on the threshold of the temple with seven lighted sticks of incense. At the light of these the first row of pilgrims light their incense sticks. After which, every ascetic begins whirling his stick around his head in space, and furnishes the rest with fire. Thus with the heavenly bodies. A laya-centre is lighted and awakened into life by the fires of another “pilgrim,” after which, the new “centre” rushes into space and becomes a comet. It is only after losing its velocity, and hence its fiery tail, that the Fiery Dragon settles down into quiet and steady life, as a regular respectable citizen of the sidereal family. Therefore it is said:

[pg 225]

Born in the unfathomable depths of Space, out of the homogeneous Element called the World-Soul, every nucleus of cosmic matter, suddenly launched into being, begins life under the most hostile circumstances. Through a series of countless ages, it has to conquer for itself a place in the infinitudes. It circles round and round, between denser and already fixed bodies, moving by jerks, and pulling towards some given point or centre that attracts it, and, like as a ship drawn into a channel dotted with reefs and sunken rocks, trying to avoid other bodies that draw and repel it in turn. Many perish, their mass disintegrating through stronger masses, and, when born within a system, chiefly within the insatiable stomachs of various Suns. Those which move slower, and are propelled into an elliptic course, are doomed to annihilation sooner or later. Others, moving in parabolic curves, generally escape destruction, owing to their velocity.

Some very critical readers will perhaps imagine that this teaching, as to the cometary stage passed through by all heavenly bodies, is in contradiction with the statements just made as to the Moon being the mother of the Earth. They will perhaps fancy that intuition is needed to harmonize the two. But no intuition is in truth required. What does Science know of comets, their genesis, growth, and ultimate behaviour? Nothing—absolutely nothing! And what is there so impossible in that a laya-centre—a lump of cosmic protoplasm, homogeneous and latent—when suddenly animated or fired up, should rush from its bed in space, and whirl throughout the abysmal depths, in order to strengthen its homogeneous organism by an accumulation and addition of differentiated elements? And why should not such a comet settle in life, live, and become an inhabited globe?

“The abodes of Fohat are many”—it is said. “He places his Four Fiery [electro-positive] Sons in the Four Circles”; these Circles are the equator, the ecliptic, and the two parallels of declination, or the tropics, to preside over the climates of which are placed the Four Mystical Entities. Then again: “Other Seven [Sons] are commissioned to preside over the seven hot, and seven cold Lokas [the Hells of the orthodox Brâhmans] at the two ends of the Egg of Matter [our Earth and its poles].” The seven Lokas are elsewhere also called the “Rings” and the “Circles.” The Ancients made the polar circles seven instead of two, as do the Europeans; for Mount Meru, which is the North Pole, is said to have seven gold and seven silver steps leading to it.

The strange statements, in one of the Stanzas, that “The Songs of [pg 226]Fohat and his Sons were radiant as the noon-tide Sun and the Moon combined,” and that the Four Sons, on the middle Four-fold Circle, “SAW their Father's Songs and heard his solar-selenic Radiance,” are explained, in the Commentary, in these words: “The agitation of the Fohatic Forces at the two cold ends [North and South Poles] of the Earth, which results in a multicoloured radiance at night, has in it several of the properties of Âkâsha [Ether], Colour and Sound as well.”

“Sound is the characteristic of Âkâsha [Ether]: it generates Air, the property of which is Touch; which [by friction] becomes productive of Colour and Light.”

Perhaps the above will be regarded as archaic nonsense, but it will be better comprehended, if the reader remembers the Aurora Borealis and Australis, both of which take place at the very centres of terrestrial electric and magnetic forces. The two Poles are said to be the store-houses, the receptacles and liberators, at the same time, of cosmic and terrestrial Vitality (Electricity), from the surplus of which the Earth, had it not been for these two natural safety-valves, would have been rent to pieces long ago. At the same time it is a theory that has lately become an axiom, that the phenomenon of the polar lights is accompanied by, and productive of, strong sounds, like whistling, hissing and cracking. See Professor Humboldt's works on the Aurora Borealis, and his correspondence regarding this moot question.

7. Make thy calculations, O Lanoo, if thou wouldst learn the correct age of thy Small Wheel. Its Fourth Spoke is our Mother (a). Reach the Fourth Fruit of the Fourth Path of Knowledge that leads to Nirvâna, and thou shalt comprehend, for thou shalt see (b)....

(a) The “Small Wheel” is our Chain of Spheres, and the “Fourth Spoke” is our Earth, the fourth in the Chain. It is one of those on which the “hot [positive] breath of the Sun” has a direct effect.

The seven fundamental transformations of the Globes or heavenly Spheres, or rather of their constituent particles of matter, are described as follows: (1) homogeneous; (2) aëriform and radiant—gaseous; (3) curd-like (nebulous); (4) atomic, ethereal—beginning of motion, hence of differentiation; (5) germinal, fiery—differentiated, but composed of the [pg 227] germs only of the Elements, in their earliest states, they having seven states, when completely developed on our earth; (6) four-fold, vapoury—the future Earth; (7) cold—and depending on the Sun for life and light.

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

(b) There are four grades of Initiation mentioned in exoteric works, which are known respectively in Sanskrit as Srotâpanna, Sakridâgâmin, Anâgâmin, and Arhan; the Four Paths to Nirvâna, in this our Fourth Round, bearing the same appellations. The Arhan, though he can see the Past, the Present and the Future, is not yet the highest Initiate; for the Adept himself, the initiated candidate, becomes Chelâ (Pupil) to a higher Initiate. Three higher grades have still to be conquered by the Arhan who would reach the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. There are those who have reached it even in this Fifth Race of ours, but the faculties necessary for the attainment of these higher grades will be fully developed, in the average ascetic, only at the end of this Root-Race, and in the Sixth and Seventh. Thus, there will always [pg 228] be Initiates and the Profane until the end of this minor Manvantara, the present Life-Cycle. The Arhats of the “Fire-Mist,” of the Seventh Rung, are but one remove from the Root-Base of their Hierarchy, the highest on Earth and our Terrestrial Chain. This “Root-Base” has a name which can only be translated into English by several compound words—the “Ever-Living-Human-Banyan.” This “Wondrous Being” descended from a “high region,” they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before the separation of sexes in the Third Race.

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

The “Being” just referred to, who has to remain nameless, is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane—the ever invisible, yet ever present) Personage, about whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he, again, who holds spiritual sway over the initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the “Nameless One” who has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the “Initiator,” called the “Great Sacrifice.” For, sitting at the Threshold [pg 229] of Light, he looks into it from within the Circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last Day of this Life-Cycle. Why does the Solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen post? Why does he sit by the Fountain of Primeval Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer, for he has naught to learn which he does not know—aye, neither on this Earth, nor in its Heaven? Because the lonely, sore-footed Pilgrims, on their journey back to their Home, are never sure, to the last moment, of not losing their way, in this limitless desert of Illusion and Matter called Earth-Life. Because he would fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has sacrificed himself for the sake of Mankind, though but a few elect may profit by the Great Sacrifice.

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

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

[pg 230]

It is owing to the divine perfection of these architectural proportions that the Ancients could build these wonders of all the subsequent ages, their Fanes, Pyramids, Cave-Temples, Cromlechs, Cairns, Altars, proving they had the powers of machinery and a knowledge of mechanics to which modern skill is like a child's play, and which that skill refers to itself as the “works of hundred-handed giants.”

Modern architects may not have altogether neglected these rules, but they have superadded enough empirical innovations to destroy the just proportions. It is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of construction of the Grecian temples erected to the immortal Gods; and the ten books of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio on Architecture, of one, in short, who was an Initiate, can only be studied esoterically. The Druidical Circles, the Dolmens, the Temples of India, Egypt and Greece, the Towers, and the 127 towns in Europe which were found “Cyclopean in origin” by the French Institute, are all the work of initiated Priest-Architects, the descendants of those first taught by the “Sons of God,” and justly called the “Builders.” This is what appreciative posterity says of these descendants:

They used neither mortar nor cement, nor steel, nor iron to cut the stones with; and yet they were so artificially wrought that in many places the joints are hardly seen, though many of the stones, as in Peru, are 38 feet long, 18 feet broad, and 6 feet thick, and in the walls of the fortress of Cuzco there are stones of a still greater size.

Again:

The well of Syene, made 5,400 years ago, when that spot was exactly under the tropic, which it has now ceased to be, was ... so constructed, that at noon, at the precise moment of the solar solstice, the entire disk of the sun was seen reflected on its surface—a work which the united skill of all the astronomers in Europe would not now be able to effect.

Although these matters were barely hinted at in Isis Unveiled, it will be well to remind the reader of what was said there concerning a certain Sacred Island in Central Asia, and to refer him for further details to the Section, entitled “The Sons of God and the Sacred Island,” attached to Stanza IX of Volume II. A few more explanations, however, though thrown out in a fragmentary form, may help the student to obtain a glimpse into the present mystery.

To state at least one detail concerning these mysterious “Sons of God” in plain words: it is from them, these Brahmaputras, that the high Dvijas, the initiated Brâhmans of old, claimed descent, while the modern Brâhman would have the lower castes believe literally that they (the Brâhmans) issued direct from the mouth of Brahmâ. Such is [pg 231] the Esoteric teaching; and it adds moreover that, although those descended (spiritually, of course) from the “Sons of Will and Yoga” became in time divided into opposite sexes, as their “Kriyâshakti” progenitors did themselves later on; yet even their degenerate descendants have, down to the present day, retained a veneration and respect for the creative function, and still regard it in the light of a religious ceremony, whereas the more civilized nations consider it as a mere animal function. Compare the Western views and practice in these matters with the Institutions of Manu, in regard to the laws of Grihastha, or married life. The true Brâhman is, thus, indeed “he whose seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the Moon-plant (Soma),” and who is a “Trisuparna,” for he has understood the secret of the Vedas.

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

The great antique heart—how like a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth! Heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth; making all the earth a mystic temple to him, the earth's business all a kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover, doing God's messages among men.... Wonder, miracle, encompass the man; he lives in an element of miracle.... A great law of [pg 232]duty, high as these two infinitudes (heaven and hell), dwarfing all else, annihilating all else—it was a reality, and it is one: the garment only of it is dead; the essence of it lives through all times and all eternity!

It lives undeniably, and has settled in all its ineradicable strength and power in the Asiatic Âryan heart, from the Third Race direct, through its first Mind-born Sons, the fruits of Kriyâshakti. As time rolled on, the holy caste of Initiates produced, but rarely, from age to age, such perfect creatures; beings apart, inwardly, though the same as those who produced them, outwardly.

In the infancy of the Third primitive Race:

A creature of a more exalted kind

Was wanting yet, and therefore was designed;

Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,

For empire formed and fit to rule the rest.

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

But how comes our physical body to the state of perfection it is now found in? Through millions of years of evolution, of course, yet never through, or from, animals, as taught by Materialism. For, as Carlyle says:

... The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself “I,”—ah, what words have we for such things?—is a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being [pg 233]reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed?

The “breath of Heaven,” or rather the breath of Life, called in the Bible Nephesh, is in every animal, in every animate speck and in every mineral atom. But none of these has, like man, the consciousness of the nature of that “Highest Being,” as none has that divine harmony in its form, which man possesses. It is, as Novalis said, and no one since has said it better, as repeated by Carlyle:

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

Stanza VII.

1. Behold the beginning of sentient formless Life (a).

First, the Divine (b), the One from the Mother-Spirit;then, the Spiritual (c); the Three from the One (d), the Four from the One (e), and the Five (f), from which the Three, the Five and the Seven (g). These are the Three-fold and the Four-fold downward; the Mind-born Sons of the First Lord, the Shining Seven. It is they who are thou, I, he, O Lanoo; they who watch over thee and thy mother, Bhûmi.

(a) The Hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided esoterically into Seven (four and three), within the Twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve signs of the Zodiac; the Seven of the manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the Seven Planets. All these are subdivided into numberless Groups of divine spiritual, semi-spiritual, and ethereal Beings.

[pg 234]

The chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary, or the “four bodies and the three faculties,” exoterically, of Brahmâ and the Panchâsya, the five Brahmâs, or the five Dhyâni-Buddhas in the Buddhist system.

The highest Group is composed of the Divine Flames, so called, also spoken of as the “Fiery Lions” and the “Lions of Life,” whose esotericism is securely hidden in the zodiacal sign of Leo. It is the nucleole of the superior Divine World. They are the Formless Fiery Breaths, identical in one aspect with the upper Sephirothal Triad, which is placed by the Kabalists in the Archetypal World.

The same Hierarchy, with the same numbers, is found in the Japanese system, in the “Beginnings,” as taught by both the Shinto and the Buddhist sects. In this system, Anthropogenesis precedes Cosmogenesis, as the divine merges into the human, and creates—midway in its descent into matter—the visible Universe; the legendary personages, remarks reverentially Omoie, “having to be understood as the stereotyped embodiment of the higher [secret] doctrine, and its sublime truths.” To state this old system at full length would occupy too much of our space; a few words on it, however, cannot be out of place. The following is a short synopsis of this Anthropo-Cosmogenesis, and shows how closely the most separated nations echoed one and the same archaic teaching.

When all was as yet Chaos (Kon-ton), three spiritual Beings appeared on the stage of future creation: (1) Ame no ani naka nushi no Kami, “Divine Monarch of the Central Heaven”; (2) Taka mi onosubi no Kami, “Exalted, Imperial Divine Offspring of Heaven and Earth”; and (3) Kamu mi musubi no Kami, “Offspring of the Gods,” simply.

These were without form or substance—our Arûpa Triad—as neither the celestial nor the terrestrial substance had yet differentiated, “nor had the essence of things been formed.”

(b) In the Zohar—which, as now arranged and reëdited by Moses de Leon, with the help of Syrian and Chaldean Christian Gnostics, in the XIIIth century, and corrected and revised still later by many Christian hands, is only a little less exoteric than the Bible itself—this “Divine [Vehicle]” no longer appears as it does in the Chaldean Book of Numbers. True enough, Ain Suph, the Absolute Endless No-thing, uses also the form of the One, the manifested “Heavenly Man” (the First Cause), as its Chariot (Mercabah, in Hebrew; Vâhana, in Sanskrit) or Vehicle, to descend into, and manifest itself in, the phenomenal [pg 235] world. But the Kabalists neither make it plain how the Absolute can use anything, or exercise any attribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is devoid of attributes; nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause (Plato's Logos), the original and eternal Idea, that manifests through Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos, so to speak. In the Book of Numbers, it is explained that Ain (En, or Aiôr) is the only self-existent, whereas its “Depth,” the Bythos of the Gnostics, called Propatôr, is only periodical. The latter is Brahmâ, as differentiated from Brahman or Parabrahman. It is the Depth, the Source of Light, or Propatôr, which is the Unmanifested Logos, or the abstract Idea, and not Ain Suph, whose Ray uses Adam Kadmon—“male and female”—or the Manifested Logos, the objective Universe, as a Chariot, through which to manifest. But in the Zohar we read the following incongruity: “Senior occultatus est, et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus.” This is a fallacy, since Microprosopus, or the Microcosm, can only exist during its manifestations, and is destroyed during the Mahâpralayas. Rosenroth's Kabbala is no guide, but very often a puzzle.

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

The later Kabalists, however, especially the Christian Mystics, have played sad havoc with this magnificent symbol. Indeed, the Microprosopus—who is, philosophically speaking, quite distinct from the unmanifested eternal Logos, “one with the Father”—has finally been brought, by centuries of incessant efforts of sophistry and of paradoxes, to be considered as one with Jehovah, or the one living God (!), whereas Jehovah is no better than Binah, a female Sephira. This fact cannot be too frequently impressed upon the reader. For the “Ten Limbs” of the Heavenly Man are the ten Sephiroth; but the first Heavenly Man [pg 236] is the unmanifested Spirit of the Universe, and ought never to be degraded into Microprosopus, the Lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of man on the terrestrial plane. The Microprosopus is, as just said, the Logos manifested, and of such there are many. Of this, however, later on. The six-pointed star refers to the six Forces or Powers of Nature, the six planes, principles, etc., etc., all synthesized by the seventh, or the central point in the star. All these, the upper and lower Hierarchies included, emanate from the Heavenly or Celestial Virgin, the Great Mother in all religions, the Androgyne, the Sephira Adam Kadmon. Sephira is the Crown, Kether, in the abstract principle only, as a mathematical x, the unknown quantity. On the plane of differentiated nature, she is the female counterpart of Adam Kadmon, the first Androgyne. The Kabalah teaches that the words “Fiat Lux” referred to the formation and evolution of the Sephiroth, and not to light as opposed to darkness. Rabbi Simeon says:

O companions, companions, man as an emanation was both man and woman, Adam Kadmon verily, and this is the sense of the words, “Let there be Light, and there was Light.” And this is the two-fold man.

In its Unity, Primordial Light is the seventh, or highest, principle, Daiviprakriti, the Light of the Unmanifested Logos. But in its differentiation, it becomes Fohat, or the “Seven Sons.” The former is symbolized by the central point in the Double Triangle; the latter by the Hexagon itself, or the “Six Limbs” of Microprosopus, the Seventh being Malkuth, the “Bride” of the Christian Kabalists, or our Earth. Hence the expressions:

The first after the One is Divine Fire; the second, Fire and Ether; the third is composed of Fire, Ether and Water; the fourth of Fire, Ether, Water, and Air. The One is not concerned with Man-bearing Globes, but with the inner, invisible Spheres. The First-Born are the Life, the Heart and Pulse of the Universe; the Second are its Mind or Consciousness.

These Elements of Fire, Air, etc., are not our compound elements; and this “Consciousness” has no relation to our consciousness. The Consciousness of the “One Manifested,” if not absolute, is still unconditioned. Mahat, the Universal Mind, is the first production of the Brahmâ-Creator, but also of Pradhâna, Undifferentiated Matter.

