I. When above, were not raised the heavens ;

a. and below on the earth a plant had not grown up.
3. The abyss had not broken its boundaries.
4. l*he chaos (or water) 'I'iamat (tlie sea) was th« producing mother of the whole of them. (This is the Cosmical Aditi and 5>epliira.)
5. 'I'hose waters at the beginning were ordained but
6. a tree had not grown, a flower had not un- folded.
7. When the gods had not sprung up, any one of them :
8. a plant had not grown, and order did not «a- ut
This was the chaotic or ante-genesis period.
i
268
ISIS UNVEILED.
earth (both yet in their ideal, not their manifested form).
Thus, this second triad, only another name for the first one (never pronounced aloud), and which is the real pre-Vedic and primordial secret Trimurti, consisted of
Nara, Father-Heaven, Naii Mother-Earth, Viradj, the Son— or Universe.
The Trimurti, comprising Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Siva, the Destroyer and Regenerator, belongs to a later period. It is an anthropomorphic afterthought, invented for the more popu- lar comprehension of the uninitiated nuLsses. The Dikskita^ the initiate, knew better. Thus, also, the profound allegory imder the colors of a ridiculous fable, given in the Aytareya Brahmana^ * which re- sulted in the representations in some tem- ples of Brahm-Nara, assuming the furm of a bull, and his daughter, Aditi-Nari, that of a heifer, contains the same metaphysical idea as the ^* fall of man,** or that of the Spirit into generation — matter. The All- pervading Divine Spirit embodied under the symbols of Heaven, the Sun, and Heat (fire) — the correlation of cosmic forces — fecundates Matter or Nature, the daughter of Spirit. And Para- Brahma himself has to submit to and bear the penance of the curses of the other gods (Elohim) for such an incest. (See corre- sponding column.) According to the im- mutable, and, therefore, fatal law, both Nara and Nari are mutually Father and Mother, as well as Father and Daughter. \ Matter, through infinite transformation, is the gradual product of Spirit. The unifi- cation of one Eternal Supreme Cause re- quired such a correlation ; and if nature be
* See Haug*! "Aytareya Brahmanam/' of the RiK-Veda.
t The Kame transfonnations are found in the cosmogony of every important nation, llius, we see in the Egyptian mythology, Isi« and Osiris, UAter and brother, man and wife ; and Horus, the Son of both, becoming the husband of his mother, Isia, and producing a ion, MalouU.
After brooding over the '* Deep," the ** Spirit of God '* produces its own image in the water, the Universal Womb, sym- bolized in Manu by the Golden Egg. In the kabalistic Cosmogony, Heaven and Earth are personified by Adam Kadraun and the second Adam. The first Ineffable Triad, contained in the abstract idea of the ** Three Heads,** was a ** mystery name.** It was composed of En-Soph, Sephira, and Adam Kadmon, the Protogonos, the latter being identical with the former, when bisexual.* In every triad there is a male, a female, and an androg>-ne. Adam-Sephira b> the Crown (Keter). It sets itself to the work of creation, by first producing Chochmah, Male Wisdom, a masculine active potency, represented by ,-{% jah, or the Wheels of Creation, ?2">:BX| from which proceeds Binah, Intelligence, female and passive potency, which is Jeho' vah^ rr uring as the Supreme. But this Jehovah is not the kabalistic Jodcheva. The binary is the fimdamental corner-stone of Gnosis. As the binary is the Unity mul- tiplying itself and self-creating, the kaba- lists show the ** Unknown'* passive En- Soph, as emanating from himself, Sephira, which, becoming visible light, is said to produce Adam Kadinon. But, in the hid- den sense, Sephira and Adam are one and the same light, only latent and active, in- visible and visible. The second Adam, as the human tetragram, produces in his turn Eve, out of his siile. It is this second triad, with which the kabalists have hitherto dealt, hardly hinting at the Su- preme and Ineffable One, and never com- mitting anything to writing. All knowl- edge concerning the latter was imparted orally. It is the second Adam, then, who is the unity represented by Jod, emblem of the kabalistic male principle, and, at the same time, he is Chochmah, IVisdom, while Binah or Jehovah is Eve ; the first
* When a female power, she b Sephira ; when male, he is Adam Kadmon. for, as the former contains in herself the other nine Sephiroth. so, ia their totahty, the latter, including Sephira, is eof bodied in the Archetypal Kadmon, the rp«»Toyoror.
DIAGRAMS CONTINUED.
269
the product or cflfect of that Cause, in its turn it has to be fecundated by the came divine Ray which produced nature itself. The most absurd cosmogonical allegories, if analyzed without prejudice, will be found built on strict and logical necessarianism.
** Being was born from not -being," says a verse in the Rig- Veda."* The first being had to become androgyne and finite, by the very fact of its creation as a being. And thus even the sacred Trimurti, contain- ing Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva will have an end when the ** night "of Para-Brahma succeeds the present *' day,'* or period of universal activity.
The second, or rather th^ first, triad — as the highest one is a pure abstraction — is the intellectual world. The V^h which surrounds it is a more definite transforma- tion of Aditi. Besides its occult signifi- cance in the secret Mantrim, Vich is personified as the active power of Brahma proceeding from him. In the V€ is made to speak of herself as the supreme and universal soul. **I bore the Father on the head of the universal mind, and my origin is in the midst of the ocean ; and therefore do I pervade all beings. . . . Originating all beings, I pass like the breeze (Holy Ghost). I am above this heaven, beyond this earth ; and what is the Great One that am /."f Literally, VAch U speech, the power of awakening, through the metrical arrangement contained in the number and syllables of the Mantras, % cor- responding powers in the invisible world. In the sacrificial Mysteries V&ch stirs up the Brahma {Brahma Jinz'ati), or the power lying latent at the bottom of every magical operation. It existed from eter- nity as the Yajna (its latent form), lying dormant in Brahma from " no-beginning,'* and proceeded forth from him as V&ch (the active power). It is the key to the ** Traiv-
•Maiidala I.. SAkta 166, Max MUller.
t *' Asiatic Researches," vol. viii., pp. 409, 403 ; Colebrooke's tran^ticm.
t As in the Pythagorean numerical system every Mmber on earth, or the worid of the effects, corre- aponds to its invisible prototype in the world of
Chochmah issuing from Keter, or the an- drogyne, Adam Kadmon, and the second, Binah, from Chochmah. If we combine with yod the three letters which form the name of Kve, we will have the divine tetragram pronounced Ievo-iievah, Adam and Eve, T\'xn^'t Jehovah, male and female, or the idealization of humanity embodied in the first man. Thus is it that we can prove that, while the Jewish kabalists, in common with their initiated masters, the Chaldeans and the Hindus, adored the Supreme and Unknown God, in the sacred silence of their sanctuaries, the ignorant masses of every nation were left to adore something which was certainly less than the Eternal Substance of the Buddhists, the so-called Atheists. As Brahma, the deity manifested in the mythical Manu^ or the first man (bom of Swayambhuva, or the Self-existent), is finite, so Jehovah, embodied in Adam and Eve, i^ but a human god. He is the symbol of human- ity, a mixture of good with a portion of unavoidable evil ; of spirit fallen into mat- ter. In worshipping Jehovah, we simply worship naturt^ as embodied in man, half- spiritual and half-material, at best : we are Pantheists, when not fetich wor- shippers, like the idolatrous Jews, wbo sacrificed on high places, in groves, to the personified male and female principle, ignorant of Iao, the Supreme ** Secret Name " of the Mysteries.
Shekinah is the Hindu V&ch, and praised in the same terms as the latter. Though shown in the kabalistic Tree of Life as pro- ceeding from the ninth Sephiroth, yet Shekinah is the "veil" of En Soph, and the •* garment " of Jehovah. The *• veil," for it succeeded for long ages in concealing the real supreme God, the universal Spirit, and masking Jehovah, the exoteric deity, made the Christians accept him as the "father" of the initiated Jesus. Yet the kabalists, as well as the Hindu Dikshita^ know the power of the Shekinah or V4ch, and call it the "secret wisdom,"
mno:"n?3sn.
The triangle played a prominent part in
270
ISIS UNVEILED.
idyS," tlie tlirice sacred science which teaches the Yajus (the sacrificial Myste- ries). ♦
Having done with the unrevealed triad, and the first triad of the Sephiroth, called the "intellectual world/' little remains to l>e said. In the great geometrical figure v.hich has the double triangle m it, the central circle represents the world within tlie universe. The double triangle belongs to one of the most important, if it is not in itself the most important, of the mystic figures in India. It is the emblem of the Trimurti three in one. The triangle with its apex upward indicates the male princi- ple, downward the female ; the two typify- ing, at the same time, spirit and matter. This world within the infinite universe is the microcosm within the macrocosm, as in the Jewish Kabala. It is the symbol of the womb of the universe, the terrestrial egg, whose archetype is the golden mun- dane egg. It is from within this spiritual bosom of mother nature that proceed all the great saviours of the universe — the avatars of the invisible Deity.
" Of him who is and yet is not, from the not-being. Eternal Cause, is bom the being Pouroucha,** says Manu, the legislator. Pouroucha is the " divine male," the second god, and the avatar, or the Logos of Para- Brahma and his divine son, who in his turn producefl Viradj, the son, or the ideal type of the universe. " Viradj begins the woVk of creation by producing the' ten Pradjapati, * the lords of all beings.' "
According to the doctrine of Manu, the universe is subjected to a periwlical and never-ending succession of creations and dissolutions, which periods of creation are named Manvdntara.
"It is the germ (which the Divine Spirit produced from its own substance) which never perishes in the being, for it be- comes the soul of Being, and at the period of pralaya (dissolution) it returns to absorb itself again into the Divine Spirit, which itself rests from all eternity
* See initial diap., vol L, word Yi^na.
the religious symbolism of every great nation ; for everywhere it represented the three great principles— spirit, force, and matter; or the active (male), passive « fe- male), and the dual or correlative principle which partakes of both and binds the two together. It was the Arba or mystic ** four,-' * the mystery-gods, the Kabeiri, summarized in the unity of one supreme Deity. It is found in the Eg\'ptian pyra- mids, whose equal sides tower up until lost in one crowning point. In the kaba- listic diagram tlie central circle of the Brahmanical figure is replaced by the cross ; the celestial perpendicular and the terres- trial horizontal base line, f But the idea is the same : Adam Kadmon is the type of humanity as a collective totality within the unity of the creative God and the uni- versal spirit.
*Kvei5 the trinity of nature, and AiUm the unity of spirit ; the former the created material principle, the latter the ideal organ uf the creative principle, or, in other words this androgyne is both the principle and the I^gos, for ^ is the male, and ^ the female; and, as Levi expresses it, this first letter of the holy language, Aleph, represents a man pointing with one hand toward the sky, and with the other toward the ground. It is the macrocosm and the microcosm at the same time, and explains the double triangle of the Masons and tlie five-pointed sur. While the male is active the female principle is passive, for it is SPiKiT and mattkr. the latter word meaning mother in nearly every languafre. The columns of Solomon's temple, Jachin and Hoax, are the em- blems of the androgyne ; they arc also respec- tively male and female, white and black, square and round : the male a unity, the female a binary. In the later kabalistic treatises, the active principle is pictured by the sword "d, the passive by the sheath n-p3' See " Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie," vol. i.
t The vertical line being the male principle, and the horizontal the female, out of the union of the two at the intersection point is formed the cross ; the oldest symbol in the Egyptian history of gods. It is the key of Heaven in the rosy fingers of Neith, the celestial virgin, who opens the gate at dawn for the exit of her first-begotten, the radiant sun. It is the Stauros of the Gnostics, and the philosophical cross of the high-grade Masons. We find this symbol ornamenting the tee o( the umbrella- shaped oldest pagodas in lliibet. China, and India, as we find it iu the hand of I sis, in the shape of the *' handled cross.** In one of the Chaitya caves, at Ajunta, it surmounts the three umbrellas in stone, and forms the centre of the vault
DIAGRAMS CONTINUED.