(c) The Second Order of Celestial Beings, those of Fire and Ether, corresponding to Spirit and Soul, or Âtmâ-Buddhi, whose names are legion, are still formless, but more definitely “substantial.” They are [pg 237] the first differentiation in the Secondary Evolution or “Creation”—a misleading word. As the name shows, they are the Prototypes of the incarnating Jîvas or Monads, and are composed of the Fiery Spirit of Life. It is through these that passes, like a pure solar beam, the Ray which is furnished by them with its future Vehicle, the Divine Soul, Buddhi. These are directly concerned with the Hosts of the higher World of our System. From these Two-fold Units emanate the “Three-fold.”

In the cosmogony of Japan, when, out of the chaotic mass, an egg-like nucleus appears, having within itself the germ and potency of all universal as well as of all terrestrial life, it is the Three-fold just named, which differentiate. The male ethereal principle (Yo) ascends, and the female grosser or more material principle (In) is precipitated into the universe of substance, when a separation occurs between the celestial and the terrestrial. From this, the female, the Mother, the first rudimentary objective being is born. It is ethereal, without form or sex, and yet it is from it and the Mother that the Seven Divine Spirits are born, from whom will emanate the seven “creations”; just as in the Codex Nazaræus from Karabtanos and the Mother Spiritus the seven “evilly disposed” (material) spirits are born. It would be too long to give here the Japanese names, but in translation they stand in this order:

(1.) The “Invisible Celibate,” which is the Creative Logos of the non-creating “Father,” or the creative potentiality of the latter made manifest.

(2.) The “Spirit [or God] of the rayless Depths [Chaos],” which becomes differentiated matter, or the world-stuff; also the mineral realm.

(3.) The “Spirit of the Vegetable Kingdom,” of the “Abundant Vegetation.”

(4.) The “Spirit of the Earth” and “the Spirit of the Sands”; a Being of dual nature, the former containing the potentiality of the male element, the latter that of the female element. These two were one, as yet unconscious of being two.

In this duality were contained (a) Isu no gai no Kami, the male, dark and muscular Being; and (b) Eku gai no Kami, the female, fair and weaker or more delicate Being. Then:

(5 and 6.) The Spirits who were androgynous or dual-sexed.

(7.) The Seventh Spirit, the last emanated from the “Mother,” appears as the first divine human form distinctly male and female. [pg 238] It was the seventh “creation,” as in the Purânas, wherein man is the seventh creation of Brahmâ.

These, Tsanagi-Tsanami, descended into the Universe by the Celestial Bridge, the Milky Way, and “Tsanagi, perceiving far below a chaotic mass of cloud and water, thrust his jewelled spear into the depths, and dry land appeared. Then the two separated to explore Onokoro, the newly-created island-world.” (Omoie.)

Such are the Japanese exoteric fables, the rind that conceals the kernel of the same one truth of the Secret Doctrine.

(d) The Third Order correspond to Âtmâ-Buddhi-Manas, Spirit, Soul and Intellect; and are called the “Triads.”

(e) The Fourth Order are substantial Entities. This is the highest Group among the Rûpas (Atomic Forms). It is the nursery of the human, conscious, spiritual Souls. They are called the “Imperishable Jîvas,” and constitute, through the Order below their own, the first Group of the first Septenary Host—the great mystery of human, conscious and intellectual Being. For the latter is the field wherein lies concealed, in its privation, the Germ that will fall into generation. That Germ will become the spiritual potency in the physical cell, that guides the development of the embryo, and that is the cause of the hereditary transmission of faculties, and all the inherent qualities in man. The Darwinian theory, however, of the transmission of acquired faculties is neither taught nor accepted in Occultism. Evolution, in the latter, proceeds on quite other lines; the physical, according to Esoteric teaching, evolving gradually from the spiritual, mental, and psychic. This inner soul of the physical cell—the “spiritual plasm” that dominates the germinal plasm—is the key that must open one day the gates of the terra incognita of the Biologist, now called the dark mystery of Embryology. It is worthy of notice that Modern Chemistry, while rejecting, as a superstition of Occultism and Religion as well, the theory of substantial and invisible Beings, called Angels, Elementals, etc.—without, of course, having ever looked into the philosophy of these incorporeal Entities, or thought over them—should, owing to observation and discovery, have been unconsciously forced to recognize and adopt the same ratio of progression and order, in the evolution of chemical atoms, as Occultism does for both its Dhyânis and Atoms—analogy being its first law. As seen above, the very first Group of the Rûpa Angels is quaternary, an element being added to each in descending order. So also are the atoms, in the phraseology of [pg 239] Chemistry, monatomic, diatomic, triatomic, tetratomic, etc., progressing downwards.

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

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

(f) The Fifth Order is a very mysterious one, as it is connected with the microcosmic pentagon, the five-pointed star, representing man. In India and Egypt, these Dhyânis were connected with the Crocodile, and their abode is in Capricornus. But these are convertible terms in Indian Astrology, for the tenth sign of the Zodiac, which is called Makara, is loosely translated “Crocodile.” The word itself is occultly [pg 240] interpreted in various ways, as will be shown further on. In Egypt, the Defunct—whose symbol is the pentagram, or the five-pointed star, the points of which represent the limbs of a man—was shown emblematically transformed into a crocodile. Sebekh, or Sevekh (or “Seventh”), as Mr. Gerald Massey says, showing it to be the type of intelligence, is a dragon in reality, not a crocodile. He is the “Dragon of Wisdom,” or Manas, the Human Soul, Mind, the Intelligent Principle, called in our Esoteric Philosophy the Fifth Principle.

Says the defunct “Osirified,” in the Book of the Dead, or Ritual, under the glyph of a mummiform God with a crocodile's head:

I am the crocodile presiding at the fear, I am the God-crocodile, at the arrival of his Soul among men. I am the God-crocodile brought for destruction.

An allusion to the destruction of divine spiritual purity when man acquires the knowledge of good and evil; also to the “fallen” Gods, or Angels of every theogony.

I am the fish of the great Horus. [As Makara is the “Crocodile,” the Vehicle of Varuna.] I am merged in Sekhem.

This last sentence gives the corroboration, and repeats the doctrine of esoteric “Buddhism,” for it alludes directly to the Fifth Principle (Manas), or the most spiritual part of its essence rather, which merges into, is absorbed by, and made one with Âtmâ-Buddhi, after the death of man. For Sekhem is the residence, or Loka, of the God Khem (Horus-Osiris, or Father and Son); hence the Devachan of Âtmâ-Buddhi. In the Book of the Dead, the Defunct is shown entering into Sekhem, with Horus-Thot, and “emerging from it as pure spirit.” Thus the Defunct says:

I see the forms of [myself, as various] men transforming eternally.... I know this [chapter]. He who knows it ... takes all kinds of living forms.

And addressing in magic formula that which is called, in Egyptian Esotericism, the “ancestral heart,” or the reïncarnating principle, the permanent Ego, the Defunct says:

O my heart, my ancestral heart, necessary for my transformations, ... do not separate thyself from me before the guardian of the scales. Thou art my personality within my breast, divine companion watching over my fleshes [bodies].

It is in Sekhem that lies concealed the “Mysterious Face,” or the real Man concealed under the false personality, the triple-crocodile of Egypt, the symbol of the higher Trinity, or human Triad, Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas.

One of the explanations of the real though hidden meaning of this [pg 241] Egyptian religious glyph is easy. The crocodile is the first to await and meet the devouring fires of the morning sun, and very soon came to personify the solar heat. When the sun arose, it was like the arrival on earth, and among men, of the “divine soul which informs the Gods.” Hence the strange symbolism. The mummy donned the head of a crocodile to show that it was a Soul arriving from the earth.

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

(g) The Sixth and Seventh Orders partake of the lower qualities of the Quaternary. They are conscious ethereal Entities, as invisible as Ether, which are shot out, like the boughs of a tree, from the first central Group of the Four, and shoot out in their turn numberless side Groups, the lower of which are the Nature-Spirits, or Elementals, of countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and unsubstantial—the ideal Thoughts of their creators—down to atomic, though, to human perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as the “spirits of atoms,” for they are the first remove (backwards) from the physical atom—sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the Doctrine teaches, there are no such privileged Beings in the Universe, whether in our own or in other Systems, in the outer or the inner Worlds, as the Angels of the Western Religion and the Judean. [pg 242] A Dhyân Chohan has to become one; he cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane of life as a full-blown Angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will find itself transferred, in the next Circle of Life, into higher superior Worlds, and will make room for a new Hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. Being is an endless cycle within the One Absolute Eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles finite and conditioned. Gods, created as such, would evince no personal merit in being Gods. Such a class of Beings—perfect only by virtue of the special immaculate nature inherent in them—in the face of suffering and struggling humanity, and even of the lower creation, would be the symbol of an eternal injustice quite Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an anomaly and an impossibility in Nature. Therefore the “Four” and the “Three” have to incarnate as all other beings have. This Sixth Group, moreover, remains almost inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his highest and lowest principles, or his spirit and body; the five middle human principles being the very essence of those Dhyânis. Paracelsus calls them the Flagæ; the Christians, the Guardian Angels; the Occultists, the Ancestors, the Pitris. They are the Six-fold Dhyân Chohans, having the six spiritual Elements in the composition of their bodies—in fact, men, minus the physical body.

Alone, the Divine Ray, the Âtman, proceeds directly from the One. When asked how this can be? How is it possible to conceive that these “Gods,” or Angels, can be at the same time their own emanations and their personal selves? Is it in the same sense as in the material world, where the son is, in one way, his father, being his blood, the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh? To this the Teachers answer: Verily it is so. But one has to go deep into the mystery of Being, before one can fully comprehend this truth.

2. The One Ray multiplies the smaller Rays. Life precedes Form, and Life survives the last Atom. Through the countless Rays the Life-Ray, the One, Like a Thread through many Beads.

This shloka expresses the conception—a purely Vedântic one, as already explained elsewhere—of a Life-Thread, Sûtrâtmâ, running [pg 243] through successive generations. How, then, can this be explained? By resorting to a simile, to a familiar illustration, though necessarily imperfect, as all our available analogies must be. Before resorting to it, however, I would ask, whether it seems unnatural, least of all “supernatural,” to any one of us, when we consider the process of the growth and development of a fœtus into a healthy baby weighing several pounds? Evolving from what? From the segmentation of an infinitesimally small ovum and a spermatozoön! And afterwards we see the baby develop into a six-foot man! This refers to the atomic and physical expansion, from the microscopically small into something exceedingly large; from the unseen, to the naked eye, into the visible and objective. Science has provided for all this; and, I dare say, her theories, embryological, biological and physiological, are correct enough, so far as exact observation of the material goes. Nevertheless, the two chief difficulties of the science of Embryology—namely, what are the forces at work in the formation of the fœtus, and the cause of “hereditary transmission” of likeness, physical, moral or mental—have never been properly answered; nor will they ever be solved, till the day when Scientists condescend to accept the Occult theories. But if this physical phenomenon astonishes no one, except in so far as it puzzles the Embryologists, why should our intellectual and inner growth, the evolution of the Human-Spiritual to the Divine-Spiritual, be regarded as, or seem, more impossible than the other?

The Materialists and the Evolutionists of the Darwinian school would be ill-advised to accept the newly worked-out theories of Professor Weissmann, the author of Beiträge zur Descendenzlehre, with regard to one of the two mysteries of Embryology, as above specified, which he seems to think he has solved; for, when it is fully solved, Science will have stepped into the domain of the truly Occult, and passed for ever out of the realm of transformation, as taught by Darwin. The two theories are irreconcilable, from the standpoint of Materialism. Regarded from that of the Occultists, however, the new theory solves all these mysteries. Those who are not acquainted with the discovery of Professor Weissmann—at one time a fervent Darwinist—ought to hasten to repair the deficiency. The German embryologist-philosopher—stepping over the heads of the Greek Hippocrates and Aristotle, right back into the teachings of the old Âryans—shows one infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in the formation of an organism, alone and unaided determining, [pg 244] by means of constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future man, or animal, in its physical, mental and psychic characteristics. It is this cell which impresses on the face and form of the new individual the features of the parents, or of some distant ancestor; it is this cell, again, which transmits to him the intellectual and mental idiosyncracies of his sires, and so on. This Plasm is the immortal portion of our bodies, developing by means of a process of successive assimilations. Darwin's theory, viewing the embryological cell as the essence or extract from all other cells, is set aside; it is incapable of accounting for hereditary transmission. There are but two ways of explaining the mystery of heredity: either the substance of the germinal cell is endowed with the faculty of crossing the whole cycle of transformations that lead to the construction of a separate organism, and then to the reproduction of identical germinal cells; or, these germinal cells do not have their genesis at all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral germinal cell passed from father to son through long generations. It is the latter hypothesis that Weissmann has adopted and worked upon, and it is to this cell that he traces the immortal portion of man. So far, so good; and when this almost correct theory is accepted, how will Biologists explain the first appearance of this everlasting cell? Unless man “grew” like the immortal “Topsy,” and was not born at all, but fell from the clouds, how was that embryological cell generated in him?

Complete the Physical Plasm, mentioned above, the “Germinal Cell” of man with all its material potentialities, with the “Spiritual Plasm,” so to say, or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of the Six-principled Dhyâni—and you have the secret, if you are spiritual enough to understand it.

Now to the promised simile.

When the seed of the animal man is cast into the soil of the animal woman, that seed cannot germinate unless it has been fructified by the five virtues [the fluid of, or the emanation from, the principles] of the Six-fold Heavenly Man. Wherefore the Microcosm is represented as a Pentagon, within the Hexagon Star, the Macrocosm.

The functions of Jiva on this Earth are of a five-fold character. In the mineral atom, it is connected with the lowest principles of the Spirits of the Earth (the Six-fold Dhyânis); in the vegetable particle, with their [pg 245]second—the Prâna (Life); in the animal, with all these plus the third and the fourth; in man, the germ must receive the fruitage of all the five. Otherwise he will be born no higher than an animal.

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

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

The “tabernacles” mentioned above have improved in texture and symmetry of form, growing and developing with the Globe that bears them; but the physical improvement has taken place at the expense of [pg 246] the spiritual Inner Man and of Nature. The three middle principles, in earth and man, became with every Race more material; the Soul stepping back to make room for the Physical Intellect; the essence of the Elements becoming the material and composite elements now known.

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

The learned and very philosophical author of New Aspects of Life would impress upon his reader that the Nephesh Chiah (Living Soul), according to the Hebrews:

Proceeded from, or was produced by, the infusion of the Spirit or Breath of Life into the quickening body of man, and was to supersede and take the place of that Spirit in the thus constituted Self, so that the Spirit passed into, was lost sight of, and disappeared in the Living Soul.

The human body, he thinks, ought to be viewed as a matrix in which, and from which, the Soul, which he seems to place higher than the Spirit, is developed. Considered functionally and from the standpoint [pg 247] of activity, the Soul stands undeniably higher, in this finite and conditioned world of Mâyâ. The Soul, he says, “is ultimately produced from the animated body of man.” Thus the author identifies “Spirit” (Âtmâ) with the “Breath of Life” simply. The Eastern Occultists will demur to this statement, for it is based on the erroneous conception that Prâna and Âtmâ, or Jîvâtmâ, are one and the same thing. The author supports the argument, by showing that with the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and even Latins, Ruach, Pneuma and Spiritus meant Wind—with the Jews undeniably, and with the Greeks and Romans very probably; the Greek word Anemos (Wind) and the Latin Animus (Soul) having a suspicious relation.

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

Thus the philosophy of man's psychic, spiritual and mental relations with his physical functions is in almost inextricable confusion. Neither the old Âryan nor the Egyptian psychology is now properly understood; nor can they be assimilated, without accepting the Esoteric septenary, or, at any rate, the Vedântic quinquepartite division of the human inner principles. Failing which, it will be for ever impossible to understand the metaphysical and purely psychic, and even physiological, relations between the Dhyân Chohans, or Angels, on the one plane, and Humanity on the other. No Eastern (Âryan) Esoteric works are so far published, but we possess the Egyptian papyri, which speak clearly of the seven principles, or the “Seven Souls of Man.” The Book of the Dead gives a complete list of the “transformations” that every Defunct undergoes, while divesting himself, one by one, of all these principles—materialized for the sake of clearness into ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who try to show that the Ancient Egyptians did not teach Reïncarnation, that the “Soul” (the Ego or Self) of the Defunct is said to be living in Eternity: it is immortal, “coëval with, and disappearing with, the Solar Boat,” that is, for the Cycle of Necessity. This “Soul” emerges from the Tiaou, the Realm of the Cause of Life, and joins the living on Earth [pg 248] by day, to return to Tiaou every night. This expresses the periodical existences of the Ego.

The Shadow, the Astral Form, is annihilated, “devoured by the Uræus,” the Manes will be annihilated; the two Twins (the Fourth and Fifth Principles) will be scattered; but the Soul-Bird, “the Divine Swallow, and the Uræus of Flame” (Manas and Âtmâ-Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for they are their mother's husbands.

Another suggestive analogy between the Âryan, or Brâhmanical, and the Egyptian Esotericism. The former call the Pitris the “Lunar Ancestors” of men, and the Egyptians make of the Moon-God, Taht-Esmun, the first human ancestor.

This Moon-God “expressed the Seven nature-powers that were prior to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls, of which he was the manifestor as the Eighth One. [Hence the eighth sphere.]... The seven rays of the Chaldean ... Heptakis or Iao, on the Gnostic stones, indicate the same septenary of souls.... The first form of the mystical Seven was seen to be figured in heaven, by the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the constellation assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven Elemental Powers.”

As well known to every Hindû, this same constellation represents in India the Seven Rishis, and is called Riksha, and Chitrashikandinas.