271
within Swayambhuva, the * Self-Existent * " {Institutes of. Manu, book i.).
As we have shown, neither the SvAbhi- vikas, Buddhist philosophers — nor the Brahmans believe in a creation of the universe ex nihih^ but both believe in I lie Prakritif the indestructibility of mat- ter.
The evolution of species, and the suc- cessive appearance of various new types is very distinctly shown in Manu.
" From earth, heat, and water, are bom all creatures, whether animate or inani- nuite, produced by the germ which the Divine Spirit drew from its own substance. Thus has Brahma established the series of transformations from the plant up to man, and from man up to the primordial es- sence. . . . Among them each succeeding being (or element) acquires the quality of the preceding ; and in as many degrees as each of them is advanced, with so many properties is it said to be endowed ** (Manu, book L, sloka 20). *
This, we Ijelieve, is the veritable theory of the modem evolutionists.
* " When this world had emerged from obscuri- ty, the subtile elementary principles produced the vegetable cerm which at first animated the plants : from the plants life passed through the fantastic (jrganiMms which were bom in die ilus (6 the waters ; then through a series of forms and different animals, it at length reached man" ("Manu," book L ; and " Bhagavatu ").
Manu is a convertible type, which can by no means be explained as a personage. Manu means sometimes humanity, sometimes man. The Manu who emanated from the uncreated Swayambhuva is without doubt, the type of Adam Kadmon. llie Manu who is progcnittM* of the other six Manus is evidently identical witb-the Rishis, or seven prime- val sages who are the fixefathers of the post-diluvian raceft. He is— as we shall show in Chapter VIII.— Noah, and his six sons, or subsequent generations are the originals of the pott-diluvian and mythical . patriarchs of the Bible.

Of him who Is formless, the non-ex- istent (also the eternal,but not First Cause), is born the heavenly man.** But after he created the form of the heavenly man njlir?aiJt, he ** used it as a vehicle wherein to descend,** says the Kabala. Thus Adam Kadmon is the avatar of the concealed power. After that the heavenly Adam creates or engenders by the com)>ined power of the Sephiroth, the earthly Adam. The work of creation is also begun by Sephira in the creation of the ten Sephi- roth (who are the Pradjapatis of the Kabala, for tliey are likewise the Iy)rds of all l)eings).
The Sohar a. to the kabalistic doctrine there were old worlds (see Idra Suta: Sohar, iii., p. 292 b). Everything will return some day to that from which it first proceedctl. ** All things of which this world consists, spirit as well as body, will return to their principal, and the roots from which they proceeded " (Sohar, iL, 218 b). The kaljalists also maintain the indestructi)>ility of matter, albeit their doctrine is shrouded still more carefully than that of the Hindus. The creation is eternal, and the universe is the " garment,*' or ** the veil of God **— Shc- kinah ; and the latter is immortal and eternal as Him within whom it has ever existed. Every world is made after the pattern of its predecessor, and each more gross and material than the preceding one.' In the Kabala all were called sparksw Finally, our present grossly materialistic world was formed.
In the Chaldean account of the period which preceded the Genesis of our world, Bcrosus speaks of a time when there existed nothing but darkness, and an abyn of waters, filled with hideous monsters^ **protluced of a two-fold principle. . . . These were creatures in which were com- bined the limbs of every species of ani- mals. In addition to these fishes, rep- tiles, serpents, with other monstrous ani- mals, which assumed each other*s shape and countenance.** *
* Cory's "Ancient Fragments."
272 ISIS UNVEILED.
In the first book of Manu, we read : " Know that the sum of i,ooo divine ages, composes the totality of one day of Brahma ; and that one night is equal to that day." One thousand divine ages is equal to 4,320,000,000 of human years, in the Brahmanical calculations.
"At the expiration of each night, Brahma, who has been asleep, awakes, and through the sole energy of the motion causes to emanate from himself the spirit, which in its essence />, and yet is not.*'
" Prompted by the desire to create, the Spirit (first of the emanations) operates the creation and gives birth to ether, which the sages consider as having the faculty of transmitting sound.
** Ether begets air whose property is tangible, and which is necessary to life.
** Through a transformation of the air, light is produced.
" From air and light, which begets heat, water is formed, and the water is the womb of all the living germs."
Throughout the whole immense period of progressive creation, cover- ing 4,320,000,000 years, ether, air, water and fire (heat), are constantly forming matter under the never-ceasing impulse of the Spirit, or the unre- vealed God who fills up the whole creation, for he is in all, and all is in him. This computation, which was secret and which is hardly hinted at even now, led Higgins into the error of dividing every ten ages into 6,000 years. Had he added a few more ciphers to his sums he might have come nearer to a correct explanation of the neroses, or secret cycles.*
In the Sepher Jezireh, the kabalistic Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated the words of Manu. In it, the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed from the eternity, boundless and absolute ; and emitted from itself the Spirit. " One is the Spirit of the living God, blessed be His Name, who liveth for ever ! Voice, Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy Spirit ;**t ^."^ ^^is is the kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized by the P'athers. From this triple one emanated the whole Cosmos. First from one emanated number two, or Air, the creative element; and then number three, Water, proceeded fi*om the air ; Ether or Fire complet the Arba-il. J "When the Concealed of the Concealed wanted to reveal Himself, he first made a point (primordial point, or the first Sephira, air or Holy Ghost), shaped it into a sacred form (the ten Sephiroth, or the Heavenly man), and covered it with a rich and splendid garment, that is the worlds § ** He maketh the wind His messengers, flaming Fire his
♦ See Vol. I., chap, i., pp. 33, 34, of this work.
f "Sepher Jezirch," chap. L, Mishna ixth.
ilbid. §"Sohar,'»l, 2 a.
THE NIGHT OF BRAHMA. 273
servants/' says the Jezirehy showing the cosmical character of the later euhenierized angels, * and that the Spirit permeates every minutest atom of the Cosmos.f
When the cycle of creation is run down, the energy of the manifested word is weakening. He alone, the Unconceivable, is unchangeable (ever latent), but the Creative Force, though also eternal, as it has been in the former from "no beginning," yet must be subject to periodical cycles of activity and rest ; as it had a beginning in one of its aspects, when it first emanated, therefore must also have an end. Thus, the evening suc- ceeds the day, and the night of the deity approaches. Brahma is grad- ually falling asleep. In one of the books of Sohar^ we read the following :
** As Moses was keeping a vigil on Mount Sinai, in company with the Deity, who was concealed from his sight by a cloud, he felt a great fear overcome him and suddenly asked : * Lord, where art Thou . . . sleep- est thou, O Lord ? * And the Spirit answered him : " 1 never sleep ; were I to fall asleep for a moment before my time^ all the Creation would cnmible into dissolution in one instant.' " And Vamadeva-Modcly de- scribes the ** Night of Brahma," or the second period of the Divine Un- known existence, thus :
"Strange noises are heard, proceeding from every point. . . . These are the precursors of the Night of Brahma ; dusk rises at the horizon and the Sun passes away behind the thirtieth degree of Macara (sign of the zodiac), and will reach no more the sign of the Minas (zodiacal pisces^ or fish). The gurus of the pagodas appointed to watch the r&s-chakr (Zodiac), may now break their circle and instruments, for they are hence- forth useless. ,
" Gradually light pales, heat diminishes, uninhabitable spots multiply on the earth, the air becomes more and more rarefied ; the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers see their waves exhausted, the ocean shows its sandy bottom, and plants die. Men and animals decrease in size daily. Life and motion lose their force, planets can hardly gravitate in space ; they are extinguished one by one, like a lamp which the hand of the chokra (servant) neglects to replenish. Sourya (the Sun) flick- ers and goes out, matter falls into dissolution (pralaya), and Brahma merges back into Dyaus, the Unrevealed God, and his task being accom pltshed, he falls asleep. Another day is passed, night sets in and con tinues until the future dawn.
* ** Sepher Jezirch," Mishna ix., la
f It is interesting to recall Hebrews i. 7, in connection with this passage. ^' Who maketh his angels (messengers) spirits, and his ministers (servants, those who minister) a flame of fire." The resemblance is too striking for us to avoid the conclusion that the author of " Hebrews ** was as familiar with the " Kabola " as adepts usually are. 18
274 ISIS UNVEILED.
" And now again re-enter into the golden egg of His Thought, the germs of all that exists as the divine Manu tells us. During His peace- ful rest, the animated beings, endowed with the principles of action, cease their functions, and all feeling (manas) becomes dormant. When they are all absorbed in the Supreme Soul, this Soul of all the beings sleeps in complete repose, till the day when it resumes its form, and awakes again from its primitive darkness.*' *
If we now examine the ten mythical avatars of Vishnu, we find them recorded in the following progression :
1. Matsya- Avatar : as a fish. It will also be his tenth and last avatar, at the end of the Kali-yug.
2. Kumi-Avatar : as a tortoise.
3. Varaha : as a boar.
4. Nara-Sing : as a man-lion ; last animal stage.
5. Vamuna : as a dwarf ; first step toward the human form.
6. Parasu-Rama : as a hero, but yet an imperfect man.
7. Rama-Chandra : as the hero of Ramayana, Physically a perfect man ; his next of kin, friend and ally Hanoum&, the monkey-god. The monkey endowed with speech, \
8. Christna- Avatar : the Son of the Virgin Devanaguy (or Devaki) one formed by God, or rather by the manifested Deity Vishnu, who is identical with Adam Kadmon. | Christna is also called Kaneya, the Son of the Virgin.
9. Gautama-Buddha, Siddhartha, or Sakya-muni. (The Buddhists reject this doctrine of their Buddha being an incarnation of Vishnu.)
10. This avatar has not yet occurred. It is expected in the future, like the Christian Advent, the idea of which was undoubtedly copied from the Hindu. When Vishnu appears for the last time he will come as a "Saviour.** According to the opinion of some Brahmans he will ai>- pear himself under the fonn of the horse Kalki. Others maintain that he will be mounting it. This horse is the envelope of the spirit of evil, and Vishnu will mount it, invisible to all, till he has conquered it for the last time. The " Kalki* Avataram, ** or the last incarnation, divides
♦ *« The Sons of God ; " " The India of the Brahmans," p. 230.
f May it not be that Hanoumft is the representative ol that link of beings half- man, half-monkeys, which, according to the theories of Messrs. Hovelacque and Schlei- cher, were arrested in their development, and fell, so to say, into a retrogressive evolu- tion?
\ The Primal or Ultimate Essence has no name in India. It is indicated some- times as "That" and "This.** ** This (universe) was not originally anything. There was neither heaven, nor earth, nor atmosphere. That being non-exisrent re- solved * Let me be* " (Original Sanscrit Text.) Dr. Muir, vol. v., p. 366.