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

For what is the Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the Book of the Dead contains a mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night-Sun, the inferior hemisphere, or the infernal region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the concealed side of the Moon. The human being, in their Esotericism, came out from the Moon—a triple mystery, astronomical, physiological and psychical, at once; he crossed the whole cycle of existence, and then returned to his birth-place, before issuing from it again. Thus the Defunct is shown arriving in the West, receiving his judgment before Osiris, resurrecting as the God Horus, and circling round the sidereal heavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having crossed the Noot, the Celestial Abyss, returning once more to Tiaou; an assimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life [pg 249] and reproduction, inhabits the Moon. Plutarch shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called “The Ingress of Osiris into the Moon.” In the Ritual, life is promised after death; and the renovation of life is placed under the patronage of Osiris-Lunus, because the Moon was the symbol of life-renewals or reïncarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying, and reäppearance every month. In the Dankmoe, it is said: “O Osiris-Lunus, that renews to thee thy renewal.” And Sabekh says to Seti I: “Thou renewest thyself as the God Lunus, when a babe.” It is still better explained in a Louvre papyrus: “Couplings and conceptions abound when he [Osiris-Lunus] is seen in heaven on that day.” Says Osiris: “O sole radiant beam of the Moon! I issue from the circulating multitudes [of stars].... Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris N. I will issue by day to do what I have to do amongst the living”—i.e., to produce conceptions.

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

If, instead of being taught in Sunday Schools useless lessons from the Bible, the armies of the ragged and poor were taught Astrology—so far, at any rate, as the occult properties of the Moon and its hidden influences on generation are concerned—then, there would be little need to fear increase of the population, or to resort to the questionable literature of the Malthusians for its arrest. For it is the Moon and her conjunctions that regulate conceptions, and every Astrologer in India knows it. During the previous Races, and at least at the beginning of the present one, those who indulged in marital relations during certain lunar phases that made those relations sterile, were regarded as sorcerers [pg 250] and sinners. But now even these sins of old, which arose from the abuse of Occult knowledge, would appear preferable to the crimes of to-day, which are perpetrated because of the complete ignorance of such Occult influences.

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

Nevertheless, there was a time when the whole world was “of one lip and of one knowledge,” and man knew more of his origin than he does now; and thus knew that the Sun and Moon, however large a part they may play in the constitution, growth and development of the human body, were not the direct causative agents of his appearance on Earth; for these agents, in truth, are the living and intelligent Powers which the Occultists call Dhyân Chohans.

As to this, a very learned admirer of the Jewish Esotericism tells us that:

The Kabalah says expressly that Elohim is a “general abstraction”; what we call in mathematics “a constant coëfficient,” or a “general function,” entering into all [pg 251]construction, not particular; that is, by the general ratio 1 to 31415, the [Astro-Dhyânic and] Elohistic figures.

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

Therefore, when it is proved to us that the Kabalistic identification of Jehovah with Binah, a female Sephira, has still another, a sub-occult, meaning in it, then and then only will Occultists be ready to pass the palm of perfection to the Kabalist. Until then, it is asserted that, as Jehovah, in the abstract sense of a “one living God,” is a single number, a metaphysical figment, and a reality only when put in his proper place as an emanation and a Sephira—we have a right to maintain that the Zohar, as witnessed by the Book of Numbers, at any rate, gave out originally, before the Christian Kabalists had disfigured it, and still gives out, the same doctrine that we do; that is, it makes Man emanate, not from one Celestial Man, but from a Septenary Group of Celestial Men, or Angels, just as in Pymander, the Thought Divine.

3. When the One becomes Two, the Three-fold appears (a). The Three are One; and it is our Thread, O Lanoo, the Heart of the Man-Plant, called Saptaparna (b).

(a) “When the One becomes Two, the Three-fold appears”: to wit, when the One Eternal drops its reflection into the region of Manifestation, [pg 252] that reflection, the Ray, differentiates the Water of Space; or, in the words of the Book of the Dead: “Chaos ceases, through the effulgence of the Ray of Primordial Light dissipating total darkness, by the help of the great magic power of the Word of the [Central] Sun.” Chaos becomes male-female, and Water, incubated by Light, and the Three-fold Being issues as its “First-born.” “Ra [or Osiris-Ptah] creates his own Limbs [like Brahmâ], by creating the Gods destined to personify his phases,” during the Cycle. The Egyptian Ra, issuing from the Deep, is the Divine Universal Soul in its manifested aspect, and so is Nârâyana, the Purusha, “concealed in Âkâsha, and present in Ether.”

This is the metaphysical explanation, and refers to the very beginning of Evolution, or, as we would rather say, of Theogony. The meaning of the Stanza, when explained from another standpoint in its reference to the mystery of man and his origin, is still more difficult to comprehend. In order to form a clear conception of what is meant by the One becoming Two, and then being transformed into the Three-fold, the student has to make himself thoroughly acquainted with what we call Rounds. If he refers to Esoteric Buddhism—the first attempt to sketch out an approximate outline of archaic cosmogony—he will find that by a Round is meant the serial evolution of nascent material Nature, of the seven Globes of our Chain, with their mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; man being included in the latter and standing at the head of it, during the whole period of a Life-Cycle, which latter would be called by the Brâhmans a “Day of Brahmâ.” It is, in short, one revolution of the “Wheel” (our Planetary Chain), which is composed of seven Globes, or seven separate “Wheels,” in another sense this time. When evolution has run [pg 253] downward into matter from Globe A to Globe G, it is one Round. In the middle of the fourth revolution, which is our present Round, “Evolution has reached its acme of physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical man, and, from this point, begins its work spirit-ward.” All this needs little repetition, as it is well explained in Esoteric Buddhism. That which was hardly touched upon, however, and of which the little that was said has misled many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a little more light may now be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more comprehensible, as the process will be fully explained only in its legitimate place, in Volume II.

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

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

The Group of the Hierarchy which is commissioned to “create” men is a special Group, then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this Cycle, just as a higher and still more spiritual Group evolved him in the Third [pg 254] Round. But as it is the Sixth, on the downward scale of Spirituality—the last and Seventh being the Terrestrial Spirits (Elementals), which gradually form, build and condense his physical body—this Sixth Group evolves no more than the future man's shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible, transparent copy of themselves. It becomes the task of the Fifth Hierarchy—the mysterious Beings that preside over the constellation Capricornus, Makara, or “Crocodile,” in India and in Egypt—to inform the empty and ethereal animal form, and make of it the Rational Man. This is one of those subjects upon which very little may be said to the general public. It is a Mystery truly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of intellectual and conscious Spiritual Beings in the Universe, and to limit full Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a “function of the brain.” Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated bodily in man, since his first appearance, and who, for all that, still exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space.

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

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

They held that, functionally, Spirit and Matter, of corresponding opacity and [pg 255]density, tended to coalesce; and that the resultant created Spirits, in the disembodied state, were constituted on a scale in which the differing opacities and transparencies of elemental or uncreated Spirit were reproduced. And that these Spirits, in the disembodied state, attracted, appropriated, digested and assimilated elemental Spirit and elemental Matter whose condition was conformed to their own.... They therefore taught that there was a wide difference in the conditions of created Spirits; and that, in the intimate association between the Spirit-world and the world of Matter, the more opaque Spirits, in the disembodied state, were drawn towards the more dense parts of the material world, and therefore tended towards the centre of the Earth, where they found the conditions most suited to their state; while the more transparent Spirits passed into the surrounding aura of the planet, the most rarefied finding their home in its satellite.

This relates exclusively to our Elemental Spirits, and has naught to do with either the Planetary, Sidereal, Cosmic or Inter-Etheric Intelligent Forces, or “Angels” as they are termed by the Roman Church. The Jewish Kabalists, especially the practical Occultists who dealt with Ceremonial Magic, busied themselves solely with the Spirits of the Planets and the “Elementals” so-called. Therefore the above covers only a portion of the Esoteric teaching.

The Soul, whose body-vehicle is the astral, ethereo-substantial envelope, could die and man be still living on earth. That is to say, the Soul could free itself from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons, such as insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc. The possibility of the “Soul”—that is, the eternal Spiritual Ego—dwelling in the unseen worlds, while its body goes on living on Earth, is a preeminently Occult doctrine, especially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. Many are the soulless men among us, for the occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists as well as in persons “who advance in holiness and never turn back.”

Therefore, that which living men (Initiates) can do, the Dhyânis, who have no physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This was the belief of the antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual society in “Spiritualism,” as well as in the Greek and Roman Churches, which teach the ubiquity of their Angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their Amshaspends as dual entities (Ferouers), applying this duality—in Esoteric philosophy, at any rate—to all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the numberless worlds in space, which are visible to our eye. In a note of Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean Oracles, we have ample evidence of the universality of [pg 256] this doctrine, for he says: “In these Oracles, the seven Cosmocratores of the World [‘the World-Pillars’], mentioned likewise by St. Paul, are double; one set being commissioned to rule the superior worlds, the spiritual and the sidereal, and the other to guide and watch over the worlds of matter.” Such is also the opinion of Jamblichus, who makes an evident distinction between the Archangels and the Archontes.

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

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

(b) The concluding sentence of this shloka shows how archaic is the belief and the doctrine that man is seven-fold in his constitution. The “Thread” of Being, which animates man, and passes through all his [pg 257] Personalities, or Rebirths on this Earth—an allusion to Sûtrâtmâ—the Thread on which moreover all his “Spirits” are strung, is spun from the essence of the Three-fold, the Four-fold and the Five-fold which contain all the preceding. Panchâshikha, agreeably to Padma Purâna, is one of the seven Kumâras who go to Shveta Dvîpa to worship Vishnu. We shall see, further on, what connection there is between the “celibate” and chaste Sons of Brahmâ, who refuse “to multiply,” and terrestrial mortals. Meanwhile, it is evident that the “Man-Plant, Saptaparna,” thus refers to the seven principles, and that man is compared to this seven-leaved plant, which is so sacred among Buddhists. The Egyptian allegory, in the Book of the Dead, that relates to the “reward of the Soul,” is as suggestive of our septenary doctrine as it is poetical. The Deceased is allotted a piece of land in the field of Aanroo, wherein the Manes, the deified shades of the dead, glean, as the harvest they have sown by their actions in life, the corn seven cubits high, which grows in a territory divided into seven and fourteen portions. This corn is the food on which they will live and prosper, or that will kill them, in Amenti, the realm of which the Aanroo-field is a domain. For, as said in the hymn, the Deceased is either destroyed therein, or becomes pure spirit for the Eternity, in consequence of the “seven times seventy-seven lives” passed, or to be passed, on Earth. The idea of the corn reaped as the “fruit of our actions” is very graphic.

4. It is the Root that never dies, the Three-tongued Flame of the Four Wicks (a)... The Wicks are the Sparks, that draw from the Three-tongued Flame, shot out by the Seven, their Flame; the Beams and Sparks of One Moon, reflected in the Running Waves of all the Rivers of the Earth (b).

(a) The “Three-tongued Flame that never dies” is the immortal spiritual Triad, the Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas, or rather the fruitage of the last, assimilated by the first two after every terrestrial life. The “Four Wicks,” that go out and are extinguished, are the Quaternary, the four lower principles, including the body.

“I am the Three-wicked Flame and my Wicks are immortal,” says the Defunct. “I enter into the domain of Sekhem [the God whose [pg 258] hand sows the seed of action produced by the disembodied soul], and I enter the region of the Flames who have destroyed their adversaries [i.e., got rid of the sin-creating Four Wicks].”

“The Three-tongued Flame of the Four Wicks” corresponds to the four Unities and the three Binaries of the Sephirothal tree.

(b) Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean, above which one and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent Personalities—the illusive envelopes of the immortal Monad-Ego—twinkle and dance on the waves of Mâyâ. They appear and, as the thousands of sparks produced by the moon-beams, last only so long as the Queen of the Night radiates her lustre on the “Running Waves” of Life, the period of a Manvantara; and then they disappear, the “Beams”—symbols of our eternal Spiritual Egos—alone surviving, remerged in, and being, as they were before, one with the Mother-Source.

5. The Spark hangs from the Flame by the finest Thread of Fohat. It journeys through the Seven Worlds of Mâyâ (a). It stops in the first, and is a Metal and a Stone; it passes into the Second, and behold—a Plant; the Plant whirls through Seven Forms and becomes a Sacred Animal (b).

From the combined attributes of these, Manu, the Thinker, is formed.

Who forms him? The Seven Lives, and the One Life (c). Who completes him? The Five-fold Lha. And who perfects the last Body? Fish, Sin and Soma (d).

(a) The phrase, “through the Seven Worlds of Mâyâ,” refers here to the seven Globes of the Planetary Chain and the seven Rounds, or the forty-nine stations of active existence that are before the “Spark,” or Monad, at the beginning of every Great Life-Cycle, or Manvantara. The “Thread of Fohat” is the Thread of Life before referred to.

This relates to the greatest problem of philosophy—the physical and substantial nature of Life, the independent nature of which is denied [pg 259] by Modern Science, because that Science is unable to comprehend it. The reïncarnationists and believers in Karma alone dimly perceive, that the whole secret of Life is in the unbroken series of its manifestations, whether in, or apart from, the physical body. Because even if:

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity—

yet it is itself part and parcel of that Eternity; for Life alone can understand Life.

What is that “Spark” which “hangs from the Flame”? It is Jîva, the Monad in conjunction with Manas, or rather its aroma—that which remains from each Personality, when worthy, and hangs from Âtmâ-Buddhi, the Flame, by the Thread of Life. In whatever way it is interpreted, and into whatever number of principles the human being is divided, it may be easily shown that this doctrine is supported by all the ancient religions, from the Vedic to the Egyptian, from the Zoroastrian to the Jewish. In the case of the last-mentioned, the Kabalistic works offer abundant proof of this statement. The entire system of the Kabalistic numerals is based on the divine Septenary hanging from the Triad, thus forming the Decad, and its permutations 7, 5, 4, and 3, which, finally, all merge into the One itself; an endless and boundless Circle.

As says the Zohar:

The Deity [the ever invisible Presence] manifests itself through the ten Sephiroth, which are its radiating witnesses. The Deity is like the sea from which outflows a stream called Wisdom, the waters of which fall into a lake named Intelligence. From the basin, like seven channels, issue the Seven Sephiroth.... For tenequal seven: the Decad contains four Unities and three Binaries.

The Ten Sephiroth correspond to the Limbs of Man.

When I [the Elohim] framed Adam Kadmon, the Spirit of the Eternal shot out of his Body, like a sheet of lightning that radiated at once on the billows of the sevenmillions of skies, and my ten Splendours were his Limbs.

But neither the Head nor the Shoulders of Adam Kadmon can be seen; therefore we read in the Siphra Dtzenioutha, the “Book of the Concealed Mystery”:

In the beginning of Time, after the Elohim [the “Sons of Light and Life,” or the Builders] had shaped out of the eternal Essence the Heavens and the Earth, they formed the worlds six by six.

The seventh being Malkuth, which is our Earth on its plane, and [pg 260] the lowest on all the other planes of conscious existence. The Chaldean Book of Numbers contains a detailed explanation of all this.

The first triad of the Body of Adam Kadmon [the three upper planes of the seven ] cannot be seen before the Soul stands in the presence of the Ancient of Days.

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

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

When Matronitha, the Mother, is separated and brought face to face with the King, in the excellence of the Sabbath, all things become one body.

“Become one body” means, that all is reäbsorbed once more into the One Element, the spirits of men becoming Nirvânîs, and the elements of everything else becoming again what they were before—Protyle or Undifferentiated Substance. “Sabbath” means Rest, or Nirvâna. It is not the “seventh day” after six days, but a period the duration of which equals that of the seven “days,” or any period made up of seven parts. Thus a Pralaya is equal in duration to a Manvantara, or a Night of Brahmâ is equal to his Day. If the Christians will follow Jewish customs, they ought to adopt the spirit and not the dead letter thereof. [pg 261] They should work one week of seven days and rest seven days. That the word “Sabbath” had a mystic significance, is disclosed in the contempt shown by Jesus for the Sabbath day, and by what is said in Luke. Sabbath is there taken for the whole week. See the Greek text where the week is called “Sabbath.” Literally, “I fast twice in the Sabbath.” Paul, an Initiate, knew it well when referring to the eternal rest and felicity in Heaven, as Sabbath: “and their happiness will be eternal, for they will ever be [one] with the Lord, and will enjoy an eternal Sabbath.”

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

The Shinto allegorical accounts of cosmogony and the origin of man, in Japan, hint at the same belief.

Captain C. Pfoundes, who studied the religion underlying the various sects of the land, for nearly nine years in the monasteries of Japan, says:

The Shinto idea of creation is as follows: Out of Chaos (Konton) the Earth (In) was the sediment precipitated, and the Heavens (Yo) the ethereal essences which ascended: Man (Jin) appeared between the two. The first man was called Kuni-to ko tatchino-mikoto, and five other names were given to him, and then the human race appeared, male and female. Isanagi and Isanami begat Tenshoko doijin, the first of the five Gods of the Earth.

These “Gods” are simply our Five Races, Isanagi and Isanami being the two kinds of “Ancestors,” the two preceding Races which give birth to animal and to rational man.

[pg 262]

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

Thus it stands with both the Kabalistic and Occult names attached:

Lévi calls Nephesh that which we name Manas, and vice versâ. Nephesh is the Breath of (animal) Life in man—the Breath of Life, [pg 263] instinctual in the animal; and Manas is the Third Soul—the human in its light side, and animal, in its connection with Samaël or Kâma. Nephesh is really the “Breath of (animal) Life” breathed into Adam, the Man of Dust; it is consequently the Vital Spark, the informing Element. Without Manas, the “Reasoning Soul,” or Mind, which in Lévi's diagram is miscalled Nephesh, Âtmâ-Buddhi is irrational on this plane and cannot act. It is Buddhi which is the Plastic Mediator; not Manas, the intelligent medium between the upper Triad and the lower Quaternary. But there are many such strange and curious transformations to be found in the Kabalistic works—a convincing proof that this literature has become a sad jumble. We do not accept the classification, except in this one particular, in order to show the points of agreement.