DIAGRAM OF THE AVATARS. 2/5
Brahmanism into two sects. That of the Vaihn4va refuses to recognize tlie incarnations of their god Vishnu in animal forms literally. They claim that these must be understood as allegorical.
In this diagram of avatars we see traced the gradual evolution and transformation of all species out of the ante-Silurian mud of Darwin and the ilus of Sanchoniathon and Berosus. Beginning with the Azoic time, corresponding to the ilus in which Brahma implants the creative germ, we pass through the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic times, covered by the first and second incarnations as the fish and tortoise ; and the Cenozoic, which is embraced by the incarnations in the animal and semi-human forms of the boar and man-lion ; and we come to the fifth and crowning geological period, designated as the "era of mind, or age of man," whose symbol in the Hindu mythology is the dwarf — the first attempt of nature at the creation of man. In this diagram we should follow the main-idea, not judge the degree of knowledge of the ancient philosophers by the literal acceptance of the popular form in which it is presented to us in the grand epical poem oi Maha-Bharata and its chapter the Bagaved- gitta.
Even the four ages of the Hindu chronology contain a far more philo- sophical idea than appears on the surface. It defines them according to both the psychological or mental and the physical states of man during their period. Crita-yug, the golden age, the " age of joy, " or spiritual innocence of man ; Treta-yug, the age of silver, or that of fire — the period of supremacy of man and of giants and of the sons of God ; Dwapara-yug, the age of bronze — a mixture already of purity and impurity (spirit and matter) the age of doubt ; and at last our own, the Kali-yug, or age of iron, of darkness, misery, and sorrow. In this age, Vishnu had to incar- nate himself in Christna, in order to save humanity from the goddess Kali, consort of Siva, the all-annihilating — the goddess of death, destruc- tion, and human misery. Kali is the best emblem to represent the " fall of man ; " the falling of spirit into the degradation of matter, with all its terrific results. We have to rid ourselves of Kali before we can ever reach " Moksha, '* or Nirvana, the abode of blessed Peace and Spirit.
With the Buddhists the last incarnation is the fifth. When Maitree- Buddha comes, then our present world will be destroyed ; and a new and a better one will replace it. The four arms of every Hindu Deity are the emblems of the four preceding manifestations of our earth from its invisible state, while its head typifies the fifth and last Kalki-AwdX^ix^ when this would be destroyed, and the power of Budh — Wisdom (with the Hindus, of Brahma), will be again called into requisition to manifest itself — as a Logos — to create the future world.
In this diagram, the male gods typify Spirit in its deific attributes,
276 ISIS UNVEILED.
while their female counterparts — the Sakti^ represent the active energies of these attributes. The Durga (active virtue), is a subtile, invisible force, which answers to Shekinah — the garment of En- Soph. She is the Sakti through which the passive " Eternal *' calls forth the visible universe from its first ideal conception. Every one of the three personages of the exoteric Trimurti are shown as using their Sakti as a Vehan (vehi- cle). Elach of them is for the time being the form which sits upon the mysterious wagon of Ezekiel.
Nor do we see less clearly carried out in this succession of avatars, the truly philosophical idea of a simultaneous spiritual and physical evolution of creatures and man. From a fish the progress of this dual transformation carries on the physical form through the shape of a tor- toise, a boar, and a man-lion ; and then, appearing in the dwarf of humanity, it shows Parasu Rama physically, a perfect, spiritually, an undeveloped entity, until it carries mankind personified by one god-like man, to the apex of physical and spiritual perfection — a god on earth. In Christna and the other Saviours of the world we see the philosophical idea of the progressive dual development understood and as clearly expressed in the Sohar. The " Heavenly man," who is the Protogonos, Tikkun, the first-bom of God, or the universal Form and Idea, engen- ders Adam. Hence the latter is god-born in humanity, and endowed with the attributes of all the ten Sephiroth. These are : Wisdom, Intelligence, Justice, Love, Beauty, Splendor, Firmness, etc. They make him the Foundation or basis, ^^ the mighty living one^' "^nVn, and the crown of creation, thus placing him as the Alpha and Omega to reign over the " kingdom " — Malchuth. " Man is both the import and the highest degree of creation," says the Sohar. " As soon as man was created, everything was complete, including the upper and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms " (iiL, p. 48 a).
But this does not relate to our degenerated mankind ; it is only occa- sionally that men are born who are the types of what man should be, and yet is not. The first races of men were spiritual, and their proto- plastic bodies were not composed of the gross and material substances of which we see them composed now-a-day. The first men were created with all the faculties of the Deity, and powers far transcending those of the angelic host ; for they were the direct emanations of Adam Kad- mon, the primitive man, the Macrocosm ; while the present humanity is several degrees removed even from the earthly Adam, who was the Microcosm, or "the little world." Seir Anpin, the mystical figure of the Man, consists of 243 numbers, and we see in the circles which follow each other that it is the angels which emanated firom the " Primi-
THE FALL OF ADAM. 2^^
tive Man," not the Sephiroth from angels. Hence, man was intended from the first to be a being of both a progressive and retrogressive nature. Beginning at the apex of the divine cycle, he gradually began receding from the centre of Light, acquiring at every new and lower sphere of being (worlds each inhabited, by a different race of human beings) a more solid physical form and losing a portion of his divine faculties.
In the ** fall of Adam " we must see, not the personal transgression of man, but simply the law of the dual evolution. Adam, or ** Man," begins his career of existences by dwelling in the garden of Eden, " dressed in the celestial garment, which is a garment of heavenly lighV {SoAar, ii., 229 b) ; but when expelled he is '•clothed*' by God, or the eternal law of Evolution or necessarianism, with coats of skin. But even on this earth of material degradation — in which the divine spark (Soul, a corruscation of the Spirit) was to begin its physical pro- gression in a series of imprisonments from a stone up to a man's body — if he but exercise his will and call his deity to his help, man can trans- cend the powers of the angel. *' Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" asks Paul (i Corinthians^ '^ i)* The real man is the Soul (Spirit), teaches the Sohar, ** The mystery of the earthly man is after the mystery of the heavenly man . . . the wise can read the mysteries in the human face " (ii., 76 a).