We will now give in tabular form what the very cautious Éliphas Lévi says in explanation of his diagram, and what the Esoteric Doctrine teaches—and compare the two. Lévi, too, makes a distinction between Kabalistic and Occult Pneumatics.

Says Éliphas Lévi, the Kabalist: Say the Theosophists:

Kabalistic Pneumatics. Esoteric Pneumatics.

1. The Soul (or Ego) is a clothed light; and this light is triple. 1. The same; for it is Âtmâ-Buddhi-Manas.

2. Neshamah—pure Spirit. 2. The same.

3. Ruach—the Soul or Spirit. 3. Spiritual Soul.

4. Nephesh—Plastic Mediator. 4. Mediator between Spirit and Man, the Seat of Reason, the Mind, in man.

5. The garment of the Soul is the rind [body] of the Image [Astral Soul]. 5. Correct.

6. The Image is double, because it reflects the good and the bad. 6. Too uselessly apocalyptic. Why not say that the Astral reflects the good as well as the bad man; man, who is ever tending to the upper Triad, or else disappears with the Quaternary.

7. [Image—Body.] 7. The Earthly Image.

[pg 264]

Occult Pneumatics. Occult Pneumatics.

(As given by Éliphas Lévi.) (As given by the Occultists.)

1. Nephesh is immortal, because it renews its life by the destruction of forms. [But Nephesh, the “Breath of Life,” is a misnomer, and a useless puzzle to the student.] 1. Manas is immortal, because after every new incarnation it adds to Âtmâ-Buddhi something of itself; and thus, assimilating itself to the Monad, shares its immortality.

2. Ruach progresses by the evolution of ideas (!?). 2. Buddhi becomes conscious by the accretions it gets from Manas, on the death of man after every new incarnation.

3. Neshamah is progressive, without oblivion and destruction. 3. Âtmâ neither progresses, forgets, nor remembers. It does not belong to this plane; it is but the Ray of Light eternal which shines upon, and through, the darkness of matter—when the latter is willing.

4. The Soul has three dwellings. 4. The Soul—collectively, as the Upper Triad—lives on three planes, besides its fourth, the terrestrial sphere; and it is eternally on the highest of the three.

5. These dwellings are: the Plane of Mortals; the Superior Eden; and the Inferior Eden. 5. These dwellings are: Earth for the physical man, or Animal Soul; Kâma Loka (Hades, the Limbo) for the disembodied man, or his Shell; Devachan for the Higher Triad.

[pg 265]

6. The Image [man] is a sphinx that offers the riddle of birth. 6. Correct.

7. The fatal Image [the Astral] endows Nephesh with its aptitudes; but Ruach is able to substitute for it the Image conquered in accordance with the inspirations of Neshamah. 7. The Astral, through Kâma (Desire), is ever drawing Manas down into the sphere of material passions and desires. But if the better Man, or Manas, tries to escape the fatal attraction, and turns its aspirations to Âtmâ (Neshamah), then Buddhi (Ruach) conquers, and carries Manas with it to the realm of eternal Spirit.

It is very evident that the French Kabalist either did not sufficiently know the real tenet, or distorted it to suit himself and his objects. Thus he says again, treating upon the same subject, as follows; and we Occultists answer the late Kabalist and his admirers also as follows:

1. The Body is the mould of Nephesh; Nephesh the mould of Ruach; Ruach the mould of the garment of Neshamah. 1. The Body follows the whims, good or bad, of Manas; Manas tries to follow the Light of Buddhi, but often fails. Buddhi is the mould of the “garments” of Âtmâ; for Âtmâ is no body, or shape, or anything, and because Buddhi is only figuratively its Vehicle.

2. Light [the Soul] personifies itself in clothing itself [with a Body]; and personality endures only when the garment is perfect. 2. The Monad becomes a personal Ego when it incarnates; and something remains of that Personality through Manas, when the latter is perfect enough to assimilate Buddhi.

3. The Angels aspire to become men; a Perfect Man, a Man-God, is above all the Angels. 3. Correct.

4. Every 14,000 years the soul rejuvenates, and rests in the jubilean sleep of oblivion. 4. Within a period, a Great Age, or a Day of Brahmâ, 14 Manus reign; after which comes Pralaya, when all the Souls (Egos) rest in Nirvâna.

[pg 266]

Such are the distorted copies of the Esoteric Doctrine in the Kabalah.

But to return to Shloka 5 of Stanza VII.

(b) The well-known Kabalistic aphorism runs: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; the beast, a man; a man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.” The “Spark” animates all the kingdoms, in turn, before it enters into and informs Divine Man, between whom and his predecessor animal man, there is all the difference in the world. Genesis begins its anthropology at the wrong end—evidently for a blind—and lands nowhere. The introductory chapters of Genesis were never meant to represent even a remote allegory of the creation of our Earth. They embrace a metaphysical conception of some indefinite period, in eternity, when successive attempts were being made by the law of evolution at the formation of universes. The idea is plainly stated in the Zohar:

There were old Worlds, which perished as soon as they came into existence, were formless, and were called Sparks. Thus, the smith, when hammering the iron, lets the sparks fly in all directions. The Sparks are the primordial Worlds, which could not continue because the Sacred Aged (Sephira) had not as yet assumed its form (of androgyne, or opposite sexes) of King and Queen (Sephira and Kadmon), and the Master was not yet at his work.

Had Genesis begun as it ought, one would have found in it, first, the Celestial Logos, the “Heavenly Man,” which evolves as a Compound Unit of Logoi, out of which, after their pralayic sleep—a sleep that gathers the Numbers scattered on the mâyâvic plane into One, as the separate globules of quicksilver on a plate blend into one mass—the Logoi appear in their totality as the first “Male and Female,” or Adam Kadmon, the “Fiat Lux” of the Bible, as we have already seen. But this transformation did not take place on our Earth, nor on any material plane, but in the Spacial Depths of the first differentiation of the eternal Root-Matter. On our nascent Globe, things proceed differently. The Monad or Jîva, as said in Isis Unveiled, is, first of all, shot down by the Law of Evolution into the lowest form of matter—the mineral. After a sevenfold gyration encased in the stone, [pg 267] or that which will become mineral and stone in the Fourth Round, it creeps out of it, say, as a lichen. Passing thence, through all the forms of vegetable matter, into what is termed animal matter, it has now reached the point at which it has become the germ, so to speak, of the animal, that will become the physical man. All this, up to the Third Round, is formless, as matter, and senseless, as consciousness. For the Monad, or Jîva, per se, cannot be called even Spirit: it is a Ray, a Breath of the Absolute, or the Absoluteness rather; and the Absolute Homogeneity, having no relations with the conditioned and relative finiteness, is unconscious on our plane. Therefore, besides the material which will be needed for its future human form, the Monad requires (a) a spiritual model, or prototype, for that material to shape itself into; and (b) an intelligent consciousness, to guide its evolution and progress, neither of which is possessed by the homogeneous Monad, or by senseless though living matter. The Adam of dust requires the Soul of Life to be breathed into him: the two middle Principles, which are the sentient Life of the irrational animal and the Human Soul, for the former is irrational without the latter. It is only when, from a potential androgyne, man has become separated into male and female, that he will be endowed with this conscious, rational, individual Soul (Manas), “the principle, or the intelligence, of the Elohim,” to receive which, he has to eat of the fruit of Knowledge from the Tree of Good and Evil. How is he to obtain all this? The Occult Doctrine teaches that while the Monad is cycling on downward into matter, these very Elohim, or Pitris—the lower Dhyân Chohans—are evolving, pari passu with it, on a higher and more spiritual plane, descending also relatively into matter, on their own plane of consciousness, when, after having reached a certain point, they will meet the incarnating senseless Monad, encased in the lowest matter, and blending the two potencies, Spirit and Matter, the union will produce that terrestrial symbol of the “Heavenly Man” in space—Perfect Man. In the Sânkhya Philosophy, Purusha (Spirit) is spoken of as something impotent unless it mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (Matter), which, left alone, is—senseless. But in the Secret Philosophy they are viewed as graduated. Spirit and Matter, though one and the same thing in their origin, when once they are on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them their evolutionary progress in contrary directions—Spirit falling gradually into Matter, and the latter ascending to its original condition, that of a pure spiritual Substance. [pg 268] Both are inseparable, yet ever separated. On the physical plane, two like poles will always repel each other, while the negative and the positive are mutually attracted; so do Spirit and Matter stand to each other—the two poles of the same homogeneous Substance, the Root-Principle of the Universe.

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

“Who forms Manu [the Man] and who forms his body? The Life and the Lives. Sin and the Moon.” Here Manu stands for the spiritual, heavenly Man, the real and non-dying Ego in us, which is the direct emanation of the “One Life,” or the Absolute Deity. As to our outward physical bodies, the house of the tabernacle of the Soul, the Doctrine teaches a strange lesson; so strange that unless thoroughly explained, and as thoroughly comprehended, it is only the exact science of the future that is destined to fully vindicate the theory.

It has been stated before now that Occultism does not accept anything inorganic in the Kosmos. The expression employed by Science, [pg 269] “inorganic substance,” means simply that the latent life, slumbering in the molecules of so-called “inert matter,” is incognizable. All is Life, and every atom of even mineral dust is a Life, though beyond our comprehension and perception, because it is outside the range of the laws known to those who reject Occultism. “The very atoms,” says Tyndall, “seem instinct with a desire for life.” Whence, then, we would ask, comes the tendency “to run into organic form”? Is it in any way explicable except according to the teachings of Occult Science?

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

The Commentary first speaks of the “numberless and countless crores of Lives.” Is Pasteur, then, unconsciously taking the first step toward Occult Science, in declaring that, if he dared express his ideas fully upon this subject, he would say, that the organic cells are endowed with a vital potency that does not cease its activity with the cessation of a current of oxygen towards them, and does not, on that account, break off its relations with life itself, which is supported by the influence [pg 270] of that gas? “I would add,” continues Pasteur, “that the evolution of the germ is accomplished by means of complicated phenomena, among which we must class processes of fermentation”; and life, according to Claude Bernard and Pasteur, is nothing else than a process of fermentation. That there exist in Nature Beings, or Lives, that can live and thrive without air, even on our Globe, has been demonstrated by the same Scientists. Pasteur found that many of the lower lives, such as vibriones, and other microbes and bacteria, could exist without air, which, on the contrary, killed them. They derived the oxygen necessary for their multiplication from the various substances that surrounded them. He calls them ærobes, living on the tissues of our matter, when the latter has ceased to form a part of an integral and living whole (then called very unscientifically by Science “dead matter”), and anærobes. The one kind binds oxygen, and contributes greatly to the destruction of animal life and vegetable tissues, furnishing to the atmosphere materials which enter, later on, into the constitution of other organisms; the other finally destroys, or rather annihilates, the so-called organic substance; ultimate decay being impossible without their participation. Certain germ-cells, such as those of yeast, develop and multiply in air, but when deprived of it, they will adapt themselves to life without air and become ferments, absorbing oxygen from substances coming in contact with them, and thereby ruining the latter. The cells in fruit, when lacking free oxygen, act as ferments and stimulate fermentation. “Therefore the vegetable cell, in this case, manifests its life as an anærobic being. Why, then, should an organic cell form, in this case, an exception?” asks Professor Bogolubof. Pasteur shows that in the substance of our tissues and organs, the cell, not finding sufficient oxygen for itself, stimulates fermentation in the same way as the fruit-cell, and Claude Bernard thought that Pasteur's idea of the formation of ferments found its application and corroboration in the fact that urea increases in the blood during strangulation. Life therefore is everywhere in the Universe, and, Occultism teaches us, it is also in the atom.

“Bhûmi appears with six sisters,” says the Commentary. It is a Vedic teaching that “there are three Earths, corresponding to three Heavens, and our Earth [the fourth] is called Bhûmi.” This is the explanation given by our exoteric Western Orientalists. But the esoteric meaning, and allusion to it in the Vedas, is that it refers to our Planetary Chain; “three Earths” on the descending arc, and “three [pg 271] Heavens,” which are three Earths or Globes also, only far more ethereal, on the ascending or spiritual arc. By the first three we descend into Matter, by the other three we ascend into Spirit; the lowest one, Bhûmi, our Earth, forming the turning point, so to say, and containing, potentially, as much of Spirit as it does of Matter. But we shall treat of this hereafter.

The general teaching of the Commentary, then, is that every new Round develops one of the Compound Elements, as now known to Science, which rejects the primitive nomenclature, preferring to subdivide them into constituents. If Nature is the “Ever-Becoming” on the manifested plane, then these Elements are to be regarded in the same light: they have to evolve, progress, and increase to the manvantaric end.

Thus the First Round, we are taught, developed but one Element, and a nature and humanity in what may be spoken of as one aspect of Nature—called by some, very unscientifically, though it may be so de facto, “one-dimensional space.”

The Second Round brought forth and developed two Elements, Fire and Earth; and its humanity, adapted to this condition of Nature, if we can give the name humanity to beings living under conditions now unknown to men, was—to use again a familiar phrase in a strictly figurative sense, the only way in which it can be used correctly—a “two-dimensional” species.

The processes of natural development which we are now considering will at once elucidate and discredit the fashion of speculating on the attributes of two, three, and four or more dimensional space; but, in passing, it is worth while to point out the real significance of the sound, but incomplete, intuition that has prompted—among Spiritualists and Theosophists, and several great men of Science, for the matter of that—the use of the modern expression, the “fourth dimension of space.” To begin with, the superficial absurdity of assuming that Space itself is measurable in any direction is of little consequence. The familiar phrase can only be an abbreviation of the fuller form—the “fourth dimension of matter, in Space.” But even thus expanded, it is an unhappy phrase, because while it is perfectly true that the progress of [pg 272] evolution may be destined to introduce us to new characteristics of matter, those with which we are already familiar are really more numerous than the three dimensions. The qualities, or what is perhaps the best available term, the characteristics of matter, must clearly bear a direct relation always to the senses of man. Matter has extension, colour, motion (molecular motion), taste and smell, corresponding to the existing senses of man, and the next characteristic it develops—let us call it for the moment “Permeability”—will correspond to the next sense of man, which we may call “Normal Clairvoyance.” Thus, when some bold thinkers have been thirsting for a fourth dimension, to explain the passage of matter through matter, and the production of knots upon an endless cord, they have been in want of a sixth characteristic of matter. The three dimensions belong really to only one attribute, or characteristic, of matter—extension; and popular common sense justly rebels against the idea that, under any condition of things, there can be more than three of such dimensions as length, breadth and thickness. These terms, and the term “dimension” itself, all belong to one plane of thought, to one stage of evolution, to one characteristic of matter. So long as there are foot-rules within the resources of cosmos, to apply to matter, so long will they be able to measure it three ways and no more; just as, from the time the idea of measurement first occupied a place in the human understanding, it has been possible to apply measurement in three directions and no more. But these considerations do not in any way militate against the certainty that, in the progress of time, as the faculties of humanity are multiplied, so will the characteristics of matter be multiplied also. Meanwhile, the expression is far more incorrect than even the familiar phrase of the sun's “rising” or “setting.”

We now return to the consideration of material evolution through the Rounds. Matter in the Second Round, it has been stated, may be figuratively referred to as two-dimensional. But here another caveat must be entered. This loose and figurative expression may be regarded—on one plane of thought, as we have just seen—as equivalent to the second characteristic of matter, corresponding to the second perceptive faculty or sense of man. But these two linked scales of evolution are concerned with the processes going on within the limits of a single Round. The succession of primary aspects of Nature, with which the succession of Rounds is concerned, has to do, as already indicated, with the development of the Elements—in the Occult sense—Fire, [pg 273] Air, Water, Earth. We are only in the Fourth Round, and our catalogue so far stops short. The order in which these Elements are mentioned, in the last sentence but one, is the correct one for Esoteric purposes and in the Secret Teachings. Milton was right when he spoke of the “Powers of Fire, Air, Water, Earth”; the Earth, such as we know it now, had no existence before the Fourth Round, hundreds of millions of years ago, the commencement of our geological Earth. The Globe, says the Commentary, was “fiery, cool and radiant, as its ethereal men and animals, during the First Round”—a contradiction or paradox in the opinion of our present Science—“luminous and more dense and heavy, during the Second Round; watery during the Third.” Thus are the Elements reversed.

The centres of consciousness of the Third Round, destined to develop into humanity as we know it, arrived at a perception of the third Element, Water. If we had to frame our conclusions according to the data furnished us by Geologists, then we would say that there was no real water, even during the Carboniferous Period. We are told that gigantic masses of carbon, which existed formerly spread in the atmosphere, as carbonic acid, were absorbed by plants, while a large proportion of that gas was mixed in the water. Now, if this be so, and we have to believe that all the carbonic acid which went to compose those plants that formed bituminous coal, lignite, etc., and went towards the formation of lime-stone, and so on, that all this was at that period in the atmosphere in gaseous form, then, there must have been seas and oceans of liquid carbonic acid! But how then could the Carboniferous Period be preceded by the Devonian and Silurian Ages—those of fishes and molluscs—on that assumption? Barometric pressure, moreover, must have exceeded several hundred times the pressure of our present atmosphere. How could organisms, even so simple as those of certain fishes and molluscs, stand that? There is a curious work by Blanchard, on the Origin of Life, wherein he shows some strange contradictions and confusions in the theories of his colleagues, and which we recommend to the reader's attention.

Those of the Fourth Round have added Earth as a state of matter to their stock, as well as the three other Elements in their present transformation.