This is still another of the many sentences by which Paul must be recognized as an initiate. For reasons fully explained, we give far more credit for genuineness to certain Epistles of the apostles, now dismissed as apocryphal, than to many suspicious portions of the Acts, And we find corroboration of this view in the Epistle of Paul to Seneca, In this message Paul styles Seneca " my respected master,** while Seneca terms the apostle simply " brother.**
No more than the true religion of Judaic philosophy can be judged by the absurdities of the exoteric Bible, have we any right to form an opinion of Brahmanism and Buddhism by their nonsensical and some- times disgusting popular forms. If we only search for the true essence of the philosophy of both Manu and the Kabala, we will find that Vishnu is, as well as Adam Kadmon, the expression of the universe itself; and that his incarnations are but concrete and various embodi- ments of the manifestations of this " Stupendous Whole." " I am the Soul, O, Arjuna. I am the Soul which exists in the heart of all beings ; and I am the beginning and the middle, and also the end of existing things,*' says Vishnu to his disciple, in Bagaved-gitta (ch. x., p. 71).
" I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. ... I am the first and the last, ** says Jesus to John {Rev, i. 6, 17).
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are a trinity in a unity, and, like the
2/8 ISIS UNVEILED.
Christian trinity, they are mutually convertible. In the esoteric doc- trine they are one and the same manifestation of him ** whose name is too sacred to be pronounced, and whose power is too majestic and infinite to be imagined." Thus by describing the avatars of one, all others are included in the allegory, with a change of form but not of substance. It is out of such manifestations that emanated the many worlds that were, and that will emanate the one— which is to come.
Coleman, followed in it by other Orientalists, presents the seventh avatar of Vishnu in the most caricatured way. ♦ Apart from the fact that the Ramayana is one of the grandest epic poems in the world — the source and origin of Homer's inspiration — this avatar conceals one of the most scientific problems of our modern day. The learned Brahmans of India never understood the allegory of the famous war between men, giants, and monkeys, otherwise than in the light of the transformation of species. It is our firm belief that were European academicians to seek for information from some learned native Brahmans, instead of unani- mously and incontinently rejecting their authority, and were they, like JacoUiot — against whom they have nearly all arrayed themselves — to seek for light in the oldest documents scattered about the country in pagodas, they might learn strange but not useless lessons. I^et any one inquire of an educated Brahman the reason for the respect shown to mon- keys— the origin of which feeling is indicated in the story of the valorous feats of Hanouma, the generalissimo and faithful ally of the hero of Rama- yana,! and he would soon be disabused of the erroneous idea that the Hindus accord deific honors to a monkey-^^^. He would, perhaps, learn — were the Brahman to judge him worthy of an explanation — that the Hindu sees in the ape but what Manu desired he should : the transforma- tion 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
* Coleman*s "Hindu Mythology."
f The siege and subsequent surrender of Lanca (Isle of Ceylon) to Rama is placed by the Hindu chronology— based upon the Zodiac — at 7,500 to 8,000 years B.C., and the following or eighth incarnation of Vbhnu at 4,800 B.C. (from the book of the Historical Zodiacs of the Brahmans).
\ A Hanoverian scientist has recently published a work entitled Ueber die Aufi'dsung der Arten dinck Naturliche Jucht 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 has evolved from man. That, in the beginning, man- kind were, morally and physically, the types and prototypes of our present race and of 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 Brahmanic, Buddhistic, and kabalistic philosophy. His book is copiously iiins-
TENDER HUMANITY OF THE JA'iNS. 2/9
"heathen " the spiritual or inn^r man is one thing, and his terrestrial, phys- ical casket another. That physical nature, the great combination of physical correlations of forces ever creeping on toward perfection, has to avail herself of the material at hand ; she models and remodels as she proceeds, and finisliing her crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit tabernacle for the overshadowing of the Divine spirit But the latter circumstance does not give man the right of life and death over the ani- mals lower than himself in the scale of nature, or the right to torture them. Quite the reverse. Besides being endowed with a soul — of which every animal, and even plant, is more or less possessed — man has his im- mortal rational soul, or nouSy which ought to make him at least equal in magnanimity to the elephant, who treads so carefully, lest he should crush weaker creatures than himself. It is this feeling which prompts Brahman and Buddhist alike to constmct hospitals for sick animals, and even insects, and to prepare refuges wherein they may finish their days. It is this same feeling, again, which causes the Jain sectarian to sacrifice one-half of his life-time to brushing away from his path the helpless, crawling insects, rather than recklessly deprive the smallest of life ; and it is again from this sense of highest benevolence and charity toward the weaker, however abject the creature may be, that they honor one of the natural modifications of their own dual nature, and that later the popular belief in metempsychosis arose. No trace of the latter is to be found in the Vcdas ; and the true interpretation of the doctrine, discussed at length in Manu and the Buddhistic sacred books, having been confined from the first to the learned sacerdotal castes, the false and foolish popular ideas concerning it need occasion no surprise.
Upon those who, in the remains of antiquity, see evidence that modern times can lay small claim to originality, it is common to charge a disposition to exaggerate and distort facts. But the candid reader will scarcely aver that the above is an example in point. There were evolu- tionists before the day when the mythical Noah is made, in the BibUy to float in his ark ; and the ancient scientists were better informed, and had their theories more logically defined than the modern evolutionists.
Plato, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, the Eleatic schools of Greece, as well as the old Chaldean sacerdotal colleges, all taught the doctrine of the
trated with diagrams, tables, etc He says that the gradual debasement and degrada- tion of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced throughout the ethnological transformations down to our times. 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 inevit- able 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 body as our physical scientists should end as simia rather than as seraphs.
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dual evolution ; the doctrine of the transmigration of souls referring only to the progress of man from world to world, after death here. Every philosophy worthy of the name, taught that the spirit of man, if not the sou/, W3is preexistent. "The Essenes," says Josephus, "believed that the souls were immortal, and that they descended from the ethereal spaces to be chained to bodies." * In his turn, Philo Judajus says, the " air is full of them (of souls) ; those which are nearest the earth, de- scending to be tied to mortal bodies, mXwSpofiowri aS^ts, return to other bodies, being desirous to live in them." f In the SoAar, the soul is made to plead her freedom before God : " Lord of the Universe ! 1 am happy in this world, and do not wish to go into another world, where I shall be a handmaid, and be exposed to all kinds of pollutions." | The doctrine of fatal necessity, the everlasting immutable Law, is asserted in the answer of the Deity : " Against thy will thou becomest an embryo, and against thy will thou art born." § Light would be incomprehensible without darkness, to make it manifest by contrast ; good would be no good without evil, to show the priceless nature of the boon ; and so, personal virtue could claim no merit, unless it had passed through the furnace of temptation. Nothing is eternal and unchangeable, save the Concealed Deity. Nothing that is finite — whether because it had a beginning, or must have an end — can remain stationary. It must either progress or recede ; and a soul which thirsts after a reunion with its spirit, which alone confers upon it immortality, must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations, onward toward the only Land of Bliss and Eternal Rest, called in the SoAar, " The Palace of Love,*' nan* Va-'n ; in the Hindu religion, " Moksha ; " among the Gnostics, the " Pleroma of eternal Light ; " and by the Buddhists, Nirvana. The Christian calls it the " Kingdom of Heaven," and claims to have alone found the truth, whereas he has but invented a new name for a doctrine which is coeval with man.
The proof that the transmigration of the soul does not relate to man's condition on this earth a/fer death, is found in the SoAar, notwithstand- ing the many incorrect renderings of its translators. '* All souls which have alienated themselves in heaven from the Holy One — blessed be His Name — have thrown themselves into an abyss at their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend on earth. J . . .
• " De BeL Jud.,»» vol. ii., p. 12. t " ^>e Somniio," p. 455 d.
J ** Sohar," vol. il, p. 96.
§ *'Mishna;*' **Aboth/* vol. iv., p. 29; Mackenzie's "Royal Masonic Cydopn*
*»," p. 413.
I '* Sohar," vol. iil, p. 6i b.
PAUL ON THE TRINE HUMAN ENTITY. 28 1
Come and see when the soul reaches the abode of Love. . . . The soul could not bear this light, but for the luminous mantle which she puts on. For, just as the soul, when sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment to preserve herself here, so she receives above a shining garment, in order to be able to look without injury into the mirror, whose light pro- ceeds from the Lord of Light." * Moreover, the Sohar teaches that the soul cannot reach the abode of bliss, unless she has received the " holy kiss," or the re-union of the soul with the substance from which she emanated — spirit. All souls are dual, and, while the latter is a feminine principle, the spirit is masculine. While imprisoned in body, man is a trinity, unless his pollution is such as to have caused his divorce from the spirit. " Woe to the soul which prefers to her divine husband (spirit), the earthly wedlock with her terrestrial body," records a text of the Book of the Keys, f
These ideas on the transmigrations and the trinity of man, were held by many of the early Christian Fathers. It is the jumble made by the translators of the New Testament and ancient philosophical treatises between soul and spirit, that has occasioned the many misunderstandings. It is also one of the many reasons why Buddha, Plotinus, and so many other initiates are now accused of having longed for the total extinction of their souls — " absorption unto the Deity," or " reunion with the uni- versal soul," meaning, according to modern ideas, annihilation. The animal soul must, of course, be disintegrated of its particles, before it is able to link its purer essence forever with the immortal spirit. But the translators of both the Acts and the Epistles, who laid the foundation of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the modern commentators on the Buddhist Sutra of the Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness, have muddled the sense of the great apostle of Christianity, as of the great reformer of India. The former have smothered the word ^o^ucos, so that no reader imagines it to have any relation with soul ; and with this con- fusion of soul and spirit together, Bible readers get only a perverted sense of anything on the subject ; and the interpreters of the latter have failed to understand the meaning and object of the Buddhist four degrees of Dhydna.
In the writings of Paul, the entity of man is divided into a trine — flesh, psychical existence or soul, and the overshadowing and at the same time interior entity or Spirit. His phraseology is very definite, when he teaches the anastasis, or the continuation of life of those who have died. He maintains that there is a psychical body which is sown in the corruptible, and a spiritual body that is raised in incorruptible sub-
♦ Ibid., vol. i., p. 65 b. f Hennctic work.
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Stance. "The first man is of the earth earthy, the second man from heaven.'* Even James (iii. 15) identifies the soul by saying that its "wisdom descendeth not from the above but is terrestrial, /xj^/z/Vo/, demoniacaV^ (see Greek text). Plato, speaking of the Soul [psuche), ob- serves that " when she allies herself to the nous (divine substance, a god, as psuch6 is a goddess), she does everything aright and felicitously ; but the case is otherwise when she attaches herself to Annoia" What Plato calls fwuSf Paul terms the Sfiirft; and Jesus makes the A^art what Paul says of the ^esA. The natural condition of mankind was called in Greek airocrrcuna ; the new condition avooroo-is. In Adam came the former (death), in Christ the latter (resurrection), for it is he who first publicly taught mankind the " Noble Path " to Eternal life, as Gautama pointed the same Path to Nirvana. To accomplish both ends there was but one way, according to the teachings of both. " Poverty, chastity, contemplation or inner prayer; contempt for wealth and the illusive joys of this world."