In short, none of the so-called Elements were, in the three preceding Rounds, as they are now. For all we know, Fire may have been pure Âkâsha, the First Matter of the “Magnum Opus” of the Creators and [pg 274] Builders, that Astral Light which the paradoxical Éliphas Lévi calls in one breath the “Body of the Holy Ghost,” and in the next “Baphomet,” the “Androgyne Goat of Mendes”; Air, simply Nitrogen, the “Breath of the Supporters of the Heavenly Dome,” as the Mahometan Mystics call it; Water, that primordial fluid which was required, according to Moses, to make a “Living Soul.” And this may account for the flagrant discrepancies and unscientific statements found in Genesis. Separate the first from the second chapter; read the former as a scripture of the Elohists, and the latter as that of the far later Jehovists; still one finds, if one reads between the lines, the same order in which created things appear; namely, Fire (Light), Air, Water, and Man (or Earth). For the sentence of the first chapter (the Elohistic), “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” is a mistranslation; it is not “the heaven and the earth,” but the duplex, or dual, Heaven, the upper and the lower Heavens, or the separation of Primordial Substance that was light in its upper, and dark in its lower portions (the manifested Universe), in its duality of the invisible (to the senses), and the visible to our perceptions. “God divided the light from the darkness”; and then made the firmament (Air). “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters,” i.e., “the waters which were under the firmament [our manifested visible Universe] from the waters which were above the firmament [the (to us) invisible planes of being].” In the second chapter (the Jehovistic), plants and herbs are created before water, just as in the first, light is produced before the sun. “God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God [Elohim] had not caused it to rain upon the earth, etc.”—an absurdity unless the esoteric explanation is accepted. The plants were created before they were in the earth—for there was no earth then such as it is now; and the herb of the field was in existence before it grew as it does now, in the Fourth Round.

Discussing and explaining the nature of the invisible Elements and the “Primordial Fire” mentioned above, Éliphas Lévi invariably calls it the “Astral Light”: with him it is the “Grand Agent Magique.” Undeniably it is so, but—only so far as Black Magic is concerned, and on the lowest planes of what we call Ether, the noumenon of which is Âkâsha; and even this would be held incorrect by orthodox Occultists. The “Astral Light” is simply the older “Sidereal Light” of Paracelsus; and to say that “everything which exists has been evolved from it, and [pg 275] it preserves and reproduces all forms,” as he does, is to enunciate truth only in the second proposition. The first is erroneous; for if all that exists was evolved through (or viâ) it, this is not the Astral Light, since the latter is not the container of all things but, at best, only the reflector of this all. Éliphas Lévi very truly shows it “a force in Nature,” by means of which “a single man who can master it ... might throw the world into confusion and transform its face”; for it is the “Great Arcanum of transcendent Magic.” Quoting the words of the great Western Kabalist in their translated form, we may, perhaps, the better explain them by the occasional addition of a word or two, to show the difference between Western and Eastern explanations of the same subject. The author says of the great Magic Agent:

This ambient and all-penetrating fluid, this ray detached from the [Central or Spiritual] Sun's splendour ... fixed by the weight of the atmosphere [?!] and the power of central attraction ... the Astral Light, this electro-magnetic ether, this vital and luminous caloric, is represented on ancient monuments by the girdle of Isis, which twines round two poles ... and in ancient theogonies by the serpent devouring its own tail, emblem of prudence and of Saturn [emblem of infinity, immortality, and Cronus—Time—not the God Saturn or the planet]. It is the winged dragon of Medea, the double serpent of the caduceus, and the tempter of Genesis; but it is also the brazen snake of Moses encircling the Tau ... lastly, it is the devil of exoteric dogmatism, and is really the blind force [it is not blind, and Lévi knew it], which souls must conquer, in order to detach themselves from the chains of Earth; for if they should not, they will be absorbed by the same power which first produced them, and will return to the central and eternal fire.

This great Archæus is now publicly discovered by, and for, only one man—J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia. For others, however, it is discovered, yet must remain almost useless. “So far shalt thou go....”

All the above is as practical as it is correct, save one error, which we have explained. Éliphas Lévi commits a great blunder in always identifying the Astral Light with what we call Âkâsha. What it really is will be expounded in Volume II.

Éliphas Lévi further writes:

The great Magic Agent is the fourth emanation of the life principle [we say—it is the first in the inner, and the second in the outer (our) Universe], of which the Sun is the third form ... for the day-star [the Sun] is only the reflection and material shadow of the Central Sun of truth, which illuminates the intellectual [invisible] world of Spirit, and which itself is but a gleam borrowed from the Absolute.

So far he is right enough. But when the great authority of the [pg 276] Western Kabalists adds that, nevertheless, “it is not the immortal Spirit, as the Indian Hierophants have imagined”—we answer, that he slanders the said Hierophants, as they have said nothing of the kind; for even the Purânic exoteric writings flatly contradict the assertion. No Hindû has ever mistaken Prakriti—the Astral Light being only above the lowest plane of Prakriti, the Material Kosmos—for the “immortal Spirit.” Prakriti is ever called Mâyâ, Illusion, and is doomed to disappear with the rest, the Gods included, at the hour of the Pralaya. As it is shown that Âkâsha is not even the Ether, least of all then, we imagine, can it be the Astral Light. Those unable to penetrate beyond the dead letter of the Purânas, have occasionally confused Âkâsha with Prakriti, with Ether, and even with the visible Sky! It is true also that those who have invariably translated the term Âkâsha by “Ether”—Wilson, for instance—finding it called “the material cause of sound” possessing, moreover, this one single property, have ignorantly imagined it to be “material,” in the physical sense. True, again, that if the characteristics are accepted literally, then, since nothing material or physical, and therefore conditioned and temporary, can be immortal—according to metaphysics and philosophy—it would follow that Âkâsha is neither infinite nor immortal. But all this is erroneous, since both the words Pradhâna, Primeval Matter, and Sound, as a property, have been misunderstood; the former term (Pradhâna) being certainly synonymous with Mûlaprakriti and Âkâsha, and the latter (Sound) with the Verbum, the Word or the Logos. This is easy to demonstrate; for it is shown in the following sentence from Vishnu Purâna. “There was neither day nor night, nor sky, nor earth, nor darkness, nor light, nor any other thing, save only One, unapprehensible by intellect, or that which is Brahman, and Pums, [Spirit] and Pradhâna [Primordial Matter].”

Now, what is Pradhâna, if it is not Mûlaprakriti, the Root of All, in another aspect? For though Pradhâna is said, further on, to merge into the Deity, as everything else does, in order to leave the One absolute during the Pralaya, yet is it held as infinite and immortal. The literal translation is given as: “One Prâdhânika Brahma Spirit: That was”; and the Commentator interprets the compound term as a substantive, not as a derivative word used attributively, i.e., like something “conjoined with Pradhâna.” The student has to note, moreover, that the Purânic is a dualistic system, not evolutionary, and that, in this [pg 277] respect, far more will be found, from an Esoteric standpoint, in the Sânkhya, and even in the Mânava-Dharma-Shâstra, however much the latter differs from the former. Hence Pradhâna, even in the Purânas, is an aspect of Parabrahman, not an evolution, and must be the same as the Vedântic Mûlaprakriti. “Prakriti, in its primary state, is Âkâsha,” says a Vedântin scholar. It is almost abstract Nature.

Âkâsha, then, is Pradhâna in another form, and as such cannot be Ether, the ever-invisible agent, courted even by Physical Science. Nor is it Astral Light. It is, as said, the noumenon of the seven-fold differentiated Prakriti—the ever immaculate “Mother” of the fatherless “Son,” who becomes “Father” on the lower manifested plane. For Mahat is the first product of Pradhâna, or Âkâsha; and Mahat—Universal Intelligence, “whose characteristic property is Buddhi”—is no other than the Logos, for he is called Îshvara, Brahmâ, Bhâva, etc. He is, in short, the “Creator,” or the Divine Mind in creative operation, “the Cause of all things.” He is the “First-Born,” of whom the Purânas tell us that “Earth and Mahat are the inner and outer boundaries of the Universe,” or, in our language, the negative and the positive poles of dual Nature (abstract and concrete), for the Purâna adds:

In this manner—as were the seven forms [principles] of Prakriti reckoned from Mahat to Earth—so at the (time of elemental) dissolution (pratyâhâra), these seven successively reënter into each other. The Egg of Brahmâ (Sarva-mandala) is dissolved, with its seven zones (dvîpa), seven oceans, seven regions, etc.

These are the reasons why the Occultists refuse to give the name of Astral Light to Âkâsha, or to call it Ether. “In my Father's house are many mansions,” may be contrasted with the Occult saying, “In our Mother's house are seven mansions,” or planes, the lowest of which is above and around us—the Astral Light.

The Elements, whether simple or compound, could not have remained [pg 278] the same since the commencement of the evolution of our Chain. Everything in the Universe progresses steadily in the Great Cycle, while incessantly going up and down in the smaller Cycles. Nature is never stationary during Manvantara, as it is ever becoming, not simply being; and mineral, vegetable, and human life are always adapting their organisms to the then reigning Elements; and therefore those Elements were then fitted for them, as they are now for the life of present humanity. It will only be in the next, or Fifth, Round that the fifth Element, Ether—the gross body of Âkâsha, if it can be called even that—will, by becoming a familiar fact of Nature to all men, as Air is familiar to us now, cease to be, as at present, hypothetical and an “agent” for so many things. And only during that Round will those higher senses, the growth and development of which Âkâsha subserves, be susceptible of a complete expansion. As already indicated, a partial familiarity with the characteristic of matter—Permeability—which should be developed concurrently with the sixth sense, may be expected to develop at the proper period in this Round. But with the next Element added to our resources, in the next Round, Permeability will become so manifest a characteristic of matter, that the densest forms of this Round will seem to man's perceptions as obstructive to him as a thick fog, and no more.

Let us now return to the Life-Cycle. Without entering at length upon the description given of the Higher Lives, we must direct our attention, at present, simply to the earthly Beings and the Earth itself. The latter, we are told, is built up for the First Round by the “Devourers,” which disintegrate and differentiate the germs of other Lives in the Elements; pretty much, it must be supposed, as in the present stage of the world, the ærobes do, when, undermining and loosening the chemical structure in an organism, they transform animal matter, and generate substances that vary in their constitutions. Thus Occultism disposes of the so-called Azoic Age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time when the Earth was without life upon it. Wherever there is an atom of matter, a particle, or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life in it, however latent and unconscious.

Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active Life; it is drawn into the vortex of Motion [the Alchemical Solvent of Life]; Spirit and Matter are [pg 279]the two States of the One, which is neither Spirit nor Matter, both being the Absolute Life, latent.... Spirit is the first differentiation of [and in] Space; and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is neither Spirit nor Matter, That is IT—the Causeless Cause of Spirit and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call the One Life, or the Intra-Cosmic Breath.

Once more we say—like must produce like. Absolute Life cannot produce an inorganic atom, whether single or complex, and there is life even in Laya, just as a man in a profound cataleptic state—to all appearance a corpse—is still a living being.

When the “Devourers”—in whom the men of Science are invited to see, with some show of reason, atoms of the Fire-Mist, if they will, as the Occultist will offer no objection to this—when the “Devourers,” we say, have differentiated the “Fire Atoms,” by a peculiar process of segmentation, the latter become Life-Germs, which aggregate according to the laws of cohesion and affinity. Then the Life-Germs produce Lives of another kind, which work on the structure of our Globes.

Thus, in the First Round, the Globe, having been built by the primitive Fire-Lives—i.e., formed into a sphere—had no solidity, no qualifications, save a cold brightness, no form, no colour; it is only towards the end of the First Round that it developed one Element, which, from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence, has become now, in our Round, the fire we know throughout the System. The Earth was in her first Rûpa, the essence of which is the Âkâshic Principle named ——, that which is now known as, and very erroneously termed, Astral Light, which Éliphas Lévi calls the “Imagination of Nature,” probably to avoid giving it its correct name, as others do.

Speaking of it, in his Preface to the Histoire de la Magie, Éliphas Lévi says:

It is through this Force that all the nervous centres secretly communicate with each other; from it—that sympathy and antipathy are born; from it—that we have our dreams; and that the phenomena of second sight and extra-natural visions take place.... Astral Light [acting under the impulsion of powerful wills] ... destroys, coagulates, separates, breaks, gathers in all things.... God created it on that day when he said: “Fiat Lux!” ... It is directed by the Egregores, i.e., the chiefs of the souls, who are the spirits of energy and action.

Éliphas Lévi ought to have added that the Astral Light, or Primordial Substance, if matter at all, is that which, called Light, Lux esoterically [pg 280] explained, is the body of those Spirits themselves, and their very essence. Our physical light is the manifestation on our plane, and the reflected radiance, of the Divine Light, emanating from the collective Body of those who are called the “Lights” and the “Flames.” But no other Kabalist has ever had the talent of heaping up one contradiction on the other, of making one paradox chase another in the same sentence, and in such flowing language, as Éliphas Lévi. He leads his reader through the most lovely valleys, to strand him after all on a desert and barren rock.

Says the Commentary:

It is through and from the radiations of the seven Bodies of the seven Orders of Dhyânis, that the seven Discrete Quantities [Elements], whose Motion and harmonious Union produce the manifested Universe of Matter, are born.

The Second Round brings into manifestation the second Element—Air; an element, the purity of which would ensure continuous life to him who would use it. In Europe there have been two Occultists only who have discovered and even partially applied it in practice, though its composition has always been known among the highest Eastern Initiates. The ozone of the modern Chemists is poison compared with the real Universal Solvent, which could never be thought of unless it existed in Nature.

From the Second Round, Earth—hitherto a fœtus in the matrix of Space—began its real existence: it had developed individual sentient Life, its second Principle. The second corresponds to the sixth [Principle]; the second is Life continuous, the other, temporary.

The Third Round developed the third Principle—Water; while the Fourth transformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our Globe into the hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on. Bhûmi has reached her fourth Principle. To this it may be objected that the law of analogy, so much insisted upon, is broken. Not at all. Earth will reach her true ultimate form—her body shell—inversely in this to man, only toward the end of the Manvantara, after the Seventh Round. Eugenius Philalethes was right when he assured his readers, “on his word of honour,” that no one had yet seen the “Earth,” i.e., Matter in its essential form. Our Globe is, so far, in its Kâmarûpic state—the Astral Body of Desires of Ahamkâra, dark Egotism, the progeny of Mahat, on the lower plane.

It is not molecularly constituted matter, least of all the human Body, [pg 281] Sthûla Sharîra, that is the grossest of all our “Principles,” but verily the middle Principle, the real Animal Centre, whereas our Body is but its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us acts all its life. Every intellectual Theosophist will understand my real meaning. Thus the idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless Lives, just in the same way as was the rocky crust of our Earth, has nothing repulsive in it for the true Mystic. Nor can Science oppose the Occult teaching, for it is not because the microscope will ever fail to detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it can reject the doctrine.

(c) Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organisms of both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, ærobes, anærobes, and what not. But Science has never yet gone so far as to assert with the Occult doctrine, that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings; which, with the exception of the larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and Physiology are the two great magicians of the future, which are destined to open the eyes of mankind to great physical truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man—is more and more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be identical, Chemical Science may well say that there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox, and that which forms man. But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal invisible Lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the tree which shelters it from the sun. Each particle—whether you call it organic or inorganic—is a Life. Every atom and molecule in the Universe is both life-giving and death-giving to such forms, inasmuch as it builds by aggregation universes, and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the transmigrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes the forms, and expels the souls from their temporary abodes. It creates and kills; it is self-generating and self-destroying; it brings [pg 282] into being, and annihilates, that mystery of mysteries, the living body of man, animal, or plant, every second in time and space; and it generates equally life and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and disagreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations. It is that mysterious Life, represented collectively by countless myriads of Lives, that follows in its own sporadic way the hitherto incomprehensible law of Atavism; that copies family resemblances, as well as those it finds impressed in the Aura of the generators of every future human being; a mystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention elsewhere. For the present, one instance may be cited in illustration. Modern Science is beginning to find out that ptomaine, the alkaloid poison generated by decaying corpses and matter—a Life also, extracted with the help of volatile ether, yields a smell as strong as that of the freshest orange-blossoms; but that free from oxygen, such alkaloids yield either a most sickening, disgusting smell, or a most agreeable aroma, which recalls that of the most delicately scented flowers; and it is suspected that such blossoms owe their agreeable smell to the poisonous ptomaine. The venomous essence of certain fungi, also, is nearly identical with the venom of the cobra of India, the most deadly of serpents. The French savants Arnaud, Gautier, and Villiers, have found in the saliva of living men the same venomous alkaloid as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra, and the trigonocephalus of Portugal. It is proven that venom of the deadliest kind, whether called ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by living men, animals and plants. Gautier also discovered an alkaloid in the fresh carcase and brains of an ox, and a venom which he calls xanthocreatinine, similar to the substance extracted from the poisonous saliva of reptiles. It is the muscular tissues, the most active organs in the animal economy, that are suspected of being the generators or factors of venoms, which have the same importance as carbonic acid and urea in the functions of life, and are the ultimate products of inner combustion. And though it is not yet fully determined whether poisons can be generated by the animal systems of living beings, without the participation and interference of microbes, it is ascertained that the animal does produce venomous substances in its physiological or living state.

Thus, having discovered the effects, Science has to find their primary causes; and this it can never do without the help of the old sciences, of Alchemy, Occult Botany and Physics. We are taught that every physiological change, in addition to pathological phenomena, diseases—nay, [pg 283] life itself, or rather the objective phenomena of life, produced by certain conditions and changes in the tissues of the body, which allow and force life to act in that body—that all this is due to those unseen “Creators” and “Destroyers,” which are called, in such a loose and general way, microbes. It might be supposed that these Fiery Lives and the microbes of Science are identical. This is not true. The Fiery Lives are the seventh and highest sub-division of the plane of matter, and correspond in the individual with the One Life of the Universe, though only on that plane of matter. The microbes of Science are the first and lowest sub-division on the second plane—that of material Prâna, or Life. The physical body of man undergoes a complete change of structure every seven years, and its destruction and preservation are due to the alternate functions of the Fiery Lives, as Destroyers and Builders. They are Builders by sacrificing themselves, in the form of vitality, to restrain the destructive influence of the microbes, and, by supplying the microbes with what is necessary, they compel them under that restraint to build up the material body and its cells. They are Destroyers also, when that restraint is removed, and the microbes, unsupplied with vital constructive energy, are left to run riot as destructive agents. Thus, during the first half of a man's life, the first five periods of seven years each, the Fiery Lives are indirectly engaged in the process of building up man's material body; Life is on the ascending scale, and the force is used in construction and increase. After this period is passed, the age of retrogression commences, and, the work of the Fiery Lives exhausting their strength, the work of destruction and decrease also commences.

An analogy between cosmic events in the descent of Spirit into Matter, for the first half of a Manvantara (planetary as well as human), and its ascent, at the expense of Matter, in the second half, may here be traced. These considerations have to do solely with the plane of matter, but the restraining influence of the Fiery Lives on the lowest sub-division of the second plane, the microbes, is confirmed by the fact mentioned in the theory of Pasteur above referred to, that the cells of the organs, when they do not find sufficient oxygen for themselves, adapt themselves to that condition and form ferments, which, by absorbing oxygen from substances which come in contact with them, produce their destruction. Thus the process is commenced by one cell robbing its neighbour of the source of its vitality, when the supply is insufficient; and the destruction so commenced steadily progresses.

[pg 284]

Such experimenters as Pasteur are the best friends and helpers of the Destroyers, and the worst enemies of the Creators—if the latter were not at the same time Destroyers also. However it may be, one thing is certain in this: the knowledge of these primary causes, and of the ultimate essence of every Element, of its Lives, their functions, properties, and conditions of change—constitutes the basis of Magic. Paracelsus was, perhaps, the only Occultist in Europe, during the latter centuries of the Christian era, who was versed in this mystery. Had not a criminal hand put an end to his life years before the time allotted him by Nature, physiological Magic would have fewer secrets for the civilized world than it now has.

(d) But what has the Moon to do in all this, we may be asked. What have “Fish, Sin and Soma [Moon],” in the apocalyptic sentence of the Stanza, to do in company with the Life-microbes? With the latter nothing, except that they avail themselves of the tabernacle of clay prepared by them; with divine perfect Man everything, since “Fish, Sin and Moon” conjointly compose the three symbols of the immortal Being.

This is all that can be given. Nor does the writer pretend to know more of these strange symbols than may be inferred about them from exoteric religions—from the mystery, perhaps, which underlies the Matsya (Fish) Avatâra of Vishnu, the. Chaldean Oannes, the Man-Fish, recorded in the imperishable sign of the Zodiac, Pisces, and running throughout the two Testaments in the personages of Joshua “Son of Nun (the Fish)” and Jesus; from the allegorical “Sin,” or Fall of Spirit into Matter; and from the Moon—in so far as it relates to the Lunar Ancestors, the Pitris.

For the present, it may be as well to remind the reader, that while the Moon-Goddesses were connected in every mythology, especially the Grecian, with child-birth, because of the influence of the Moon on women and conception, the Occult and actual connection of our satellite with fecundation is to this day unknown to Physiology, which regards every popular practice in this connection as gross superstition. As it is useless to discuss these in detail, we can only stop for the present to notice the lunar symbology casually, to show that the said superstition belongs to the most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism—the basis of Christianity. With the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was child-giving, and the Esotericism of the Bible, interpreted kabalistically, shows undeniably that the Holy of Holies in the Temple was simply [pg 285] the symbol of the womb. This is now proven beyond doubt and cavil, by the numerical reading of the Bible in general, and of Genesis especially. This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews from the Egyptians and Indians, whose Holy of Holies is symbolized by the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid and the Yoni symbols of exoteric Hindûism. To make the matter clearer, and to show at the same time the enormous difference in the spirit of interpretation and the original meaning of the same symbols between the ancient Eastern Occultists and the Jewish Kabalists, we refer the reader to the Section on “The Holy of Holies,” in the second Volume.

Phallic worship has developed only with the loss of the keys to the true meaning of the symbols. It was the last and most fatal turning from the highway of truth and divine knowledge into the side path of fiction, raised into dogma through human falsification and hierarchic ambition.

6. From the First-Born, the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his Shadow becomes more strong and radiant with every Change. The morning sun-light has changed into noon-day glory....

This sentence, “the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his Shadow [Man] becomes more strong with every Change,” is another psychological mystery, that will find its explanation in Volume II. For the present, it will suffice to say that the “Watcher” and his “Shadows”—the latter numbering as many as there are reïncarnations for the Monad—are one. The Watcher, or the Divine Prototype, is at the upper rung of the Ladder of Being; the Shadow, at the lower. Withal, the Monad of every living being, unless his moral turpitude breaks the connection, and he runs loose and astray into the “Lunar Path”—to use the Occult expression—is an individual Dhyân Chohan, distinct from others, with a kind of spiritual Individuality of its own, during one special Manvantara. Its Primary, the Spirit (Âtman), is one, of course, with the One Universal Spirit (Paramâtmâ), but the Vehicle (Vâhan) it is enshrined in, the Buddhi, is part and parcel of that Dhyân-Chohanic Essence; and it is in this that lies the mystery of that [pg 286] ubiquity, which was discussed a few pages back. “My Father, that is in Heaven, and I—are one,” says the Christian Scripture; and in this, at any rate, it is the faithful echo of the Esoteric tenet.

7. “This is thy present Wheel”—said the Flame to the Spark. “Thou art myself, my Image and my Shadow. I have clothed myself in thee, and thou art my Vâhan, to the Day ‘Be With Us,’ when thou shalt re-become myself and others, thyself and I” (a). Then the Builders, having donned their first Clothing, descend on radiant Earth, and reign over Men—who Are themselves (b).

(a) The Day when the Spark will re-become the Flame, when Man will merge into his Dhyân Chohan, “myself and others, thyself and I,” as the Stanza has it, means that in Paranirvâna—when Pralaya will have reduced not only material and psychical bodies, but even the spiritual Egos, to their original principle—the Past, Present, and even Future Humanities, like all things, will be one and the same. Everything will have reëntered the Great Breath. In other words, everything will be “merged in Brahman,” or the Divine Unity.

Is this annihilation, as some think? Or atheism, as other critics—the worshippers of a personal deity, and believers in an unphilosophical paradise—are inclined to suppose? Neither. It is worse than useless to return to the question of implied atheism, in that which is spirituality of a most refined character. To see in Nirvâna annihilation, amounts to saying of a man plunged in a sound dreamless sleep—one that leaves no impression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper's Higher Self is then in its original state of Absolute Consciousness—that he, too, is annihilated. The latter simile answers to one side of the question only—the most material; since reäbsorption is by no means such a “dreamless sleep,” but, on the contrary, Absolute Existence, an unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language is absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a comprehensive conception of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic visions of the Soul, through spiritual ideations of the divine Monad. Nor is the Individuality—nor even the essence of the Personality, if any be left behind—lost, because reäbsorbed. For, however limitless [pg 287] from a human standpoint, the paranirvânic state, yet it has a limit in Eternity. Once reached, the same Monad will reëmerge therefrom, as a still higher being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected activity. The human mind, in its present stage of development, cannot transcend, scarcely can it reach this plane of thought. It totters here, on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and Eternity.

(b) The “Watchers” reign over men during the whole period of Satya Yuga and the smaller subsequent Yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root Race; after which it is the Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes, as in the Egyptian Dynasties enumerated by the priests to Solon, the incarnated Dhyânis of a lower order, up to King Menes and the human Kings of other nations. All were carefully recorded. In the views of symbologists this Mythopœic Age is of course regarded as only a fairy tale. But since traditions and even chronicles of such Dynasties of Divine Kings, of Gods reigning over men, followed by Dynasties of Heroes or Giants, exist in the annals of every nation, it is difficult to understand how all the peoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast oceans and belong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, as well as the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same “fairy tales” in the same order of events. However, as the Secret Doctrine teaches history—which, although esoteric and traditional, is, none the less, more reliable than profane history—we are entitled to our beliefs as much as anyone else, whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine says that the Dhyâni-Buddhas of the two higher Groups, namely, the Watchers or the Architects, furnished the many and various races with divine kings and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts and sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that had just shaken off their Vehicles of the lower Kingdoms, and who had, therefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin, the great spiritual truths of the transcendental Worlds.

Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers “descend on radiant Earth and reign over men, who are themselves.” The reigning Kings had finished their cycle on Earth and other Worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the future Manvantaras they will have risen to higher [pg 288] Systems than our planetary World; and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the hard and difficult path of Progress, who will take the places of their predecessors. The next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own Life-Cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a Mankind whose Monads may now be still imprisoned—semi-conscious—in the most intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles may be animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the vegetable world.

Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Seven-fold Nature; the spiritual or divine; the psychic or semi-divine; the intellectual; the passional, the instinctual, or cognitional; the semi-corporeal; and the purely material or physical natures. All these evolve and progress cyclically, passing from one into another, in a double, centrifugal and centripetal, way, one in their ultimate essence, seven in their aspects. The lowest, of course, is that depending upon and subservient to our five physical senses, which are in truth seven, as shown later, on the authority of the oldest Upanishads. Thus far, for individual, human, sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher macrocosm. The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for purposes of the collective progress of the countless Lives, the outbreathings of the One Life; in order that, through the Ever-Becoming, every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and the intangible, through the mixed natures of the semi-terrestrial, down to matter in full generation, and then back again, reäscending at each new period higher and nearer the final goal; that each atom, we say, may reach, through individual merits and efforts, that plane where it re-becomes the One Unconditioned All. But between the Alpha and the Omega there is the weary “Road,” hedged in by thorns, that goes down first, then—

Winds up hill all the way;

Yes, to the very end....

Starting upon the long journey immaculate, descending more and more into sinful matter, and having connected himself with every atom in manifested Space—the Pilgrim, having struggled through, and suffered in, every form of Life and Being, is only at the bottom of the valley of matter, and half through his cycle, when he has identified himself with collective Humanity. This, he has made in his own image. In order to progress upwards and homewards, the “God” has now to ascend the weary uphill path of the Golgotha of Life. It is the martyrdom [pg 289] of self-conscious existence. Like Vishvakarman, he has to sacrifice himself to himself, in order to redeem all creatures, to resurrect from the Many into the One Life. Then he ascends into Heaven indeed; where, plunged into the incomprehensible Absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvâna, he reigns unconditionally, and whence he will re-descend again, at the next “Coming,” which one portion of humanity expects in its dead-letter sense as the “Second Advent,” and the other as the last “Kalkî Avatâra.”

[pg 290]

Summing Up.

The History of Creation and of this World, from its beginning up to the present time, is composed of seven chapters. The seventh chapter is not yet written.

T. Subba Row.

The first of these “seven chapters” has been attempted and is now finished. However incomplete and feeble as an exposition, it is, at any rate, an approximation—using the word in a mathematical sense—to that which is the oldest basis for all subsequent cosmogonies. The attempt to render in a European tongue the grand panorama of the ever periodically recurring Law, impressed upon the plastic minds of the first Races endowed with Consciousness, by those who reflected the same from the Universal Mind, is daring; for no human language, save the Sanskrit—which is that of the Gods—can do so with any degree of adequacy. But the failures in this work must be forgiven for the sake of the motive.

As a whole, neither the foregoing nor what follows can be found in full anywhere. It is not taught in any of the six Indian schools of philosophy, for it pertains to their synthesis, the seventh, which is the Occult Doctrine. It is not traced on any crumbling papyrus of Egypt, nor is it any longer graven on Assyrian tile or granite wall. The Books of the Vedânta—the “last word of human knowledge”—give out but the metaphysical aspect of this world-cosmogony; and their priceless thesaurus, the Upanishads—Upa-ni-shad being a compound word, expressing the conquest of ignorance by the revelation of secret, spiritual knowledge—now requires the additional possession of a master-key, to enable the student to get at their full meaning. The reason for this I venture to state here as I learned it from a Master.

The name Upanishad, is usually translated “esoteric doctrine.” These treatises form part of Shruti, or “revealed” Knowledge, Revelation in short, and are generally attached to the Brâhmana portion of the Vedas, as their third division.

[pg 291]

[Now] the Vedas have a distinct dual meaning—one expressed by the literal sense of the words, the other indicated by the metre and the svara (intonation), which are as the life of the Vedas.... Learned pandits and philologists of course deny that svara has anything to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines; but the mysterious connection between svara and light is one of its most profound secrets.

There are over 150 Upanishads enumerated by Orientalists, who credit the oldest with being written probably about 600 years b.c.; but of genuine texts there does not exist a fifth of the number. The Upanishads are to the Vedas what the Kabalah is to the Jewish Bible. They treat of and expound the secret and mystic meaning of the Vedic texts. They speak of the origin of the Universe, the nature of Deity, and of Spirit and Soul, as also of the metaphysical connection of Mind and Matter. In a few words: They contain the beginning and the end of all human knowledge, but they have ceased to reveal it, since the days of Buddha. If it were otherwise, the Upanishads could not be called esoteric, since they are now openly attached to the Sacred Brâhmanical Books, which have, in our present age, become accessible even to the Mlechchhas (out-castes) and the European Orientalists. One thing in them—and this, in all the Upanishads—invariably and constantly points to their ancient origin, and proves (a) that they were written, in some of their portions, before the caste system became the tyrannical institution which it still is; and (b) that half of their contents have been eliminated, while some of them have been rewritten and abridged. “The great Teachers of the higher Knowledge and the Brâhmans are continually represented as going to Kshatriya [military-caste] kings to become their pupils.” As Professor Cowell pertinently remarks, the Upanishads “breathe an entirely different spirit [from other Brâhmanical writings], a freedom of thought unknown in any earlier work, except in the Rig Veda hymns themselves.” The second fact is explained by a tradition recorded in one of the MSS. on Buddha's life. It says that the Upanishads were originally attached to their Brâhmanas after the beginning of a reform, which led to the exclusiveness of the present caste system among the Brâhmans, a few centuries after the invasion of India by the “Twice-born.” They were complete in those days, and were used for the instruction of the Chelâs who were preparing for Initiation.

This lasted so long as the Vedas and the Brâhmanas remained in the [pg 292] sole and exclusive keeping of the temple-Brâhmans—while no one else had the right to study or even read them outside of the sacred caste. Then came Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu. After learning the whole of the Brâhmanical wisdom in the Rahasya, or the Upanishads, and finding that the teachings differed little, if at all, from those of the “Teachers of Life” inhabiting the snowy ranges of the Himâlayas, the disciple of the Brâhmans, feeling indignant because the Sacred Wisdom was thus withheld from all but Brâhmans, determined, by popularizing it, to save the whole world. Then it was that the Brâhmans, seeing that their Sacred Knowledge and Occult Wisdom was falling into the hands of the Mlechchhas, abridged the texts of the Upanishads, which originally contained thrice the matter of the Vedas and the Brâhmanas together, without altering, however, one word of the texts. They simply detached from the MSS. the most important portions, containing the last word of the Mystery of Being. The key to the Brâhmanical secret code remained henceforth with the Initiates alone, and the Brâhmans were thus in a position to publicly deny the correctness of Buddha's teaching by appealing to their Upanishads, silenced for ever on the chief questions. Such is the esoteric tradition beyond the Himâlayas.

Shrî Shankarâchârya, the greatest Initiate living in the historical ages, wrote many a Bhâshya (Commentary) on the Upanishads. But his original treatises, as there are reasons to suppose, have not yet fallen into the hands of the Philistines, for they are too jealously preserved in his monasteries (mathams). And there are still weightier reasons to believe that the priceless Bhâshyas on the Esoteric Doctrine of the Brâhmans, by their greatest expounder, will remain for ages still a dead letter to most of the Hindûs, except the Smârtava Brâhmans. This sect, founded by Shankarâchârya, which is still very powerful in Southern India, is now almost the only one to produce students who have preserved sufficient knowledge to comprehend the dead letter of the Bhâshyas. The reason for this, I am informed, is that they alone have occasionally real Initiates at their head in their mathams, as for instance, in the Shringa-giri, in the Western Ghâts of Mysore. On the other hand, there is no sect, in that desperately exclusive [pg 293] caste of the Brâhmans, more exclusive than is the Smârtava; and the reticence of its followers, to say what they may know of the Occult sciences and the Esoteric Doctrine, is only equalled by their pride and learning.

Therefore the writer of the present statement must be prepared beforehand to meet with great opposition, and even the denial of such statements as are brought forward in this work. Not that any claim to infallibility, or to perfect correctness in every detail of all which is herein written, has ever been put forward. Facts are there, and they can hardly be denied. But, owing to the intrinsic difficulties of the subjects treated of, and the almost insurmountable limitations of the English tongue, as of all other European languages, to express certain ideas, it is more than probable that the writer has failed to present the explanations in the best and the clearest form; yet all that could be done, under every adverse circumstance, has been done, and this is the utmost that can be expected of any writer.

Let us recapitulate and, by the vastness of the subjects expounded, show how difficult, if not impossible, it is to do them full justice.