" Enter on this Path and put an end to sorrow ; verily the Path has been preached by me, who have found out how to quench the darts of grief. You yourselves must make the effort; the Buddhas are only preaclurs. The thoughtful who enter the Path are freed from the bon- dage of the Deceiver (Mara). *
** Enter ye in at the strait gate : for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. . . . Follow me. . . . Every one that heareth these sayings and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a fool- ish man " (Matthew vii. and viii.). ^^ I can of mine own self do nothing " (John V. 30). " The care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word"(J/ by shaking off all delusions that the Buddhist enters on the " Path " which will lead him " away from the restless tossing waves of the ocean of life," and take him "to the calm City of Peace, to the real joy and rest of Nirvana."
The Greek philosophers are alike made misty instead of mystic by their too learned translators. The Egyptians revered the Divine Spirit, the One-Only One, as Nout. It is most evident that it is from that word that Anaxagoras borrowed his denominative nous^ or, as he calls it, Nots avrofcpariT^ — the Mind or Spirit self-potent, the apxqrrf^: Kin/o-ccos. " All things," says he, " were in chaos ; then came Novs and introduced order." He also denominated this NoOs the One that ruled the many. In his idea Now was God ; and the Logos was man, the emanation of the for- mer. The external powers perceived phenomena ; the nous alone recog-
• ((
Dhamma-pada,** slokas 276 et scq.
IDEAS OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS. 283
nized noutnena or subjective things. This is purely Buddhistic and esoteric.
Here Socrates took his clew and followed it, and Plato after him, with the whole world of interior knowledge. Where the old lonico- Italian world culminated in Anaxagoras, the new world began with Socrates and Plato. Pythagoras made the Soul a self-moving unit, with three elements, the nous^ the phren and the thumos ; the latter two, shared with the brutes ; the former only, being his essential self. So the charge that he taught transmigration is refuted ; he taught no more than Gautama-Buddha ever did, whatever the popular superstition of the Hindu rabble made of it after his death. Whether Pythagoras borrowed from Buddha, or Buddha from somebody else, matters not ; the esoteric doctrine is the same.
The Platonic School is even more distinct in enunciating all this.
The real selfhood was at the basis of all. Socrates therefore taught that h^ had a hnyjoviav [daimonion\ a spiritual something which put him in the road to wisdom. He himself knew nothing, but this put him in the way to learn all.
Plato followed him with a full investigation of the principles of being. There was an Agaihon, Supreme God, who produced in his own mind a paradeigma of all things.
He taught that in man was " the immortal principle of the soul," a mortal body, and a *• separate mortal kind of soul,*' which was placed in a separate receptacle of the body from the other ; the immortal part was in the head (T'unaus xix., xx.) the other in the tnmk (xliv.).
Nothing is plainer than that Plato regarded the interior man as con- stituted of two parts — one always the same, fonned of the same entity as Deity, and one mortal and corruptible.
** Plato and Pythagoras," says Plutarch, " distribute the soul into two parts, the rational (noetic) and irrational (agnota) ; " that that part of the soul of man which is rational, is eternal ; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity, but that part of the soul which is divested of reason (agnota) dies."
*' Man," says Plutarch, " is compound ; and they are mistaken who think him to be compounded of two parts only. For they imagine that the understanding is a part of the soul, but they err in this no less than those who make the soul to be a part of the body, for the understanding (nous) as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and diviner than the body. Now this composition of the soul (^xv) with the understanding (voOs) makes reason ; and with the body, passion ; of which the one is the be- ginning or principle of pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue and vice. Of these three parts conjoined and compacted together, the earth
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has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of man.
**Now of the deaths we die, the one makes man two of three ^ and the other, one of (out of) two. The former is in the region and jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to the Mysteries tcXcif resembled that given to death, rcXcvrav. The Athenians also heretofore called the de- ceased sacred to Demeter. As for the other death it is in the moon or region of Persophon6. And as with the one the terrestrial, so with the other the celestial Hermes doth dwelL This suddenly and with violence plucks the soul from the body ; but Proserpina mildly and in a long time disjoins the understanding from the soul. For this reason she is called Monogenes^ only-begotten, or rather begetting one alone ; for the better part of man becomes alone when it is separated by her. Now both the one and the other happens thus according to nature. It is ordained by Faith that every soul, whether with or without understanding (voOs), when gone out of the body, should wander for a time, though not all for the same, in the region lying between the earth and moon. For those that have been unjust and dissolute suffer there the punishment due to their offences ; but the good and virtuous are there detained till they are purified, and have, by expiation, purged out of them all the infections they might have contracted from the contagion of the body, as if from foul health, living in the mildest part of the air, called the Meadows of Hades, where they must remain for a certain prefixed and appointed time. And then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage or long exile into their coun- try, they have a taste of joy, such as they principally receive who are ini- tiated into Sacred Mysteries, mixed with trouble, admiration, and each one's proper and peculiar hope."
The doemonium of Socrates was this vov^ mind, spirit, or understand- ing of the divine in it. " The vovs of Socrates," says Plutarch, " was pure and mixed itself with the body no more than necessity recjuired. . . . Every soul hath some portion of vovs, reason, a man cannot be a man without it ; but as nmch of each soul as is mixed with flesh and appetite is changed and through pain or pleasure becomes irrational Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort ; some plunge themselves into the body, and so, in this life their whole frame is corrupted by appetite and passion ; others are mixed as to some part, but the purer part [nous] still remains with^ out the body. It is not drawn down into the body, but it swims above and touches (overshadows) the extremest part of the man's head ; it is Hke a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh. • The part that is plunged into the body is called souL But the incorruptible