(1) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate of all systems, even as veiled in the exotericism of the Purânas. But such is the mysterious power of Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, set down and explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs. The flashing gaze of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded the soul of things there, where an ordinary profane observer, however learned, would have perceived but the external work of form. But Modern Science believes not in the “soul of things,” and hence will reject the whole system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals; that it is an uninterrupted record, covering thousands of generations of seers, whose respective experiences were made to test and verify the traditions, passed on orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted Beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity; that for long ages, the “Wise Men” of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued from the last cataclysm and the shifting of continents, passed their lives in learning, not teaching. How did they do so? It is answered: [pg 294] by checking, testing, and verifying, in every department of Nature, the traditions of old, by the independent visions of great Adepts; that is to say, men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organizations, to the utmost possible degree. No vision of one Adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions—so obtained as to stand as independent evidence—of other Adepts, and by centuries of experience.

(2) The fundamental law in that system, the central point from which all emerges, around and towards which all gravitates, and upon which is hung all its philosophy, is the One Homogeneous Divine Substance-Principle, the One Radical Cause.

... Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led

From cause to cause to nature's secret head,

And found that one first Principle must be....

It is called “Substance-Principle,” for it becomes “Substance” on the plane of the manifested Universe, an Illusion, while it remains a “Principle” in the beginningless and endless abstract, visible and invisible, Space. It is the omnipresent Reality; impersonal, because it contains all and everything. Its Impersonality is the fundamental conception of the System. It is latent in every atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself.

(3) The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown Absolute Essence. To call it “Essence,” however, is to sin against the very spirit of the philosophy. For though the noun may be derived in this case from the verb esse, “to be,” yet It cannot be identified with a “being” of any kind, that can be conceived by human intellect. It is best described as neither Spirit nor Matter, but both. Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti are One, in reality, yet Two in the universal conception of the Manifested, even in the conception of the One Logos, the first “Manifestation,” to which, as the able lecturer shows, in the “Notes on the Bhagavadgîtâ,” It appears from the objective standpoint as Mûlaprakriti, and not as Parabrahman; as its Veil, and not the One Reality hidden behind, which is unconditioned and absolute.

(4) The Universe, with everything in it, is called Mâyâ, because all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the sun. Compared to the eternal immutability of the One, and the changelessness of that Principle, the Universe, with its evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in the mind of a philosopher, no [pg 295] better than a will-o'-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself.

(5) Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. We men must remember that, simply because we do not perceive any signs of consciousness which we can recognize, say, in stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there. There is no such thing as either “dead” or “blind” matter, as there is no “blind” or “unconscious” Law. These find no place among the conceptions of Occult Philosophy. The latter never stops at surface appearances, and for it the noumenal Essences have more reality than their objective counterparts; wherein it resembles the system of the mediæval Nominalists, for whom it was the universals that were the realities, and the particulars which existed only in name and human fancy.

(6) The Universe is worked and guided, from within outwards. As above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth; and man, the microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm, is the living witness to this Universal Law, and to the mode of its action. We see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind. As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man's external body, can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three functions named, so with the external or manifested Universe. The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to perform, and who—whether we give them one name or another, whether we call them Dhyân Chohans or Angels—are “Messengers,” in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence; and to call them all pure Spirits, without any of the earthly alloy “which time is wont to prey upon,” is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was, or prepares to become, a man, if not in the present, then in a past or a coming Manvantara. They are perfected, when not incipient, men; and in their higher, less material, spheres differ morally from terrestrial human beings only in that they are devoid of the feeling of personality, and of the human emotional nature—two purely earthly characteristics. The [pg 296] former, or the “perfected,” have become free from these feelings, because (a) they have no longer fleshly bodies—an ever-numbing weight on the Soul; and (b), the pure spiritual element being left untrammelled and more free, they are less influenced by Mâyâ than man can ever be, unless he is an Adept who keeps his two personalities—the spiritual and the physical—entirely separated. The incipient Monads, having never yet had terrestrial bodies, can have no sense of personality or Ego-ism. That which is meant by “personality” being a limitation and a relation, or, as defined by Coleridge, “individuality existing in itself but with a nature as a ground,” the term cannot of course be applied to non-human Entities; but, as a fact insisted upon by generations of Seers, none of these Beings, high or low, have either individuality or personality as separate Entities, i.e., they have no individuality in the sense in which a man says, “I am myself and no one else”; in other words, they are conscious of no such distinct separateness as men and things have on earth. Individuality is the characteristic of their respective Hierarchies, not of their units; and these characteristics vary only with the degree of the plane to which these Hierarchies belong: the nearer to the region of Homogeneity and the One Divine, the purer and the less accentuated is that individuality in the Hierarchy. They are finite in all respects, with the exception of their higher principles—the immortal Sparks reflecting the Universal Divine Flame, individualized and separated only on the spheres of Illusion, by a differentiation as illusive as the rest. They are “Living Ones,” because they are the streams projected on the cosmic screen of Illusion from the Absolute Life; Beings in whom life cannot become extinct, before the fire of ignorance is extinct in those who sense these “Lives.” Having sprung into being under the quickening influence of the uncreated Beam, the reflection of the great Central Sun that radiates on the shores of the River of Life, it is the Inner Principle in them which belongs to the Waters of Immortality, while its differentiated clothing is as perishable as man's body. Therefore Young was right in saying that

Angels are men of a superior kind ...

and no more. They are neither “ministering” nor “protecting” Angels, nor are they “Harbingers of the Most High”; still less the “Messengers of Wrath” of any God such as man's fancy has created. To appeal to their protection is as foolish as to believe that their sympathy may be secured by any kind of propitiation; for they are, as [pg 297] much as man himself is, the slaves and creatures of immutable Karmic and Cosmic Law. The reason for this is evident. Having no elements of personality in their essence, they can have no personal qualities, such as are attributed by men, in exoteric religions, to their anthropomorphic God—a jealous and exclusive God, who rejoices and feels wrathful, is pleased with sacrifice, and is more despotic in his vanity than any finite foolish man. Man, being a compound of the essences of all these celestial Hierarchies, may succeed in making himself, as such, superior, in one sense, to any Hierarchy or Class, or even combination of them. “Man can neither propitiate nor command the Devas,” it is said. But, by paralyzing his lower personality, and arriving thereby at the full knowledge of the non-separateness of his Higher Self from the One Absolute Self, man can, even during his terrestrial life, become as “one of us.” Thus it is, by eating of the fruit of knowledge, which dispels ignorance, that man becomes like one of the Elohim, or the Dhyânis; and once on their plane, the spirit of Solidarity and perfect Harmony, which reigns in every Hierarchy, must extend over him, and protect him in every particular.

The chief difficulty which prevents men of Science from believing in divine as well as in nature spirits is their Materialism. The main impediment before the Spiritualist which hinders him from believing in the same, while preserving a blind belief in the “Spirits” of the Departed, is the general ignorance of all—except some Occultists and Kabalists—about the true essence and nature of Matter. It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious Beings, besides the Spirits of the Dead. It is on the right comprehension of the primeval Evolution of Spirit-Matter, and its real Essence, that the student has to depend for the further elucidation in his mind of the Occult Cosmogony, and for the only sure clue which can guide his subsequent studies.

In sober truth, as just shown, every so-called “Spirit” is either a disembodied or a future man. As from the highest Archangel (Dhyân Chohan) down to the last conscious Builder (the inferior Class of Spiritual Entities), all such are men, having lived æons ago, in other Manvantaras, on this or other Spheres; so the inferior, semi-intelligent and non-intelligent Elementals are all future men. The fact alone, that a Spirit is endowed with intelligence, is a proof to the Occultist that such a Being must have been a man, and acquired his knowledge [pg 298] and intelligence throughout the human cycle. There is but one indivisible and absolute Omniscience and Intelligence in the Universe, and this thrills throughout every atom and infinitesimal point of the whole Kosmos, which has no bounds, and which people call Space, considered independently of anything contained in it. But the first differentiation of its reflection in the Manifested World is purely spiritual, and the Beings generated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has any relation to the one we conceive of. They can have no human consciousness or intelligence before they have acquired such, personally and individually. This may be a mystery, yet it is a fact in Esoteric Philosophy, and a very apparent one too.

The whole order of Nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. There is design in the action of the seemingly blindest forces. The whole process of evolution, with its endless adaptations, is a proof of this. The immutable laws that weed out the weak and feeble species, to make room for the strong, and which ensure the “survival of the fittest,” though so cruel in their immediate action, all are working toward the grand end. The very fact that adaptations do occur, that the fittest do survive in the struggle for existence, shows that what is called “unconscious Nature” is in reality an aggregate of forces, manipulated by semi-intelligent beings (Elementals), guided by High Planetary Spirits (Dhyân Chohans), whose collective aggregate forms the Manifested Verbum of the Unmanifested Logos, and constitutes one and the same time the Mind of the Universe and its immutable Law.

For Nature, taken in its abstract sense, cannot be “unconscious,” as it is the emanation from, and thus an aspect on the manifested plane of, the Absolute Consciousness. Where is that daring man who would presume to deny to vegetation and even to minerals a consciousness of their own? All he can say is, that this consciousness is beyond his comprehension.

Three distinct representations of the Universe, in its three distinct aspects, are impressed upon our thoughts by the Esoteric Philosophy: the Pre-existing, evolved from the Ever-existing, and the Phenomenal—the world of illusion, the reflection, and shadow thereof. During the great mystery and drama of life, known as the Manvantara, real Kosmos is like the objects placed behind the white screen upon which shadows are thrown. The actual figures and things remain invisible, while the wires of evolution are pulled by unseen hands. Men and [pg 299] things are thus but the reflections, on the white field, of the realities behind the snares of Mahâmâyâ, or the Great Illusion. This was taught in every philosophy, in every religion, ante- as well as post-diluvian, in India and Chaldea, by the Chinese as by the Grecian Sages. In the former countries these three Universes were allegorized, in exoteric teachings, by the three Trinities, emanating from the central eternal Germ, and forming with it a Supreme Unity: the initial, the manifested, and the creative Triad, or the Three in One. The last is but the symbol, in its concrete expression, of the first ideal two. Hence Esoteric Philosophy passes over the necessarianism of this purely metaphysical conception, and calls the first one, only, the Ever-Existing. This is the view of every one of the six great schools of Indian philosophy—the six principles of that unit body of Wisdom of which the Gnôsis, the hidden Knowledge, is the seventh.

The writer hopes that, however superficially the comments on the Seven Stanzas may have been handled, enough has been given, in this cosmogonic portion of the work, to show the archaic teachings to be on their very face more scientific (in the modern sense of the word) than any other ancient Scriptures left to be judged on their exoteric aspect. Since, however, as before confessed, this work withholds far more than it gives out, the student is invited to use his own intuitions. Our chief care is to elucidate that which has already been given out, and, to our regret, very incorrectly at times; to supplement the knowledge hinted at—whenever and wherever possible—by additional matter; and to bulwark our doctrines against the too strong attacks of modern Sectarianism, and more especially against those of our latter-day Materialism, very often miscalled Science, whereas, in reality, the words “Scientists” and “Sciolists” ought alone to bear the responsibility for the many illogical theories offered to the world. In its great ignorance, the public, while blindly accepting everything that emanates from “authorities,” and feeling it to be its duty to regard every dictum coming from a man of Science as a proven fact—the public, we say, is taught to scoff at anything brought forward from “heathen” sources. Therefore, as materialistic Scientists can be fought solely with their own weapons—those of controversy and argument—an Addendum is added to each Volume contrasting the respective views, and showing how even great authorities may often err. We believe that this can be done effectually, by showing the weak points of our opponents, and by proving their too frequent sophisms, which are made to pass for scientific [pg 300] dicta, to be incorrect. We hold to Hermes and his “Wisdom,” in its universal character; they—to Aristotle, as against intuition and the experience of the Ages, fancying that Truth is the exclusive property of the Western world. Hence the disagreement. As Hermes says: “Knowledge differs much from sense; for sense is of things that surmount it, but Knowledge is the end of sense”—i.e., of the illusion of our physical brain and its intellect; thus emphasizing the contrast between the laboriously acquired knowledge of the senses and Mind (Manas), and the intuitive omniscience of the Spiritual Divine Soul (Buddhi).

Whatever may be the destiny of these actual writings in a remote future, we hope to have so far proven the following facts:

(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the sense underlying the Sanskrit word Nâstika, a rejection of idols, including every anthropomorphic God. In this sense every Occultist is a Nâstika.

(2) It admits a Logos, or a Collective “Creator” of the Universe; a Demiurge, in the sense implied when one speaks of an “Architect” as the “Creator” of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never touched one stone of it, but, furnishing the plan, has left all the manual labour to the masons; in our case the plan was furnished by the Ideation of the Universe, and the constructive labour was left to the Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces. But that Demiurge is no personal deity—i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic God, but only the aggregate of the Dhyân Chohans and the other Forces.

(3) The Dhyân Chohans are dual in their character; being composed of (a) the irrational brute Energy, inherent in Matter, and (b) the intelligent Soul, or cosmic Consciousness, which directs and guides that Energy, and which is the Dhyân Chohanic Thought, reflecting the Ideation of the Universal Mind. This results in a perpetual series of physical manifestations and moral effects on Earth, during manvantaric periods, the whole being subservient to Karma. As that process is not always perfect; and since, however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding Intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even very often results in evident failures—therefore, neither the collective Host (Demiurge), nor any of the working Powers individually, are proper subjects for divine honours or worship. All are entitled to the grateful reverence of humanity, however, and man ought to be ever striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming, to the best of his ability, a co-worker with Nature, in the cyclic task. The ever [pg 301] unknowable and incognizable Kârana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its shrine and altar on the holy and ever untrodden ground of our heart—invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save through the “still small voice” of our spiritual consciousness. Those who worship before it, ought to do so in the silence and the sanctified solitude of their Souls; making their Spirit the sole mediator between them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, and their sinful intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial victims to the Presence.

“When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are ... but enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.” Our Father is within us “in secret,” our Seventh Principle in the “inner chamber” of our soul-perception. “The Kingdom of God” and of Heaven is within us, says Jesus, not outside. Why are Christians so absolutely blind to the self-evident meaning of the words of wisdom they delight in mechanically repeating?

(4) Matter is Eternal. It is the Upâdhi, or Physical Basis, for the One Infinite Universal Mind to build thereon its ideations. Therefore, the Esotericists maintain that there is no inorganic or “dead” matter in Nature, the distinction between the two made by Science being as unfounded as it is arbitrary and devoid of reason. Whatever Science may think, however—and exact Science is a fickle dame, as we all know by experience—Occultism knows and teaches differently, as it has done from time immemorial, from Manu and Hermes down to Paracelsus and his successors.

Thus, Hermes, the Thrice Great, says:

Oh, my son, matter becomes; formerly it was; for matter is the vehicle of becoming. Becoming is the mode of activity of the uncreate and foreseeing God. Having been endowed with the germ of becoming, [objective] matter is brought into birth, for the creative force fashions it according to the ideal forms. Matter not yet engendered had no form; it becomes, when it is put into operation.

To this the late Dr. Anna Kingsford, the able translator and compiler of the Hermetic Fragments, remarks in a footnote:

Dr. Ménard observes that in Greek the same word signifies to be born and to become. The idea here is, that the material of the world is in its essence eternal, but that before creation or “becoming” it is in a passive and motionless condition. Thus it “was” before being put into operation; now it “becomes,” that is, it is mobile and progressive.

[pg 302]

And she adds the purely Vedântic doctrine of the Hermetic philosophy that:

Creation is thus the period of activity [Manvantara] of God, who, according to Hermetic thought [or which, according to the Vedântin], has two modes—Activity or Existence, God evolved (Deus explicitus); and Passivity of Being [Pralaya], God involved (Deus implicitus). Both modes are perfect and complete, as are the waking and sleeping states of man. Fichte, the German philosopher, distinguished Being (Seyn) as One, which we know only through existence (Daseyn) as the Manifold. This view is thoroughly Hermetic. The “Ideal Forms” ... are the archetypal or formative ideas of the Neo-Platonists; the eternal and subjective concepts of things subsisting in the Divine Mind, prior to “creation” or becoming.

Or, as in the philosophy of Paracelsus:

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort.... There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

(5) The Universe was evolved out of its ideal plan, upheld through Eternity in the Unconsciousness of that which the Vedântins call Parabrahman. This is practically identical with the conclusions of the highest Western philosophy, “the innate, eternal, and self-existing Ideas” of Plato, now reflected by Von Hartmann. The “Unknowable” of Herbert Spencer bears but a faint resemblance to that transcendental Reality believed in by Occultists, often appearing merely a personification of a “force behind phenomena”—an infinite and eternal Energy, from which all things proceed, whereas the author of the Philosophy of the Unconscious has come (in this respect only) as near to a solution of the great Mystery as mortal man can. Few have been those, whether in ancient or mediæval philosophy, who have dared to approach the subject or even hint at it. Paracelsus mentions it inferentially, and his ideas are admirably synthesized by Dr. F. Hartmann, F.T.S., in his Paracelsus, from which we have just quoted.

All the Christian Kabalists understood well the Eastern root idea. The active Power, the “Perpetual Motion of the great Breath,” only awakens Cosmos at the dawn of every new Period, setting it into motion by means of the two contrary Forces, the centripetal and the centrifugal Forces, which are male and female, positive and negative, physical and spiritual, the two being the one Primordial Force, and thus causing it to become objective on the plane of Illusion. In other words, that dual motion transfers Cosmos from the plane of the Eternal [pg 303] Ideal into that of finite manifestation, or from the noumenal to the phenomenal plane. Everything that is, was, and will be, eternally IS, even the countless Forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, but not in their ideal form. They existed as Ideas, in the Eternity, and, when they pass away, will exist as reflections. Occultism teaches that no form can be given to anything, either by Nature or by man, whose ideal type does not already exist on the subjective plane: more than this; that no form or shape can possibly enter man's consciousness, or evolve in his imagination, which does not exist in prototype, at least as an approximation. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone, has ever been “created”; and it is only on this plane of ours that it commenced “becoming,” that is to say, objectivizing into its present materiality, or expanding from within outwards, from the most sublimated and supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance. Therefore our human forms have existed in the Eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes; according to which models, the Spiritual Beings, or Gods, whose duty it was to bring them into objective being and terrestrial life, evolved the protoplasmic forms of the future Egos from their own essence. After which, when this human Upâdhi, or basic mould, was ready, the natural terrestrial Forces began to work on these supersensuous moulds, which contained, besides their own, the elements of all the past vegetable and future animal forms of this Globe. Therefore, man's outward shell passed through every vegetable and animal body, before it assumed the human shape. But as this will be fully described in Volume II, in the Commentaries, there is no need to say more of it here.

According to the Hermetico-Kabalistic philosophy of Paracelsus, it is Yliaster—the ancestor of the just-born Protyle, introduced by Mr. Crookes into Chemistry—or primordial Protomateria, that evolved out of itself the Cosmos.

When creation [evolution] took place, the Yliaster divided itself; it, so to say, melted and dissolved, developed out of [from within] itself the Ideos or Chaos (Mysterium Magnum, Iliados, Limbus Major, or Primordial Matter). This Primordial Essence is of a monistic nature, and manifests itself not only as vital activity, a spiritual force, an invisible, incomprehensible, and indescribable power, but also as vital matter of which the substance of living beings consists. In this Limbus or Ideos of primordial matter, ... the only matrix of all created things, the substance of all things is contained. It is described by the ancients as the Chaos ... out of which the Macrocosmos, and afterwards, by division and evolution in [pg 304]Mysteria Specialia, each separate being came into existence. All things and all elementary substances were contained in it in potentiâ but not in actu.

This makes the translator, Dr. F. Hartmann, justly observe that “it seems that Paracelsus anticipated the modern discovery of the ‘potency of matter’ three hundred years ago.”

The Magnus Limbus, then, or Yliaster, of Paracelsus is simply our old friend “Father-Mother,” within, before it appeared in Space. It is the Universal Matrix of Kosmos, personified in the dual character of Macrocosm and Microcosm, or the Universe and our Globe, by Aditi-Prakriti, spiritual and physical Nature. For we find it explained in Paracelsus that:

The Magnus Limbus is the nursery out of which all creatures have grown, in the same sense as a tree may grow out of a small seed; with the difference, however, that the great Limbus takes its origin from the Word of God, while the Limbus minor (the terrestrial seed or sperm) takes it from the earth. The great Limbus is the seed out of which all beings have come, and the little Limbus is each ultimate being that reproduces its form, and that has itself been produced by the great. The little Limbus possesses all the qualifications of the great one, in the same sense as a son has an organization similar to that of his father.... As ... Yliaster dissolved, Ares, the dividing, differentiating, and individualizing power [Fohat, another old friend] ... began to act. All production took place in consequence of separation. There were produced out of the Ideos the elements of Fire, Water, Air and Earth, whose birth, however, did not take place in a material mode, or by simple separation, but spiritually and dynamically [not even by complex combinations—e.g., mechanical mixture as opposed to chemical combination], just as fire may come out of a pebble, or a tree out of a seed, although there is originally no fire in the pebble, nor a tree in the seed. “Spirit is living, and Life is Spirit, and Life and Spirit [Prakriti, Purusha (?)] produce all things, but they are essentially one and not two.” ... The elements, too, have each one its own Yliaster, because all the activity of matter in every form is only an effluvium of the same fountain. But as from the seed grow the roots with their fibres, afterwards the stalk with its branches and leaves, and lastly the flowers and seeds; likewise all beings were born from the elements, and consist of elementary substances out of which other forms may come into existence, bearing the characteristics of their parents. The elements as the mothers of all creatures are of an [pg 305]invisible, spiritual nature, and have souls. They all spring from the Mysterium Magnum.

Compare this with Vishnu Purâna.

From Pradhâna [Primordial Substance] presided over by Kshetrajna [“embodied spirit” (?)] proceeds the unequal development [Evolution] of those qualities.... From the great principle (Mahat) [Universal] Intellect [or Mind] ... is produced the origin of the subtle elements and of the organs of sense. ...

Thus it may be shown that all the fundamental truths of Nature were universal in antiquity, and that the basic ideas upon Spirit, Matter and the Universe, or upon God, Substance and Man, were identical. Taking the two most ancient religious philosophies on the globe, Hindûism and Hermeticism, from the Scriptures of India and Egypt, the identity of the two is easily recognizable.

This becomes apparent to one who reads the latest translation and rendering of the “Hermetic Fragments” just mentioned, by our late lamented friend, Dr. Anna Kingsford. Disfigured and tortured as these have been in their passage through sectarian Greek and Christian hands, the translator has most ably and intuitionally seized the weak points and tried to remedy them by means of explanations and footnotes. She says:

The creation of the visible world by the “working gods” or Titans, as agents of the Supreme God, is a thoroughly Hermetic idea, recognizable in all religious systems, and in accordance with modern scientific research [?], which shows us everywhere the Divine Power operating through natural Forces.

To quote from the translation:

That Universal Being, that contains all, and which is all, puts into motion the soul and the world, all that nature comprises. In the manifold unity of universal life, the innumerable individualities distinguished by their variations are, nevertheless, united in such a manner that the whole is one, and that everything proceeds from Unity.

And again from another translation:

God is not a mind, but the cause that the Mind is; not a spirit, but the cause that the Spirit is; not light, but the cause that the Light is.

The above shows plainly that the “Divine Pymander,” however [pg 306] much distorted in some passages by Christian “smoothing,” was nevertheless written by a philosopher, while most of the so-called “Hermetic Fragments” are the production of sectarian pagans with a tendency towards an anthropomorphic Supreme Being. Yet both are the echo of the Esoteric Philosophy and the Hindû Purânas.

Compare two invocations, one to the Hermetic “Supreme All,” the other to the “Supreme All” of the later Âryans. Says a Hermetic Fragment cited by Suidas:

I adjure thee, Heaven, holy work of the great God; I adjure thee, Voice of the Father, uttered in the beginning when the universal world was framed; I adjure thee by the Word, only Son of the Father Who upholds all things; be favourable, be favourable.

This is preceded by the following:

Thus the Ideal Light was before the Ideal Light, and the luminous Intelligence of Intelligence was always, and its unity was nothing else than the Spirit enveloping the Universe. Out of Whom [Which] is neither God nor Angels, nor any other essentials, for He [It] is the Lord of all things and the Power and the Light; and all depends on Him [It] and is in Him [It].

A passage contradicted by the very same Trismegistus, who is made to say:

To speak of God is impossible. For the corporeal cannot express the incorporeal.... That which has not any body nor appearance, nor form, nor matter, cannot be apprehended by sense. I understand, Tatios, I understand, that which it is impossible to define—that is God.

The contradiction between the two passages is evident; and this shows (a) that Hermes was a generic nom de plume used by a series of generations of Mystics of every shade, and (b) that great discernment has to be used before accepting a Fragment as esoteric teaching only because it is undeniably ancient. Let us now compare the above with a like invocation in the Hindû Scriptures—undoubtedly as old, if not far older. Here it is. Parâshara, the Âryan “Hermes,” instructs Maitreya, the Indian Asclepios, and calls upon Vishnu in his triple hypostasis:

Glory to the unchangeable, holy, eternal, supreme Vishnu, of one universal nature, the mighty over all; to him who is Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Shankara [Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva], the creator, the preserver, and destroyer of the world; to Vâsudeva, the liberator (of his worshippers); to him whose essence is both single and manifold; who is both subtile and corporeal, indiscrete and discrete; to Vishnu, [pg 307]the cause of final emancipation. Glory to the supreme Vishnu, the cause of the creation, existence, the end of this world; who is the root of the world, and who consists of the world.

This is a grand invocation, with a deep philosophical meaning underlying it; but, for the profane masses, as suggestive as is the Hermetic prayer of an anthropomorphic Being. We must respect the feeling that dictated both; but we cannot help finding it in full disharmony with its inner meaning, even with that which is found in the same Hermetic treatise where it is said:

Trismegistus: Reality is not upon the earth, my son, and it cannot be thereon.... Nothing on earth is real, there are only appearances.... He [man] is not real, my son, as man. The real consists solely in itself and remains what it is.... Man is transient, therefore he is not real, he is but appearance, and appearance is the supreme illusion.

Tatios: Then the celestial bodies themselves are not real, my father, since they also vary?

Trismegistus: That which is subject to birth and to change is not real ... there is in them a certain falsity, seeing that they too are variable....

Tatios: And what then is the primordial Reality, O my Father?

Trismegistus: He Who [That Which] is one and alone, O Tatios; He Who [That Which] is not made of matter, nor in any body. Who [Which] has neither colour nor form, Who [Which] changes not nor is transmitted, but Who [Which] always Is.

This is quite consistent with the Vedântic teaching. The leading thought is Occult; and many are the passages in the Hermetic Fragments that belong bodily to the Secret Doctrine.

This Doctrine teaches that the whole Universe is ruled by intelligent and semi-intelligent Forces and Powers, as stated from the very beginning. Christian Theology admits and even enforces belief in such, but makes an arbitrary division and refers to them as “Angels” and “Devils.” Science denies the existence of both, and ridicules the very idea. Spiritualists believe in the “Spirits of the Dead,” and outside these deny entirely any other kind or class of invisible beings. The Occultists and Kabalists are thus the only rational expounders of the ancient traditions, which have now culminated in dogmatic faith on the one hand, and dogmatic denial on the other. For both belief and unbelief each embrace but one small corner of the infinite horizons of spiritual and physical manifestations: and thus both are right from their respective standpoints, yet both are wrong in believing that they can circumscribe the whole within their own special and narrow [pg 308] barriers, for—they can never do so. In this respect, Science, Theology, and even Spiritualism show little more wisdom than the ostrich, when it hides its head in the sand at its feet, feeling sure that there can be thus nothing beyond its own point of observation and the limited area occupied by its foolish head.

As the only works now extant upon the subject under consideration, within reach of the profane of the Western “civilized” races, are the above-mentioned Hermetic Books, or rather Hermetic Fragments, we may contrast them in the present case with the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy. To quote for this purpose from any other would be useless, since the public knows nothing of the Chaldean works, which are translated into Arabic and preserved by some Sufi Initiates. Therefore the “Definitions of Asclepios,” as lately compiled and glossed by Dr. Anna Kingsford, F.T.S., some of which sayings are in remarkable agreement with the Eastern Esoteric Doctrine, have to be resorted to for comparison. Though not a few passages bear a strong impression of some later Christian hand, yet on the whole the characteristics of the Genii and Gods are those of Eastern teachings, although concerning other things there are passages which differ widely in our doctrines.

As to the Genii, the Hermetic philosophers called Theoi (Gods), Genii and Daimones, those Entities whom we call Devas (Gods), Dhyân Chohans, Chitkala (the Kwan-Yin, of the Buddhists), and various other names. The Daimones are—in the Socratic sense, and even in the Oriental and Latin theological sense—the guardian spirits of the human race; “those who dwell in the neighbourhood of the immortals, and thence watch over human affairs,” as Hermes has it. In Esoteric parlance, they are called Chitkala, some of which are those who have furnished man with his fourth and fifth Principles from their own essence, and others the so-called Pitris. This will be explained when we come to the production of the complete man. The root of the name is Chit, “that by which the consequences of acts and species of knowledge are selected for the use of the soul,” or conscience, the inner voice in man. With the Yogins, Chit is a synonym of Mahat, the first and divine Intellect; but in Esoteric Philosophy Mahat is the root of Chit, its germ; and Chit is a quality of Manas in conjunction with Buddhi, a quality that attracts to itself by spiritual affinity a Chitkala, when it develops sufficiently in man. This is why it is said that Chit is a voice acquiring mystic life and becoming Kwan-Yin.

[pg 309]

Extracts From An Eastern Private Commentary, Hitherto Secret.

xvii. The Initial Existence, in the first Twilight of the Mahâmanvantara [after the Mahâpralaya that follows every Age of Brahmâ], is a Conscious Spiritual Quality. In the Manifested Worlds [Solar Systems], it is, in its Objective Subjectivity, like the film from a Divine Breath to the gaze of the entranced seer. It spreads as it issues from Laya throughout Infinity as a colourless spiritual fluid. It is on the Seventh Plane, and in its Seventh State, in our Planetary World.

xviii. It is Substance to our spiritual sight. It cannot be called so by men in their Waking State; therefore they have named it in their ignorance “God-Spirit.”

xix. It exists everywhere and forms the first Upâdhi [Foundation] on which our World [Solar System] is built. Outside the latter, it is to be found in its pristine purity only between [the Solar Systems or] the Stars of the Universe, the Worlds already formed or forming; those in Laya resting meanwhile in its bosom. As its substance is of a different kind from that known on Earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing through it, believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty space. There is not one finger's breadth [angula] of void Space in the whole Boundless [Universe]....

xx. Matter or Substance is septenary within our World, as it is so beyond it. Moreover, each of its states or principles is graduated into seven degrees of density. Sûrya [the Sun], in its visible reflection, exhibits the first or lowest state of the seventh, the highest state of the Universal Presence, the pure of the pure, the first manifested Breath of the Ever-Unmanifested Sat [Be-ness]. All the central physical or objective Suns are in their substance the lowest state of the first principle of the Breath. Nor are any of these any more than the Reflections of their Primaries, which are concealed from the gaze of all but the Dhyân Chohans, whose corporeal substance belongs to the fifth division of the seventh principle of the Mother-Substance, and is, therefore, four degrees higher than the solar reflected substance. As there are seven Dhâtu [principal substances in the human body], so there are seven Forces in Man and in all Nature.

xxi. The real substance of the Concealed [Sun] is nucleus of [pg 310]Mother-Substance. It is the Heart and Matrix of all the living and existing Forces in our Solar Universe. It is the Kernel from which proceed to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the Atoms, in their functional duties, and the Focus within which they again meet in their Seventh Essence every eleventh year. He who tells thee he has seen the Sun, laugh at him, as if he had said that the Sun moves really onward in his diurnal path....

xxiii. It is on account of his septenary nature, that the Sun is spoken of by the ancients as one who is driven by seven horses equal to the metres of the Vedas; or, again, that, though he is identified with the seven Gana [Classes of Being] in his orb, he is distinct from them, as he is, indeed; as also that he has Seven Rays, as indeed he has....

xxv. The Seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, self-born from the inherent power in the Matrix of Mother-Substance. It is they who send the seven principal Forces, called Rays, which at the beginning of Pralaya will centre into seven new Suns for the next Manvantara. The energy, from which they spring into conscious existence in every Sun, is what some people call Vishnu, which is the Breath of the Absoluteness.

We call it the One Manifested life—itself a reflection of the Absolute....

xxvii. The latter must never be mentioned in words or speech, lest it should take away some of our spiritual energies that aspire towards its state, gravitating ever toward unto It spiritually, as the whole physical universe gravitates towards its manifested centre—cosmically.

xxviii. The former—the Initial Existence—which may be called, while in this state of being, the One Life, is, as explained, a Film for creative or formative purposes. It manifests in seven states, which, with their septenary sub-divisions, are the Forty-nine Fires mentioned in sacred books....

xxix. The first is the ... “Mother” [Prima Materia]. Separating itself into its primary seven states, it proceeds down cyclically; when having consolidated itself in its last principle, as gross matter, it revolves around itself and informs, with the seventh emanation of the last, the first and the lowest element [the serpent biting its own tail]. In a Hierarchy, or Order of Being, the seventh emanation of her last principle is:

[pg 311]

(a) In the Mineral, the Spark that lies latent in it, and is called to its evanescent being by the Positive awakening the Negative [and so forth]....

(b) In the Plant, it is that vital and intelligent Force which informs the seed and develops it into the blade of grass, or the root and sapling. It is the germ which becomes the Upâdhi of the seven principles of the thing it resides in, shooting them out as the latter grows and develops.

(c) In every Animal, it does the same. It is its Life-Principle and vital power; its instinct and qualities; its characteristics and special idiosyncrasies....

(d) To Man, it gives all that it bestows on all the rest of the manifested units in Nature; but develops, furthermore, the reflection of all its “Forty-nine Fires” in him. Each of his seven principles is an heir in full to, and a partaker of, the seven principles of the “Great Mother.” The breath of her first principle is his Spirit [Âtmâ]. Her second principle is Buddhi [Soul]. We call it, erroneously, the seventh. The third furnishes him with the Brain Stuff on the physical plane, and with the Mind that moves it [which is the Human Soul.—H. P. B.]—according to his organic capacities.

(e) It is the guiding Force in the cosmic and terrestrial Elements. It resides in the Fire provoked out of its latent into active being; for the whole of the seven sub-divisions of the ... principle reside in the terrestrial Fire. It whirls in the breeze, blows with the hurricane, and sets the air in motion, which element participates in one of its principles also. Proceeding cyclically, it regulates the motion of the water, attracts and repels the waves,according to fixed laws, of which its seventh principle is the informing soul.

(f) Its four higher principles contain the Germ that develops into the Cosmic Gods; its three lower ones breed the Lives of the Elements [Elementals].

(g) In our Solar World, the One Existence is Heaven and Earth, the Root and the Flower, the Action and the Thought. It is in the Sun, and is as present in the glow-worm. Not an atom can escape it. Therefore, the ancient Sages have wisely called it the manifested God in Nature....

It may be interesting, in this connection, to remind the reader of what T. Subba Row said of the Forces—mystically defined.

[pg 312]

Kanyâ [the sixth sign of the Zodiac, or Virgo] means a virgin, and represents Shakti or Mahâmâyâ. The sign in question is the sixth Râshi or division, and indicates that there are six primary forces in Nature [synthesized by the Seventh]....

These Shaktis stand as follows:

(1) Parâshakti.—Literally the great or supreme force or power. It means and includes the powers of light and heat.

(2) Jñânashakti.—Literally the power of intellect, of real wisdom or knowledge. It has two aspects: