III. In the genealogy of the Kings and the geography of thdr

dominions, the Varshas (cotmtrics) and Ih-ipas are all regarded as terrestrial regions.
Now. the truth is that, without entering into too minute details, it is permissible and easy to show that :
(«) The Seven Dvipas apportioned to Priyaviata's septenary progeny refer to several localities — first of all to our Planetar>- Chain. In this Jamba-dripa alone represents our Globe, while the six others are the (to us) invisible companion Globes of the Chain. This is shown by the very nature of the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu-dvipa "is rj» tk^crmtre of alt these" — the so-called "Insular Continents*' — and is surrounded hj % %ai cf salt water (Lavana), whereas Plaksha, ShAi- malia, Rtxsha, Krauncha, Shika. and Pushkara, are surrounded severally **by great seas .... of sugar-cane juice, of wine, of clarified butter, of curd$i of milk/* etc, and such like metaphorical names*
:
lhmim.%, WOaoB's Xttwm . S. 109^
THE HINDO STMBOUZATION.
?35
(^) BhSskara AchSrya, who uses expressions from the books of the Secret Doctrine, in his description of the sidereal position of all these Dvipas, speaks of: "the sea of milk and the sea of curds," etc., as meaning the Milky Way, and the various congeries of Nebulje; the more so. since he calls *'the country to the south of the equator" Bhur IfOka, that to the north Bhuva, Svar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya Lokas: and adds: "These lokas are gradually attained by increasing religious merits.*' i>., they are various ''Paradises."*
(c) That this geographical distribution of seven allegorical conti- nents, islands, mountains, seas and countries, does not belong only to our Round, or even to our Races— the name of Bharata-varsha (India) notwithstanding — is explained in the texts themselves by the narrator of Visknu Purdna, who tells us that:
Bharata [the son of N&bbi, who gave his name to Bhflrata-varsha or India] • . . consigned the kingdom to his son Sumati . . . and abandoned his life at . . . Sh&lagr&ma. He was afterwards bom again, as a Brahman, in a dis- tinguished family of ascetics. . . . Under these princes [Bharata's descendantsj Bh&rata-varsha was divided into nine portions; and their descendants successively held possession of the country for seventy-one periods of the aggregate of the four ages (or for the reign of a Manu) [representing a Mahdyuga of 4,320,000 yearsj.t
But having said so much, Parashara suddenly explains that:
This was the creation of Svftyambhuva (Mann), by which the earth was peopled when he presided over thtjirsi Manvantara, in the Kalpa of Varflha [i.e., the Boar incarnation, or Avatdra].
Now every BrShman knows that oitr Humanity began on this Earth (or Round) oft/y with Vaivawata Manu. And if the Western reader turns to the sub-section on "The Primeval Manus of Humanity,"! he will see that Vaivasvata is the sevatih of the fourteen Manus who preside over our Planetary" Chain during its Life Cycle; but as every Round has two Manus (a Root- and a Seed- Manu), he is the Root-Manu of the Fourth Round, hence the seventh. Wilson finds in this only incongruity, and speculates that:
The patriarchial genealogies are older than the chronological system of Manvan- taras and Kalpas, and [thus] have been rather clumsily distributed amongst the different periods.
It is nothing of the kind; but as Orientalists know nothing of the Secret Teaching, they persist in taking everything literally, and then
• Sec BibUoth«a Indica, Trans, of the Golddhydya 0/ the SiOdhdnUk-aMirom^ni, Ui. 11-44. -r I^d.t pp. 106, to?. X F. jii.
330
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
turn round and abuse the writers for that which they do not com- prehend!
These Genealogies embrace a period of three and a half Rounds; they speak of pre-human periods, and explain the descent into genera- tion of everT.' Manu — the first manifested sparks of the One Unity — and, furthermore, show each of these human Sparks dividing into, and multiplying by, first, the Pitaras, the human Ancestors, then by the human Races. No Being can become God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human Cycles. Therefore the Shloka says:
Happy are those wbo are bom, even from the [latent] condition of gocU. as mem, in Bh4rata-varsha; as that is the way to . . . final liberation.*
In Jambu-dvipa Bharata is considered the best of its divisiatis, because it is the land of works. In it alone it is that:
The succession of four Yngaa. or ages, the Krita. the Trcti. the Dv&para. and Kidi take place.
When, therefore. Parashara. on being asked by Maitreya "to give him the descriptions of the Earth," returns again to the enumeration of the same Dvipas with the same seas, etc., as those he had described iu the Sviyambhuva Manvantara — it is simply a "blind"; yet, to him who reads between the lines, the Four great Races and the Fifth are there, ay, with their sub-divisions, islands and continents, some of which were called by the names of celestial Lokas, and by those of other Globes. Hence the confusion.
All these islands and lands are called by the Orientalists "mx-thical" and '•fabulous."! Very true, some are not of this Earthy but they still exist. The White Island and Atala, at all events, arc no m>ths, since Atala was the name contemptuously applied by the earliest pioneers of the Fifth Race to the Land of Sin — Atlantis, in general, not to Plato's island alone; and since the White Island was (a) the Shveta-dvipa of Theogony, and (Jf) ShSka-dvipa, or Atlantis (its earliest portions rather) in' its beginnings. This was when it yet had its "seven holy rivers that washed away all sin," and its "seven districts, wherein there was no dereliction of virtue, no contention, no deviation from
• Wlloou, i*i>/,, p. \\x.
* hi n Iccturr, rrofruMr Proffclly. PJI&. quotes Prore»or Oliirr to the effect "tbat the prcaeat Allnttllr iNlnTUlN* flon MfTontR no substuitia] rvidroce of a fanner direct communicatioa witli the lliutnlunil uf tlir New WurUt," but ll TTllnry e^^itcti. N-U- A«ia wiia uniletl to N.-W. America, perhaps by the line where Uie Alentian I't'Mlii |»r«(lAUr/iM "f M •ul tvil »ii hotaiiy alulic.
t
THE MAGI IN THE DAYS OF KRISHNA.
33'i
'virtue," as it was then inhabited by the caste of the Magas — that caste which even the Brahmans acknowledged as not inferior to their own, and which was the nursery of the first Zarathushtra. The BrShmans are shown consulting with Gauramukha, on Narada's advice, who told them to invite the Magas as priests of the Sun to the temple built by Samba the reputed son of Krishna, for in reality the latter had none. In this the Purdnas are historical, allegory notwithstanding, and Occult- ism is stating facts.
The whole story is told in Bhavishya Purdna, It is stated that Samba having been cured of leprosy by Surya (the Sun), built a temple and dedicated it to the Deity. But when he was looking for pious Erdhmans to perform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to the God, Narada — the virgin Ascetic who is found in every age in the Purdnas — advised him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brahmans to receive emoluments for the performance of religious rites. He therefore referred SSmba to Gauramukha (White-face), the Puro- hita, or family priest, of Ugraseua. King of Mathura, who would tell him whom he could best-employ. The priest directed SSmba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of Surya, to discharge the duty. But as he was ignorant of the place where they lived, Surya, the Sun himself, directs Samba to Shaka-dvipa beyond the salt water. Then SSmba per- forms the journey, using Garuda, the Great Bird, the vehicle of Vishnu and Krishna, who transports him to the Magas, etc.*
Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years ago, and NSrada, who is found reborn in every Cycle (or Race), in addition to Garuda — the symbol Esoterically of the Great Cycle — give the key to the allegory; never- theless the Magas are the Magi of Chaldxa, aud their caste and worship were bom on the earlier Atlantis, in Shaka-dvipa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed that the Magas of Sh^ka-dvipa are the fore- fathers of the fire-worshipping Parsts. Our quarrel with them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing periods of hundreds of thousands of years this time into only a few centuries; in spite of NSrada and Simba, they carry the event only to the days of the flight of the Parsts to Gujerat. This is simply absurd, as this took place only in the eighth centur>' of our era. True, the Magas are credited in the Bhavishya Purdna with still living in ShS.ka-dvipa in the day of Krishna's ''son," nevertheless the last portion of that Continent — Plato's "Atlantis" — had perished 6,000 years before. They were Magas '*late*of" Shaka-
• J^HAmiAiril»ffl,Wil»on,T. 381,38a.
338
THE SKCItET DOCTRINE.
dvipa, and in those days lived in Chaldaea. This, again, is an inten- tional confusion.
The earliest pioneers of the Fourth Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet were they the human Asuras and the Rakshasas which they became later. In those days large portions of the future Continent of Atlantis were yet part and parcel of the ocean floors. Lemuria, as we have called the Continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land.* It covered the whole area from the foot of the Himalayas, which separated it from the inland sea rolling its waves over w^hat is now Tibet, Mon- golia, and the Great Desert of Shamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, west- ward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam [? Annam]. From thence, it stretched south across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as we go south, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; and from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it extended far into the Pacific Ocean, beyond Rapa-nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) which now liee in latitude 26''S., and longitude no'^W.t This statement seems to be corroborated by Science — even if only partially. When discussing continental trends, and showing the infra- Arctic masses trending generally with the meridian, several ancient continents are mentioned, though inferentially. Among such are mentioned the '*Mascarene continent," which included Madagascar, stretching north and south, and another ancient continent which "stretched from Spitzbergen to the Straits of Dover, while most of the other parts of Europe were sea bottom."^ This corroborates the Occult teaching which says that what are now the polar regions were formerly the earliest of the seven cradles of Humanity, and the tomb
*
* As shown In the "Preliminary Notes" to this Volume, tt stsjids to reason that neither the name of Lemuria nor even of Atlantis arr the real archaic names of the lost Continents. Tlicy have been adopted by us simply for the soke of clearness. Atlantis was the name ^ven Co those portions of the submerKed Foorth Race Continent which were "beyond the Pillars of Hcnrules," and which happened to keep abo%'e water after the general Cataclysm. The last remnant nf Iheae— Plato's Atlantis, or " Poeeidonifi," which is another substitute, ot rather a translation of the real name— was the Inst of the Continent above water tiome 11,000 years ago. Most of tlie correct names of the countries and islands of both Continents are given in the pitrAnas; but to mention them specially, as found In other more ancient works, such as the Stirya Siddhanta, would necessitate too lengthy explanations. If. in earlier writiuKN tlie two seem to have been too faintly distingntshed, this must be due to careless reading and want of reflection. If ages hence, Europeans are referred to as Aryans, and a reader confuses them with the Hindis and the latter with the Poarth lUce, because some of them lived in ancient LankA— the blame wiU not fall on the writer.
T See Part III, Section VI, of this Volume.
t Sec Professor J. D. Dana's nx\Jiic)it,Amtncan Journal of Scienct, UI. v. 44St 443r WtodKU's Wort4- Li/e, p. 3S1.
TH» ATLANTIC OCEAS-PI.OW.
339
of the bult of the Mankind of that region during the Third Race, when the gigantic Continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller continents. This is due, according to the explanation in the Commen- tar>', to a decrease of velocity in the Earth's rotation:
li'^en the IVhul runs at the usual raie^ its exiretnities [^the poles'] agree with its middle Circle [the equator~\, when it runs slower and tilts in every direction, there is a great disturbance on ike face of the Earth. The waters flow toward the two ends^ and new lands arise in the middle Belt [equa- torial lands], while those at the ends are subject to Pralayas by submersion.
And again :
TTius the Wheel [the Earth] is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of the Moon, for the breath of its waters [tides]. Toward the close of the age [Kalpa] of a great [Root-] Race, the Regents of the Moon [the Fathers, or Pitris] begin drawing harder, and thus flatten the Wheel about its Belt, when it goes down in some places and swells in others, and the swelling running toward the extremities [_pole5\ new lands will arise and old ones be sucked in.
We have only to read astronomical and geological works, to sec the meaning of the above ver>' clearly. Scientists — modern Specialists — have ascertained the influence of the tides on the geological distri- bution of land and water on the planet, and have noted the shifting of the oceans with a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new lands. Science knows, or thinks it knows, that this occurs periodi- cally * Professor Todd believes he can trace the series of oscillations backward to the periods of the Earth's first incmstation.f Therefore it seems easy for Science to verify the Esoteric statement. We propose to treat of tJiis at greater length in the Addenda.
Some TheosophisLs who have understood from a few words in Esoteric Buddhism that "old continents'* which have been submerged will r^ppear. have asked the question: "What will Atlantis be like when raised?*' Here, again, there \s a slight misconception. Were identi- cally the same lands of Atlantis that were submerged to be raised again* then they wonld, indeed, be barren fcr ages. But because the Atlantic
or tkr «qnteiial ai
340
THE SECRET DOCTiONK.
sea-bottom is covered with some 5,000 feet of chalk at pre more is forming — a new **cretaceous formation" of strata, in fact — that is no reason why, when the time for a new Continent to appear arrives, a geological convulsion and upraising of the sea-bottom should not dis- pose of these 5,000 feet of chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the surface. The Racial Cataclysms are not a Noah's Deluge of forty days — a kind of Bombay monsoon.
That the periodical sinking and reappearance of the mighty Conti- nents, now called Atlantis and Lerauria by modem writers, is no fiction^ will be demonstrated in the Section in which all the evidence has been collated together. The most archaic Sanskrit and Tamil works teem with references to both Continents. The seven sacred Islands (Dvipas) are mentioned in the Surya Siddhdjtia^ the oldest astronomical work in the whole world, and in the works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean Astronomer whom Professor Weber has made out to be '^reincarnated** in Ptolemy. Yet, it is a mistake to call these *'Sacred Islands" Atlan- tean — as is done by us; for, like everything else in the Hindu Sacred Books, they are made to refer to several things. The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son of SvSyambhuva Manu, to his seven sons — was not Atlantis* even though one or two of these Islands survived the sub- sidence of their fellows, and ofifered shelter, ages later, to Atlanteans, whose Continent had been submerged in its turn. When first men- tioned by Par^hara in the Vishnu Purdna^ the seven refer to an Esoteric Doctrine which is explained further on. In this connection, of all the .seven Islands, Jambu-d\npa (our Globe) is the only one that is terrestrial. In the Purd?ias every reference to the North of Mem is connected with that Primeval Eldorado, now the North Polar region, which, when the magnolia blossomed where now we see an unexplored endless desert of ice, was then a Continent. Science speaks of an "ancient continent" which stretched from Spitzbergen down to the Straits of Dover. The Secret Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological periods, these regions formed a horse-shoe-likc continent, whose one end, the Eastern, far more northward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the other contained Behring's Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended southward in its natural trend down to the British Isles, which in those days must have been right under the lower curve of the semi-circle. This Continent was raised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of I
ON FOOT ACROSS THE OCEANS.
34t
■
again on the face of the oceans. Therefore, though it can be said, without departing from truth, that Atlantis is included in the seven great Insular Continents since the Fourth Race Atlanteans came inta possession of some of the Lemurian relics, and settling on the islands^ included them among their lands and continents, yet a difference should be made and an explanation given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is attempted, as in the present work. Easter Island was also taken possession of in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, having escaped from the Cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on this remnant of L,emuria, but only to pefish thereon, when it was destroyed in one day by volcanic fires and lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain Geographers and Geologists; to the Occultists, however, it is history. What does Science know to the contrary?
Until the appearance of a Tnap, published at Basle in 1533, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, thg latUr was believed to be pari of India. . , . Science also refuses to sanction the wild hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian peninsula at one end of the line, and South America at the other, con- nected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the pre-historic ages .... was doubly connected with the two Americas. The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus calls the "BrAhmans of Upper India," stretched from Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Sliauio. A pedestrian from the north mi>;ht then have reached — hardly welting his feet — the Alaskan Peninsula, through Manchoona, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveller, Inmished with a canoe, and starting from the south, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South America.*
This was written from the words of a Master — a rather doubtful authority for the Materialists and Sceptics. But here we have one of their own flock, and a bird of the same feather, Ernst Haeckel, who, in his distribution of races, corroborates the statement almost verbatim r
It would seem that the region on the earth's surface where the evolution of these primitive men from the closely related catarrhine apes [\ !] took place, must be sought either in Southern Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the bye, was not even in existence when the Third Race flourished], or in Lemuria. Lemuria is an ancient continent now sunk beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean which, lying to the South of tlie .\sia of to-day. stretched on the one hand eastwards to Upper India and Sunda Island, on the other westward as far as Madagascar and Africa.t
In the epoch of which we are treating, the Continent of I^emuria had already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents. Nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less
■ Fivt Yean of Theoutphy, pp. 339, 340. t Ptdigrte of Man, AveUnR's Trans., pp. 80, fli.
M^
THE SKCRRT DOCTRINE.
Europe, existed in those days; all of them slumbering as yet on the ocean-floors. Nor was there much of present Asia; for the Cis- Himdlayan regions were covered with seas, and beyond them stretched the "lotus leaves" of Shveta-dvipa, the countries now called Green- land, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc. The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappear- ing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Island, for instance, belongs to the earliest civilization of the Third Race. It was a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the ocean-floor, which raised this small relic of the Archaic Ages — after it had been submerged with the rest — untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of north polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the Third Race.
In this we are again corroborated to a degree by Materialistic Science. Haeckel, when speaking of Blunienbach's brown or Malay race, and the Australians and Papuans, remarks :
There is much likcQcss between these last and the Aborigines of Polynesia, that Australian island-world, that s^ifms to havt been once on a time a gigantic and con- iinuous contitsent.*
It certainly was "a gigantic and continuous continent," for» during the Third Race, it stretched east and west, as far as where the two Americas now lie. The present Australia was but a portion of it, and in addition to this there are a few surviving islands strewn hither and thither on the face of the Pacific, and a large strip of California, which belonged to it. Funnily enough, Hxckel, in his fantastic Pedigree oj Man, considers:
The Australians of to-day as the lineal descendants, almost unchanged [? !], of Ihal second hrancb of the primitive human race . . . that spread northwards, at first chiefly in Asia, from the home of man's infancy, and seems to have been the parent of ail the other straight -haired races of men. . . . The one. woolly- haired, migrated in part westwards {i.e., to Africa and eastwards to New Guinea, which countries had then, as said, no existence as yet]. . . . The other, straight- haired, was evolved farther to the North, in Asia, and . , . peopled Australia, t
As writes a Master:
Behold the relics of that once great nation [Lemuria of the Third Race] in some of the flat-headed aborigines of your Australia.^
CHAKGES OF CUMATE.
343
But they belong to the last remnants of the seventh sub-race of the Third. Professor Hseckel must also have dreamt a dream and seen for once a true vision!
It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the ancestors of those, whom we term the most ancient peoples of the world — now called respectively the Aryan Hindus, the Egyptians, and the oldest Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees and Phoe- nicians on the other. These were governed by the Divine Dynasties, i.e., Kings and Rulers who had of mortal man only his physical appearance as it was then, but who were Beings from Spheres higher and more celestial than our own Sphere will be, long Manvanlaras hence. It is. of course, useless to attempt to force the existence of such Beings on sceptics. Tkeir greatest pride consists in proving their patronymic denomination as Catarrhinides — a fact which they try to demonstrate on the alleged authority of the Coccyx appended to their Os Sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if it were only long enough,, they would wag with joy and for ever, in honour of its eminent dis- coverer. These will remain as faithful to their Ape-ancestors as Christians will to tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets Theosophists and students of the Occult Sciences right on this point.
If we regard the second portion of the Third Race as the first repre- sentatives of the reaily human race with solid bones, then Haeckers surmise that ** the evolution of the primitive men took place .... in either Southern Asia or ... . Lemuria" — Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out of the question — is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate, however, just as the evolution of the First Race, from the bodies of the Pitris, took place on seven distinctly separated regions, at the Arctic Pole of the (then) only Earth — so did the ultimate transformation of the Third occur. It began in those northern regions, which have just been described as including Behring's Straits, and what there then was of dry land in Central Asia, when the climate was .semi-tropical even in the Arctic regions and excel- lently adapted to the primitive wants of nascent physical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and tropical in turn since the appearance of man. The Commentary tells us that the Third Race was only about the middle point of its development when;
The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moait shone no longer over
344
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the heads of that portion of the Sweat-bont ; people knew snon; ice, and^ frost, and men ^ plants t and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those that did not perish remained as half grown babes^ in size and intellect. This was the third Pralaya of the Races.]
This means again, that our Globe is subject to seven periodical and entire changes which go pari passu with the Races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven ter- restrial Pralayas, occasioned by the change in the inclination of the Earth's axis. It is a Law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as Science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic Law. In Occultism this Inexorable Law is referred to as the "Great Adjuster." Science confesses its ignorauce of the cause producing climatic vicissitudes and also the changes in the axial direction, which are always followed by these vicissitudes. In fact, it does not seem at all sure of the axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared to deny the axial phenomena alto- gether, rather than admit the intelligent hand of the Karmic Law which alone can reasonably explain these sudden changes and their accompanying results. It has tried to account for them by various and more or less fantastic speculations; one of which, as de Bouchcpom imagined, would be the sudden collision of our Earth with a Comet, thus causing all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding to our Esoteric explanation, since Fohat is as good as any Comet, and, in addition, has universal Intelligence to guide him.
Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu's Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have already been four such axial disturbances. The old Continents — save the first — were sucked in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge mountain chains arose where there had been none before. The face of the Globe was completely changed each Lime; the "survival of the fittest" nations and races was secured through timely help; and the unfit ones — the failures — were dis- posed of by being swept off the Earth. Such sorting and shifting requires several thousands of years before the new house is set in order.
The sub-races are also subject to the same cleansing process, and the side-branchlets or family-races as well. Let any one. well acquainted
• " Httlf-ifrowii bttliw" in comparinou with their gUat brethren on other Zones. So would we now, nhould u like calamity overtake lu. T ThU relate* to Ucmurtii.
CYCI,ES WITHIN CYCLES.
345
with astronomy and mathematics, throw a retrospective glance into the twilight and shadows of the Past. Let him observe and take notes of what he knows of the histor>' of peoples and nations, and collate their respective rises and falls with what is known of astronomical cycles— especially with the Sidereal Year, which is equal to 25,868 of our solar years* Then, if the observer is gifted with the faintest intuition, he will find how the weal and woe of nations are intimately connected with the beginning and close of this Sidereal Cycle. True, the non-occultist has the disadvantage that he has no such far distant times to rely upon. He knows nothing, through exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he may find consola- tion in the knowledge of, or^if he so prefers — speculation about, the fate of every one of the modern nations he knows of^some 16,000 years hence. Our meaning is very clear. Every Sidereal Year the tropics recede from the po\^ /onr degrees in each revolution from the equinoctial points, as the equator turns through the Zodiacal con- stellations. Now, as every Astronomer knows, at present the tropic is only twenty-three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the equator. Hence it has still two and a half degrees to run before the end of the Sidereal Year. This gives humanity in general, and our civilized races in particular, a reprieve of about i6,ooo years.
After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) as Com- mentary Thirty-three tells us:
A/en decreased eonsiderably in stature, and the duration of their lives was diminished. Having /alien down in godliness tfiey mixed with animal races, afid intermarried atnong giants and pigmies [the dwarfed races of the Poics\ . . Many acquired divine, nay more — unlawful knowledge^ and followed willingly the Left Path.
Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many geological periods it took to accomplish t\\\s fourth destruc- tion who can tell! But we are told that:
• There arc other cycles, of coune, cyeUt witkin cyeta—tinA it is juat tWa which creates imch a iliAculty ia the calculatiotut of racial events. The circuit of the ecliptic is completed in 35.8M years, and. with rrgard to our Enrth, it is calculated that the et^utnoctial point falls hack 50.1" annually. But there is another cycle within this one. It is said that : "' As the ap«Is goc* forward to meet it nt the rate of 11. j^'- annually, this would complete a rwolulion in one hundred and fiAccn thousand tbxe hundred and two year* (ii5,30x^ The approximatiou of the equinox and the apsis is thcKuni of these motions, 61.34 ', and hence the equinox returns to the same po«itioti in relation to the aptiis In ai.iaS years." iSt-e the article on "Astronomy" in the Eneyctop^dia Brttannica.) We mentioned this cycle in /ii'j L'nveiied, {vqI. i), in relation to other cycles. Kach has a marked influence on its contemporary race.
346
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
44. They* built great images nine yatis high,! the size of their bodies (a). inner fijies had destroyed the land of
their FATHERS-t WaTKR THREATENED THE FOURTH § {&).
(a) It is well worth noticing that most of the gigantic statues dis- covered on Easter Island, a portion of an undeniably submerged con- tinent, as also those found on the outskirts of Gobi, a region which had been submerged for untold ages, are all between twenty and thirty feet high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all twenty-seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders.|| The writer is well aware that the modern Archseologists have decided that "these statues are not very old," as declared by one of the high officials of the British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of those arbitrary decisions of Modem Science which does not carry much weight.
We are told that after the destruction of Lemuria by subterranean fires men went on steadily decreasing in stature — a process already commenced after their physical Fall — and that finally, some millions of years later, they decreased to between six and seven feet, and are now, as in the older Asiatic races, dwindling down to nearer five than six feet. As Pickering shows, there is in the Malay race (a sub-race of the Fourth Root- Race) a singular diversity of stature; the members of the Polynesian family, such as the Tahitians, Samoans, and Tonga islanders, are of a higher stature than the rest of mankind; but the Indian tribes and the inhabitants of the Indo-Chinese countries are decidedly below the general average. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the very earliest of the surviving sub-races, the others to the very latest and most transitory stock. As the Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and the Australians rapidly dying out, so will the other old races soon follow.
{b) How could those records have been preserved? we may be asked. Even the knowledge of the Zodiac by the Hindus is denied by our kind and learned Orientalists, who conclude that the Aryan Hindus knew nothing of it, before the Greeks brought it into the country. This uncalled-for slander has been so suflSciently refuted by Bailly,
■
* The Atlanteana.
4 Twoily-ftrveo ftel.
5 The Lcmurians.
I Raw.
II Compatr the roUowing^ Section, entitled "Cyclopean Ruliu and Coloasal Stones as Witaeascs to CionU."
THB OLD CONTINENTS.
3^7
and what is more, by the clear evidence of f acts ^ as not to need very much additional refutation. While the Egyptian 2^diac5* preserve irrefutable proofs of records embracing more than thrce-and-a-half Sidereal Years — or about 87,000 years — the Hindu calculations cover nearly thirtj'-three such years, or 850,000 years. The Eg>'plian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of the Earth and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as remarked by the author of the Sphinxiad:
These poor benighted Hindoos have registered a knowledge of Astronomy for ten times 35,000 years since tlie [last local] Flood [in Asia], or Age of Horror.
And they possess recorded observations from the date of the Srst Great Flood within the Aryan historical memory — the Flood which submerged the last portions of Atlantis 850,000 years ago. The Floods which preceded are, of course, more traditional than historical.
The sinking and transformation of Lemuria began nearly at the Arctic Circle (Norway), and the Third Race ended its career in Lanka, or rather on that which became Lanka with the Atlanteaus. The small remnant now known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lanka, while the enormous Island of that name wa.s, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic Continent already described. As a Master says:
Why should not your geologists bear in mind that under the continents explored a?td fathomed by them . . . there may be hidden, deep in the fathomless, or rather unfaihomed ocean bcds^ other and far older continents whose strata have never been geologically explored; and that they may some day upset entirely their presait theorus ? Why not admit that our present continents have^ like Lcmuria and Atlantis^ been several times already submerged^ and had the tinu to reappear again, and bear their new groups of mankind and civilizations: and that at the first great geological up" heaval at the next cataclysm, in the scries of periodical cataclysms that occur from the beginning to the aid of every Round, our already autopsized continents will go down, and the Lemurias and Atianlises come tip again f\
Not identically the same Continents, of course. But here an ex- planation is needed. No confusion need arise as regards the postula- tion of a Northern Lemuria. The prolongation of that great Continent into the North Atlantic Ocean is in no way subversive of the opinions so widely held as to the site of the lost Atlantis, and one corroborates the other. It must be noted that the Lemuria, which sensed as the
* See Denoo'tt Voyage en Egypte, vol. iL
T See Esoieric Buddhism, p. 65.
i
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
cradle of the Third Root-Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape of a horse-shoe past Madagascar, round "South Africa" (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh-water deposit called the Wealdeu — which every Geologist regards as the mouth oC a former great river — is the bed of ikt main stream which drained Northern Lcniuria in the Sccofidary age. The former actual existence of this river is a fact of Science — will its votaries acknowledge the necessit>' of accepting the Secondar>'-age Northern Lemuria. demanded by their data? Professor Berthold See- mann not only accepted the reality of such a mighty continent, but regarded Australia and Europe as formerly portions of one conlinntt — thus corroborating the whole "horse-shoe" doctrine already enunciated. No more striking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that the elevated ridge in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then shifts almost at right angles to proceed in a south-easterly line toward the African coasts whence it runs on southward to Tristan d'Acunha. This ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would establish the reality of a submarine horse-shoe junction with a former continent in the Indian Ocean.*
The Atlantic portion of Letnnria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis, but which must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth Root-Race. Just as in the case of Race evolution, so in that of the shifting and re-shifting of Continental masses, no hard and fast line can be drawn as to where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth- Race Atlauteaus were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third- Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Their Continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and peninsulas which were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and ultimately became the true home of the great Race known as the Atlanteaus. After this consummation was once attained it follows, as stated on the highest Occult authority, that:
* Cf. the chart ndDpted rrom Uie OukUenget and Dotphin nouDdiiiffa in Danoclly's Atiantis: ik^ AntedHuvian tVorld, p. 47.
:
^ — -- THE SECRET ANNALS. ^^ ^ 349
Lemuria should no more be confounded wiik the Atlantis Continent, than Europe with America.*
The above, coming from quarters so discredited by orthodox Science, will, of course, be regarded as a more or less happy fiction. Even the clever work of Donnelly, already mentioned, is put aside, notwith- standing that its statements are all confined within a frame of strictly scientific proofs. But we write for the future. New discoveries in this direction will vindicate the claim of the Asiatic Philosophers, that sciences — Geolog\', Ethnology, and History included — were pursued by the Antetliluvian nations who lived untold ages ago. Future "finds" will justify the correctness of the present observations of such acute minds as H. A. Taiue and Renan. The former shows that the civilizations of such archaic nations as the Egyptians, Aryans of India, Chaldaeaus, Chinese, and Assyrians are the result of preceding civili- zations lasting "'myriads of centuries'*;! a^°d the latter points to the fact that:
Egypt at the beginning appears mature, old, and entirely vHtlioul mythical and heroic ages, as if the couutr>' had never known youth. Its civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period. The civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy. It was already mature.t
To this Professor R. Owen adds that:
Egypt is recorded to have been a dvilized and governed commanity Ifefore the time of Menes.
And Winchell states that:
At the epoch of Menes the Egyptians were already a civilized and numeroufi people. Manetho tells ns that Athotia, the son of this first king Menes, built the palace of Memphis; that he was a physician, and left anatamicut books.
This is quite natural if we are to believe the statement of Herodotus, who records in Euterpe (cxlii), that the written history of the Egyptiau priests dated from about 12,000 years before his time. But what are 12.000 or even 120,000 years compared with the millions of years which have elapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been left without witnesses, notwithstanding its tremendous antiquity. The complete records of the growth, development, social and even political life of the Lemurians, have been preserved in the Secret AnnaLs. Unfortunately, few are those who can read them; and those who could would still be unable to understand the language, unless
* Etoitric Buddhiim, p. 58. t Hiitory of Englith Ct'ttralurt, p. as. t Quotctl in Attantii, p. r3a.
4
35IO
THE SECRET I>OCTRINE.
acquainted with all the seven keys of its symbolism. For the compre- hension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that of the Seven Sciences; and these Sciences find their expression in the seven different applica- tions of the Secret Records to the exoteric texts. Thus we have to deal with modes of thought on seven entirely different planes of Ideality. Every text relates to, and has to be rendered from, one of the following standpoints:
1. The Realistic Plane of Thought.
2. The Idealistic.
3. The purely Divine or Spiritual.
The other planes too far transcend the average consciousness, especially of the materialistic mind, to admit of their being even symbolized in terms of ordinary phraseology. There is no purely mythical element in any of the ancient religious texts; but the mode of thought in which they were originally written has to be found out and closely adhered to during the process of interpretation. For it is symbolical, the archaic mode of thought; emblematical, a later though very ancient mode of thought; parabolical or allegorical; hieroglyphi- cal; or again logogram mical. the most difiEcult method of all; every letter, as in the Chinese language, representing a whole word. Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the Vedas, the Book of the Dead^ or, to a certain degree, in tlie Bible, is composed of such logograms. No one not initiated into the mystery of the Occult religious logography can presume to know what a name in any ancient fragment means, before he has mastered the meaning of every letter that composes it. How is it to be expected that the merely profane thinker, however great may be his erudition in orthodox symbolism, so to say — i.e., in that sym- bolism which can never get out of the old grooves of solar myth and sexual worship — how is it to be expected that the profane scholar should penetrate into the arcana behind the veil? Oue who deals with the husk or shell of the dead-letter, and devotes himself to the kaleido- scopic transformation of barren word-symbols, can never expect to get beyond the vagaries of modem M>'thologists.
Thus, Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Deucalion, Noah, etc.. — all the head- figures of the World-Deluges, universal and partial, astronomical or geological — all furnish in their very names the records of the causes and effects which led to the event, if one can but read them fully. All such Deluges are based on events that took place in Nature, and stand as hislorical records, therefore — whether they were sidereal, geological.
I
STAiromG WITNESSES TO SUBMERGED CONTINENTS, 35 1
or even simply allegforical — of a moral event on other and higher planes of being. This we believe has now been sufficiently demonstrated during the long explanation necessitated by the allegorical Stanzas.
To speak of a race nine "yatis," or twenty-seven feet, high, in awork claiming a more scientific character than, let us say, the story of ** Jack the Giant- Killer," is a somewhat unusual proceeding. Where are your proofs? — the writer will be asked. In history and tradition^ is the answer. Traditions about a race of giants in days of old are universal ; they exist in oral and written lore. India had her DSnavas and Daityas; Ceylon, had her Rakshasas; Greece, her Titans; Eg>'pt, her colossal Heroes; Chaldaea, her Izdubars (Nimrod); and the Jews their Emims of the land of Moab, with the famous giants, Anakim.* Moses speaks of Og, a king whose "bedstead" was nine cubits long (15ft. 4in.) and four wide.t and Goliath was "six cubits and a span in height" (or loft. 7in.)- The only difference found between "revealed scripture" and the evidence furnished to us by Herodotus* Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch. Philostratus, etc., is this: While the Pagans mention only the skdctons of giants, dead untold ages before, relics that some of them had penonally seen, the Bible interpreters unblushingly demand that Geolog>' and Archaeology should believe, that several countries were inhabited by such giants in the day of Moses; giants before whom the Jews were as grasshoppers, and who still existed in the days of Joshua and David. Unfortunately their own chronology is in the way. Either the latter or the giants has to be given up.
Of yet standing witnesses to the submerged Continents, and the colossal men that inhabited them, there are still a few. Archseology claims several such on this Earth, though beyond wondering "what these may be" — it has never made any serious attempt to solve the mystery. Not to speak of the Easter Island statues already mentioned, to wkat epoch belong the colossal statues, still erect and intact near Bamian? Archaeology, as usual, assigns them to the first centuries of Christianity, and errs in this as it does in many other speculations. A few words of description will show the readers what are the statues of both Easter Isle and Bamian. We will first examine what is known of them to orthodox Science.
Teapi, Rapa-nui, or Easter Island, is an isolated spol almost 2,000 miles from tlie Sooth American coast. ... In length it is about twelve miles, in breadth foi;r .... and there is an extinct crater 1,050 feet high in its centre. The island
• Numbers, xitt. 33. f Dtut., iU. 11.
352
THE SECRST DOCTRINE.
abounds In craters, which have been extinct for so long that no tradition of their activity remains.*
But who made the great stone images f which are now the chief attraction of the island to visitors? **No one knows ^ says a reviewer.
It ifl more than likely that they were here when the present inhabitants [a hand' fnl of Polynesian savages] arrived. . . . Their workmanship is of a high order^ * . . . and it is believed that the race who formed them were the £requenters of the natives of Peru and other portions of South America. . . . Even at thcr date of Cook's visit, some of the statues, measuring twenty-seven feet in height and eight across the shoulders, were lying overthrown, while others still standing appeared mu|^ larger. One of the latter was so lufly that the shade was sufficient to shelter a party of thirty persons from the heat of the sun. The platforms on which these colossal images stood averaged from thirty to forty feet in length, twelve to sixteen broad .... all built of hewn stone in the Cyclopean style, very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac, or the ruins of Tia-Huanacv in /"eru-X
" There is no reason to believe that any of the statues have been built up, bit by bit, by scaffolding erected around Ikcm^* adds the reviewer very sug- gestively— without explaining how they could be built otherwise, unless made by giants of the same size as the statues themselves. Two of the best of these colossal images are now in the British Museum. The images at Ronororaka arc four in number, three deeply sunk in the i»oiJ, and one resting on the back of its head like a man asleep. Their types, though all are long-headed, are different; and they are evidently meant for portraits, as the noses, the mouths, and chins differ greatly in form ; their head-dress, moreover — a kind of flat cap with a piece attached to it to cover the back portion of the head — shows that the originals were no savages of the stone period. Verily the question may be asked. Who made them? — but it is not Archteology nor yet Geology that is likely to answer, even though the latter recognizes in the iilflnd a ]x>rtion of a submerged continent.
fitiC who cut the Bamian, still more colossal, statues, the tallest and the most gigantic in the whole world? — for Bartholdi's "Statue of Liberty," now at New York, is a dwarf wh^a compared with the largest of the five images. Bumes, and several learned Jesuits who have vijft«d the place, speak of a mountain "all honeycombed with gigantic ceil*/' with two immense giants cut in the same rock. They are referred to M the modem Vfiaotse (vide snpra, quotation from Shoo-King), the
* ftiobctt Brown, Tht Comnlrits o/ tkt H^vrld, p.
^ JCcstkmed od jip. 44. €t itgq.
t t^td.. pp. 43. 44. tt if^., and pp. jio. ^1.
THE BAMIAN STATimS.
353
.ast surviving witnesses of the Miaotse who had "troubled the earth"; the Jesuits are right, and the Archaeologists, who see Buddhas in the largest of these statues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins which are discovered one after the other in our day. all those immense avenues of colossal ruins that cross North America along and beyond the Rocky Mountains, are the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of old. "Masses of enormous human bones" were found "in America, near Munte [?] " a celebrated modem traveller tells us, precisely on the spot which local tradition points out as the landing spot of those giants who overran America when it had hardly arisen from the waters.*
Central Asian traditions say the same of the Bamian statues. What are they, and what is the place where they have stood for countless ages, defying the cataclysms around them, and even the hand of man, as in the instance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal-warriors of Nadir Shah? Bamian is a small, miserable, half-ruined town in Central Asia, half-way between Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Koh-i-baba, a huge mountain of the Paropamisian, or Hindu-Kush, Chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the sea. In days of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of Djooljool, ruined and destroyed to the last stone by Tchengis-Khan in the thirteenth century. The whole valley is hemmed in by colossal rocks, which are full of partially natural and partially artificial caves and grottoes, once the dwellings of Buddhist monks who had established in them their Vihiras. Such Vihiras are to be met with in profusion, to this day, in the rock-cut temples of India and the valleys of Jellalabad. In front of some of these caves five enormous statues— of what is regarded as Buddha — have been dis- covered or rather rediscovered in our centurj', for the famous Chinese traveller Hiouen Thsang speaks of having seen them, when he visited Bamian in the seventh centur}'.
The contention that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, is easily proven on the e\'idence of all the travellers who have examined them and taken their measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high. or seventy feet higher than the "Statue of Liberty*' now at New York, as the latter is only 105 feet or 34 metres high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself, between whose legs the largest vessels of those days pas.sed with ease, measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second largest statue, which is also cut out in the rock like the first, is only
* De ta Vest, IX. iz, quoted In Dc Mirville's J^uma/olcrt*. Ui. SS*
354
THK SRCRBT DOCTRINE.
I20 feet or fifteen feet taller than the said "Liberty.'** The third statue is only 60 feet high, the two others still smaller, the last being only a little larger than the average tall man of our present Race. The first and largest of the colossi represents a man draped in a kind of "toga"; M. de Nadeylac thinks that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head, the drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, are undeniable indications that Buddha was meant to be represented. But they really prove nothing. Notwithstanding the fact that most of tlie now existing figures of Buddha, represented ia the posture of Samadhi, have large drooping ears, this is a later inno- vation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due to Esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience of wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who knows and h^ars all, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures nothing can escape. As a Shloka says:
The merciful Lord^ our Master^ hears the cry of agony of the smallest of the small, beyond vale and mountain^ and hastens to its deliverance,
Gautama Buddha was an Ar>'an Hindu, and an approach to such ears is foimd only among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort their ears artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned the grottoes of the Miaotse into Vih^ras and cells, came into Central Asia about or in the first century of the Christian era. There- fore, Hiouen Thsang, speaking of tlie colossal statue, says that "the shining of the gold ornamentation that overlaid the statue" in his day "dazzled one's eyes," but of such gilding there remains not a vestige in modem times. The drapery, in contrast to the figure itself, which is cut out of the standing rock, is made of plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made the most careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far later epoch. The statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far earlier period than Buddhism. In such case, it may be asked, Whom does it represent?
Once more tradition, corroborated by written records, answers the querj*, and explains the mystery. The Buddhist Arliats and Ascetics found the five statues, and many more, now crumbled down to dust. Three of them standing in colossal niches at the entrance of their future abode, they covered with plaster, and, over the old. modelled
* Tlie Gnl ami aecoix]. In coramoa wtlh BarUioldJ's statue, hav« nn nitmDce nt the fool, leading fay ■ wiadinc itoircftK cut in the rock up into the hcad«. The eminent Trench Arctueologif t and An- UiropologUt, the Marquis dc Nadeylac, in hia work, justly remarks that there never wu in ancient or to modem times a aculptured human fiffure morr colossal than the first of the two.
THE HANDIWORK OF INITIATES.
355
new statues made to represent Lord Tatbdgata. The interior walls of the niches are covered to this day with bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of Buddha is repeated in ever>'' group. These frescoes and ornaments — which remind one of the Byzantine style of painting — are all due to the piety of the monk-ascetics, as also are some other minor figures and rock-cut ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the Initiates of the Fourth Race, who, after the submersion of their Continent, sought refuge in the fastnesses and on the summits of the Central Asian mountain chains. Thus, the five statues are an imperishable record of the Esoteric Teaching as to the gradual evolution of the Races.
The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal body being commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of future generations, as its remembrance would other- wise never have survived the Atlautean Deluge. The second — 120 feet high — represents the Sweat-born; and the third— measuring 60 feet — immortalizes the Race that fell, and thereby inaugurated the first physical Race, born of father and mother, the last descendants of which are represented in the statues found on Easter Isle. These were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison with our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the latter.
These are, then, the "Giants" of antiquity, the ante- and post- diluvian Gibborim of the Bible. They lived and flourished one million years ago rather than between three and four thousand only. The Anakim of Joshua, whose hosts were as "grasshoppers" in comparison with the Jews, are thus a piece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the Miocene age, and change the millenniums of their chronology into millions of years.
In everj'thing that pertains to prehistoric times the reader ought to bear in mind the wise words of Montaigne. Saith the great French Philosopher:
It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto 11a geemeth to bcarc no show of likelihood or truth : which is an ordinarie fault in Ihose who perswade themselves to be of more su£ciencie than the vulgar sort. . .
But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing for false and
356
THH SECRET DOCTRINE.
impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage to have the bounds and limits of God*5 will, and the power of our common mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there is no gprcatcr folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of our capacitic and bounds of our sufficiencie. . . ,
If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason cannot attain, bow many such doe daily present themselves unto our sight? Let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde-folde. we are led to the knowledge of mo^t things that passe our hands; verily wc shall finde it is rather custome than science that rcceivelh the strangenesse of them from us: and that those things, were they newly presented unto us, wee should doubtless deeme them as much or more unlikely and incredible than any other.*
A fair-minded scholar, before denying the possibility of our history and records, should search modern history, as well as the universal traditions scattered throughout ancient and modem literature, for traces left by these marvellous early races. Few among the unbelievers suspect the wealth of corroborative evidence which is to be found scattered about and buried, even in the British Museum alone. The reader is asked to throw one more glance at the subject-matter treated of in the Section which follows.
CYCLOPEAN RUINS AND COLOSSAL STONES AS WITNESSES TO
GIANTS.
Dc Mirville, in his enormous works, "Memoires Adressees aux Aca/lemies," carrying out the task of proving the reality of the Devil and showing his abode in every ancient and modem idol, has collected several hundred pages of "historical evidence" that, in the days of "miracICp" both pagan and biblical, stones walked, spoke, delivered oracles, and even sang. That finally, the "Christ-stone," or Christ- rock, "the spiritual Rock" that followed Israel,! "became a Jupiter- lapis," swallowed by his father Saturn, "under the shape of a stone.*' J We will not stop to discuss the evident misuse and materialisation of biblical metaphors simply for the sake of proving the "Satanism" of idols, though a good deal might be said§ on this subject. But without claiming any such peripatetidsm and innate psychic faculties for our
.4
'-iMTTT, xxvl
T^mc-" Bis swmllowinc Jiipi(er-I«|iU maj tva oat
lc^->. li Ok tUv CO which the Chimb of Rome is buai"— «re mn
U m mn to ** wmSlem " a oae d^. ■» he hM swaiioved J^iter
«■« d«y ■ praptecy.
ANIMATED STONBS.
357
Stones, we may collect, in our turn, every available evidence to hand, to show that: (a) had there been no giants to move such colossal rocks, there could never have been a Stonehenge, a Camac (Brittany), or other such Cyclopean structures; and (^) were there no such thing as Magic, there could never have been so many witnesses to "oracular" and "speaking" stones.
In the Achaica we find Pausanius confessing that, in beginning his work, he had regarded the Greeks as mighty stupid "for worshipping stones." But, having reached Arcadia, he adds: "I have changed my way of thinking."* Therefore, without worshipping stones or stone idols and statues, which is the same thing — a crime with which Roman Catholics are unwise to reproach Pagans, as they do— one may be allowed to believe in what so many great Philosophers and holy men have believed in, without deser\'ing to be called an "idiot" by modem Pausaniases.
The reader is referred to the Academic des Inscriptions, if he would study the various properties of fiinls and pebbles from the standpoint of magic and psychic powers. In a poem on "Stones" attributed to
I Orpheus, these stones are divided into Ophites and Siderites, the ^'Serpent-stone" and "Star-stone." The Ophitfis is shaggy, hard, heavy, black, and has the ^/l of speech ; when one prepares to cast it away, it produces a sound similar to the cry of a child. It is by Sneaus of this stone that Htleuus foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland.t Sanchuniathon and Philo Byblus, iu referring to these "betyles," call them ^^ animated stones." Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus and the physician Eusebius had asserted before him. Eusebius especially never parted with his Ophites, which he carried in his bosom, and received oracles from it. delivered in a smalt voice resembling a low whistling.X Amobius, a holy man, who "from a Pagan had become one of the lights of the Church,^^ as Christians tell their readers, con- fesses he could never meet with one of such stones without putting it a question, "which it answered occasionally in a clear and sharp small voice''' Where, then, is the difference between the Christian and the Pagan Ophites, we ask?
The famous stone at Westminster was called liafail, "the speaking stone," and raised its voice only to name the king that had to be
♦ Tbid., p. 3«4.
♦ M. Falconoet. o/. cit., I. vi, AUm., p. jij ; qnoted by De Mirtfillr, op. cit., ibid., p. itj. Z The jwme, of courw, as the "amalt voice " hearU hy i£lijab after the earthquake at the mouth of
_l;e cave, {t ICings, xix. 12.}
358
THE SECRET I>OCTRINB.
chosen. Cambry, in his Monutnefiis Celiiques, says he saw it when it still bore the inscription:*
Ni fallat faium^ Scofi quocumqitf localum Invenient lapidan^ rtgtiassc teneniur ibidem.
Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain Heraescus, who could distinguish at a glance the inanimate stones from those which were endowed with motion; and Pliny mentions stones which "ran away when a hand approached them." f
De Mirville — who seeks to justify the ^/^/tf— enquires very pertinently, why the monstrous stones of Stonehenge were called in days of old chzor-^aur or the '*dance of giants" (from cor, "dance," whence chorea, Sind gaur, "giant")? And then he sends the reader to receive his reply from the Bishop St. Gildas. But the authors of such works as Voyage dans le CovtU de Cornouaiiles, sur les Traces des G/anis, and of various learned works on the ruinsof Stonehenge.J Camac and West Hoadley, give far fuller and more reliable information upon this particular sub- ject. In those regions—true forests of rocks— immense monoliths are found, "some weighing over 500,000 kilograms." These "hanging stones" of Salisbury Plain are believed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. But the Druids were historical men and not Cyclopes, or giants. Who then, if noi giants, could ever raise such masses — especially those at Camac and West Hoadley — range them in such symmetrical order that they .should represent the planisphere, and place them in such wonderful equipoise that they seem to hardly touch the ground, and though set in motion at the slightest touch of the finger, would nevertheless resist the efforts of twenty men should they attempt to displace them.
Now if we say that most of these stones are relics of the last Atlan- teans, we shall be answered that all the Geologists claim them to be of a natural origin; that, a rock when "weathering" — i.e., losing flake after flake of its substance under the influence of the weather — assumes this form; that, the "tors" in West England exhibit curious forms,
• The rockiQj^, or "log»n," stones bcw various naraes; such as the ctacha-brath of Uie Celt, the "dotiuy or judgrmrnt-stone"; the diTinins-stone, or " stone of the ordeal." and the onicle moving or animated atone of the Fhcenicians: the rumbling^ ntonc of the Irish. Brittany has its "pitrres branlant4i" at Hiielgoat. They are found in the Old and the New Worlds; in the BiiUsb Islnmls, Krance, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany, etc.. as also In North America. (See Hodsoa's Leitert from yorth Amfrica, vol. tl. p. 440.) Pliny apenks of several in Asia {HiU. JVai.. i. 96); and Apol- lonlus Rbodios expatiates on the rocking' stones, and says that they are " stones placed on the apex offl tumulus, and »o sensitive ai to bt movabit by tht mind'' (Ackerman's Atfh. fntUx, p. 34), referring no doubt to the ancient priests who moved such stones by will-power from a distance.
♦ See DUtionnatre rf« fteUgtom, 1'AbM Bertrand, Arts., "Hersacus" and "Wtyles": De Mirrille, ibid,, p. S87, who has "Uenddus"; but see BuDsen's .^:>^, 1. 95.
} Sec amonir others. History tf I\tgaHiim in QUedomia, by Dr. Tit. A. WIs«, F.R.A.8.. etc
THfi "ROCKING STONES" IN' I5UROPB.
359
I
also produced by this cause. And thus since all Scientists consider tlie •'rocking stones to be of purely natural origin, wind, rain, etc., causing disintegration of rocks in layers" — our statement will be justly denied, especially as "we see tliis process of rock-modification in progress around us to-day." Let us then examine the case.
First read what Geolog>' has to say. and you will then learn that often these gigantic masses are entire strangers in the countries wherein they are now fixed ; that their geological congeners often pertain to strata un- known in those countries and which are only to be found far beyond the seas. Mr. William Tooke. in speculating upon the enormous blocks of granite which are strewn over Southern Russia and Siberia, tells the reader that where they now rest, there are neither rocks nor mountains ; and that they must have been brought over "from immense distances and with prodigious efforts."* Cbarton speaks of a specimen of such rock from Ireland, which had been submitted to the analysis of an eminent English Geologist, who assigned to it a foreign origin '* ptrkaps eveti African."* \
This is a sir?Lng^ coincidence, for Irish tradition attributes the originof her circular stones to a Sonererwho brought them from Africa. De Mir\illesees in this Sorcerer "an accursed Hamite." % We see in him a dark Atlanlean, or perhaps even some earlier Lemurian, who had survived till the birth of the British Islands — a giant in any and every case.§ Says Cambry, naively;
Men have nothing" to do with it ... . for never could human power and industry undertake anything of this kind. Nature alone has accomplished it all [! !] and Science will demonstrate it some day [! !]||
Nevertheless, it was human, though gigantic power, which accom- plished it, and no more "Nature" alone than God or Devil.
"Science," having undertaken to demonstrate that even the Mind and Spirit of man are simply the production of "blind forces," is quite capable of accepting the task, and it may be that she will come out some fine morning, and seek to prove that Nature alone has marshalled the gigantic rocks of Stonehenge, traced their position with mathemati- cal precision, given them the form of the Dendera planisphere and of the signs of the Zodiac, and brought stones weighing over one million of pounds from Africa and Asia to England and Ireland!
• Sfpitihtre di> Thrtarn, *n:h. -vii. p. 1M7.
♦ f^eytageuri Ancunt et Modernes, i. »3o.
t Op- cit. , ibid. , p. 990. If Ham was a Titan or Giant then were Shem and Japhet also Titans. They mm either all Arkite Tltana. as Paher Bhow»— or myths.
) Diodonin Stculns cissertji that in the days of ina, »orae men went still of a Tast *tature. and were deoominotrd by the Hellenes Giants. "Ot S'cF Alyvinfu fiv&oKoyovo't Kara "nfv laiOOV •^Kuaav yryovfvai riva^ iroXwru/iaTOVs."
I Anii^itis CtUiquti, p. 8fl.
THE SECRKT DOCTRINH.
It is true that Cambry recanted later on, when saying: I believed for a long time in Nature, but I recant, ... for chance is unable
to create such marvellous combinatioas, . . . and those who placed the said
rocks in equipoise, arc the same who have raised the moving masses of the pond of
Huelgoat, near Concamcau. Dr. John Watson, quoted by the same author, when speaking of the
moving rocks, or "rocking stones" situated on the slope of Golcar (the
"Enchanter") says:
The astonishing movement of those masses poised in equilibrium made the Celts compare them to Gods.*
In Slonehenge^ by Flinders Petrie, it is said that:
Stonehenge is built of the stone of the district, a red sandstone, or "aorsen" stone, locally called "grey wethers." But some of the stones, especially those which are said to have been devoted to astronomical purposes, have been brought from a distance, probably the North of Ireland.
To close, the reflections of a man of Scien ce. in an articleupon the subject published in 1S50 in the Ranie ArcheologiquCy are worthy of being quoted :
Bvery stone is a block whose weight would try the most powerful machines. There are, in a word, scattered throughout the globe, masses, before which the word materials seems to remain inexplicable, at the sight of which imagination is confounded, and that had to be endowed with a name as colossal as the things themselves. Besides which, these zmrnense rocking stones, called sometimes routers, placed upright on one of their sides as on a point, their equipoise being so perfect that the slightest touch is sufficient to set them in motion .... betray a most positive knowledge of statics. Reciprocal counter-motion, surfaces, plane, convex and concave, in turn .... all tliis allies tbem to Cyclopean monu- ments, of which it can be said with good reason, repeating De la Vega, that " the demons seem to have worked on them more than men.'' t
For once we agree with our friends and foes, the Roman Catholics, and ask whether such prodigies of statics and equilibrium, with masses weighing millions of pounds, can be the work of Palaeolithic savages, of cave-men, taller than the average man in our centurj', yet ordinary
• Cambry, I'Wrf., p. 90,
* Ofi. cit., p. 473. " It is difficult," wrltM Creuzer, "not to suspect in the rtnicturcs of Tir>*ns and Mycena: planetary forces supposed to be moved by celestial powers, analoeous to the famous DaclyU." {/^/asgn it Cyciopes,) To this day Science is in iifnorancc on the subject of the Cyclopes. They are Nuppoard to have built all the so-called "Cyclopean" works whose erection would have necessitated fievernl regiments of Giants, and yet they were only seTcnty-seven in all, or about one hundred, as Creuxer thinks. They arc called Bullden, and Occultism calls them the Initiatots, who by inltiatinir some Pelasffians, thus laid the foundation stone of true Masonty. Herodotus oMociatcfl the Cyclops with Perseus "the son of an As5>Tian demon" (I. vi.). Raoul Kocbetle found that Palvmonius. the Cyclops, to whom a sanctuary was miscd, was the "Tyriau Hercules." tn any case, he was the Builder of the sacred columns of Cadir, covered with raysleHous chatactera— of which Apollooius a£ Tyana was the only one in his age who possessed the key— and with &f urea which may still be found on the walls of BUora. the gigantic ruins of the temple of Vlahvakarman, " the boUdcr and artificer of t^«-*^'odi."
tlVING, SPBAEING, AND MOVING STONES.
361
mortals as we are ? It is not our purpose to refer to the various traditions attached to the rocking stones. Still, it may be as well to remind the English reader of Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of such a stone on the Isle of Mona, which returned to its place, notwithstanding every effort to keep it elsewhere. At the time of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II, a Count Hugo Cestreusis, desiring to convince himself of the reality of the fact, tied the Mona stone to a far larger one and had them thrown !into the sea. On the following morning it was found in its accustomed fplace. The learned William of Salisbury warrants the fact by testifying [to its presence in the wall of a church where he had seen it in 1554. And this reminds one of what Pliny said of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which the Cyzicans had placed in the Prytaneum, " whence it ran away several iimes, and so they were forced to weight it with lead."* Here we have immense stones stated by all antiquity to be "living, moving, speaking, and self-perambulating." They were also capable, it seems, of making people run awaj', since they were called routers, from the word to "rout." or "put to flight"; and Des Mousseaux shows them all to be prophetic stones, and sometimes called "»»«(/ stones.'* f
The rocking stone is accepted by Science. But why did it rock? One must be blind not to see that this motion was one more means of divina- tion, and that they were called for this very reason the "stones of truth." J
a * Hist. Nat., t. xxxri. p. 592 ; De MirvUle, op. cit, ibid., p. 389. t Dieu rt les Dtemx^ p. 567.
X I>e MirvUle, op. cit.. ibid., p. 391. Mcmts. Richardson and Barth arr said to bavf been amazed Kt finding ID Uic Dcsnl of Sahara the same trUithic and raised rttoncs which they had seen in Asia, Cir- CttMia, Btmria, and in all the North of Europe. Mr. Rivett-Camsc. B.C^-, of Allahabad, the difltin- fuiahed Archieologiat, shows Ibc same amassment on tinding^ Ihc description, given by Sir j. Simpson, of the cupUke markings on stones and rocks in Enf^land, Scotland, and other Western countries; " offering an extraordinary resemblance " to " the marks on the trap boulders which encircle the barrows near Na^ur" the dty of Suulces. The eminent scholar saw in this "another and very VxtraorOinary addition to tbe iu.-vss of evidence . . . that a branch of the nomadic tribes, who vwept at an early date over I^urope, penetrated into India also." We say Lemuria, Atlantis and her Giants, and the earliest races of the Fiflh Root-Kace had nil n hand in these betyli, Uthoi, and " magic " stones in general. The citp-ntarks noticed by Sir J. Simpson, and the " holes scooped out on the face " of rocks and monuments found by Mr. Kivctt-Camac " of diflfbrent sizes varying from wiM inches to an inch aud a-half In diameter, and in depth from one to one and n-hnlf inch .... jjcneraUy arranged in perpendicular lines presenting many permutntiotui in the number and size and anvngcment of the cups " — are simply ztrritUn rrcotds of the oldest races. Whosoever examines with attention the drawings made of such marks in Arck III fCumaon, fmdia, ftc.. will find therein the most primitive style of marking or recording. Some- thing of the sort was adopted by the American inventors of the Morse code of telegraphic writing, which reminds ns of the Ogham writing, a combination of long and short strokes, as Mr. Rivett- Camac dcscritK-s it, "cut on sandstone." Sweden, Norway, and Scandinavia are full of sttch written records, for the Runic characters follow the cup-marks and long and short strokes. In Johannes
, Vagnus' Infolio one may see the representation of the demi-god, the giant Starchatcrus (atarkad, the pupil of Hro^xharsgrani, the Magician), holding under each arm a huge stone covrrrd with Runic cbaracters, This hlarkad, occording Lo Scandinavian legend, went to Ireland and performed mar* vcUousdeedsinUtcNorthaadSoutbiEast and West, {^ck Atgard and the Gods, pp. ai8-azi.)
3^2
THK SECRBT DOCTRINH.
This is hisior)', the past of prehistoric times warranting the same in later ages. The Dracontia, sacred to the Moon and the Serpent, were the more ancient ** rocks of destiny" of older nations; and their motion, or rocking, was a code perfectly clear to the initiated priests^ who alone had the key to this ancient reading. Vormius and Olaus Magnus show that it was according to the orders of the oracle, whose voice spoke through "these immense rocks raised by the colossal powers of [ancient] giants," that the kings of Scandinavia were elected. Says Pliny:
In India and Persia it is she (the Persian Otlzoe) whom the Magi had to consult for the election of their sovereigns;*
and he further describes a rock overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and placed in such a manner that "a single finger can move it, while the weight of the whole body makes it resist."! Why then should not the rocking stones of Ireland, or those of Brimham, in Yorkshire, have served for the same mode of diinnation or oracular communications? The hugest of them are evidently the relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller, such as Brimham Rocks, with revolving stones on their summit, are copies from the more ancient lithoi. Had not the Bishops of the Middle Ages destroyed all the plans of the Dracontia they could lay their hands on, Science would know more of these. J As it is, we know that they were universally used during long prehistoric ages, and all for the same purposes of prophecy and magic. E. Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published in the Aniiquites de France {vol, ix), an article showing the Chatamperamba (the "Field of Death," or ancient burial ground in Malabar), to be identical in situation with the old tombs at Caraac; that is to say, "a prominence and a central tomb." Bones are found in the tombs, and Mr. Halliwell tells us that some of these are enormous, the natives calling the tombs the ''dwell- ings of the Rakshasas" or giants. Several stone circles, ** considered the work of the Pauch Pandava (five PSndus), as all such monuments are in India, where they are to be found in such great numbers," when opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi, "were found to contain human bones of a very large j/>f."§
Again, De Mirv'ille is right in his gaieralization^ if not in his con- clusions. As the long cherished theory that the Dracontia arc mostly
• Hist. NaL, XXXVII. Ut.
T ibid,, n. xxxviii.
X Charton, Ma^asin PHierts4fue (i8w>. p. 3«. Qaoted by I>e MirvUle, op. cit., fbid,, p. 193. I T. A. Wise, Htitory n/ f^gantsm in CaUdonta, p. 3(1.
UNrVKRSAX WITNESSES.
363
■
'witnesses to "great natural geological commotions** (Charton), and **the work of Nature" (Cambry), is now exploded, his remarks are very just :
We advise Science to reflect .... and, above all, no longer to class TitAns and Giants among primitive legends; for their works are tbere, under our eyes, and those rocking masses will oscillate on their basis to the end of the world to help them to realize once for all, that one is not altogether a candidate for Charenton for believing in wonders certified to by the whole of Antiqiiity.*
This is just what we can never repeat too often, though ft may be that the voices of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised in the desert. Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as inconsistent, to say the least, in its modem speculations, as was ancient and mediaeval Theolog>' in its interpretations of the so-called Ra^ela- iion. Science would have men descend from the pithecoid ape — a transformation requiring millions of years — and yet fears to make Mankind older than 100,000 years! Science teaches the gradual trans- formation of species, natural selection and evolution from the lowest form to the highest, from mollusc to fish, from reptile to bird and mammalian — yet it refuses to man, who is physiologically only a higher mammal and animal, such a transformation of bis external form. But if the monstrous Iguanodon of the Wealden may have been the ancestor of the diminutive Iguana of to-day, why could not the monstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become the modern man — the link between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more unscientific in this "theory" than iu that of refusing to man a spiritual immortal Ego, making of him an automaton, and ranking him. at the same time, as a distinct gtfius in the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific tlian the present Exact Sciences, they are nevertheless more logical and consistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and the natural affinities of atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal; but it requires more than the mere interplay between certain material aggregates and their environment, to call to life ^ fully conscious inan, even though he were no more indeed than a ramification between two "poor cousins'* of the quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Haeckel that (objective) Life on our Globe "is a logical postulate of scientific natural history,*' but add that the rejection of a like spiritual involution, from wiikin without^ of invisible subjective Spirit-Life — Eternal and a Principle in Nature — is more
• op, eii., iHd,. p. »BB.
364
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
illogical, if possible, than to say that the Universe and all in it has been gradually built by "blind forces" inherent in Matter, without any external help.
Suppoi5e an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a cathedral had come originally into being as follows: first, there was a progressive and gradual elaboration in space of an organizable material, which resulted in the production of a state of matter named organic protein; then, under the influence of incident forces, these states having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and majestically evolved into new combinations of carved and polished wood, of brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind-pipes and bellows; after which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart*s "Requiem"; this was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc., ad infinitum^ its keys playing of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own inherent force and fancy. What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it is precisely in such wise that the materialistic savan/s tell us that the Universe was formed, with its millions of beings, and man, its spiritual crown.
Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when writing on the subject of the gradual transformation of species, his words apply to our doctrine.
Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a ffteexisting kind of being.*
Then why, in this case, should not historical man be the product of a modification on a preexistent and prehistorical kind of man, even supposing for argument's sake that there is nolking w\\.)x\\\ him to last longer than, or live independently of, his physical structure? But this is not so! For, when we are told that "organic matters are produced in the laboratory by what we may literally call artificial evolution** ^ — we answer the distinguished English philosopher, that Alchemists and great Adepts did as much, and, indeed, far more, before the Chemists ever attempted to "build out of dissociated elements complex com- binations." The Homunculi of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one in Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein's monster will have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no Chemist, or Alchemist either, will ever endow such a monster with more than animal instinct, unless indeed he does that with which the
• Euays en Pkytiology, p. 144-
r 7VMCf>/«x o/Bioicgy, Appendix, p. 4Bi
IT TAKES A GOD TO BECOME A MAN.
365
*
Progenitors" are credited, namely, leave his own Physical Body, and incarnate in the "Empty Form." But even this would be an ariificiai, not a natural man, for our "Progenitors" had, in the course of eternal evolution, to become Gods before they became Men.
The above digression — if indeed it is one — is an attempt at justifica- tion before the few thinking men of the coming century who may read this.
It also gives the reason why the best and most spiritual men of our present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science or Theology, and why they prefer any •* psychic craze" to the dogmatic assertions of the pair, since neither of them, in its infallibility, has anything better to offer than biind faith. Universal tradition is by far the safer guide in life. And universal tradition shows Primitive Man living for ages together with his Creators and first Instructors — ^the Klohim— in the World's "Garden of Kden," or "Delight."*
45. The first great waters came. They swallowed the seven
GREAT ISLANDS {a).
46. All holy saved, the unholy destroyed. With them most OF the huge animals, produced from the sweat of the
Earth ).
(a) As this subject — the fourth great Deluge on our Globe in this Round — is fully treated in the Sections that follow the last Stanza, to say anything more at present would be a mere anticipation. The seven Great Islands (Dvipas) belonged to the Continent of Atlantis. The Secret Teachings show that the Deluge overtook the Fourth, Giant Race, not on account of its depravity, or because it had become "black ■with sin," but simply because such is the fate of every Continent, which — like everything else under our Sun — is born, lives, becomes decrepit, and dies. This was when the Fifth Race was in its infancy.
{fi) Thus the Giants perished— ^the Magicians and the Sorcerers, adds the fancy of popular tradition. But "all holy saved," and alone the "unholy" were *' destroyed." This was due. however, as much to the prevision of the *'hn]y" ones, who had not lost the use of their Third Eye, as to Karma and Natural Law. Speaking of the subsequent Race, our Fifth Humanity, the Commentary says:
Alone the handful of those Elect, whose Divine Instructors had gone to
* Wc ahkU tmt of tlie Dtvioe Xastnicton in Stum XIL
366
THK SECRET DOCTRINK.
inhabit thai Sacred Island — **/rom ivhence the last Saviour will ctnm** — naiv kept mankind from becoming one-half the exierminaior of the otkir [oi mankind is now — II. P. B.], // {mankind^ became divided. 7av- ihirds of a were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material Spirits of the Earthy who took possession of the easily accessible bodies: one- third remained faithful^ and joifud with the nascent Fifth Race — the Divifie Incarnates, When the Poles moved \_for the fourth time'] this did not affect those who were protected^ and who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like the Lemurians — alone the ungodly Atiantcans perished, and "'were seen no more" . . . /
STANZA XII. THE FIFTH RACE AND ITS DIVINE INSTRUCTORS.
47. The remnanta of the first two Races disappear for ever. Groups of the various Atlanteati races saved from the Deluge along with the Forefathers of the Fifth. 48. The origins of our present Race, the Fifth. The first Divine Dynasties. 49. The earliest glimmerings in history, now pinned to the allegorical chronology of the Bibte, and "universal" history slavishly following it. The nature of the first Instructors and Civilizcrs of maukiad.
47. Few* rkmained. Some yellow, some brown axd black,
AND SOME RED REMAINED. ThE MOON-COLODRRDt WERE GONE FOR EVER (a). 43. The Fifth J produced from the holy stock remainkd; it
WAS RULED over BY THE FIRST DlVTNE KiNGS.
49. . . . The Serpents who re-descended, who made peace with the flfth.§ who taught and instructed it (d) . . . .
(a) This Shioka relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with it, but living and ever-recurring tradition does. History — or what is called history— does not go back further than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub-race, a "few thousands" of years. It is the sub-divisions of the first sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race which are referred to in the sentence. "Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red remained." The "moon-coloured" — i.e., the First and the Second Races — were gone for ever; ay, without leaving any traces whatever — and that, so far back as the third "Deluge" of the Third Lemurian
THK "GREAT DRAGON" AND THK "SERPENTS.
367
^ce, that "Great Dragon/* whose tail sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this is the tnie meaning of the verse in the Commentary which says:
The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdotn, the Serpents whose holes are now under the Triangular Stottes. Or in other words, "the pyramids, at the four comers of the world." (b) This puts clearly what is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the Commentaries; namely, that the Adepts or "Wise" men of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Races dwelt in subterranean habitats, gener- ally under some kind of pyramidal structure, if not actually under a pyramid. For such "pyramids" existed in the "four comers of the world" and were never the monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though indeed uutil they were found scattered all over the two Americas, under and above ground, beneath and amidst virgin forests, and also in plain and vale, they were generally supposed to be the ex- clusive property of Egypt. If true geometrically correct pyramids are no longer found in European regions, nevertheless many of the sup- posed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triang^ular pyramidal and conical "menhirs" in Morbihan, and Brittany generally, many of the Danish "tumuli" and even of the "giant tombs" of Sardinia with their inseparable companions, the "nuraghi," are so many more or less clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first settlers on the newly-bom continent and isles of Europe, the "some yellow, some brown and black, and some red" races that remained after the submersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands, 850,000 years ago — Plato's Island excepted— and before the arrival of the great Aryan races; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the East. Those who can hardly accept the placing of the antiquity of the human race so far back as the 57,000 years, the age assigned by Dr. Dowler to the skeleton found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi, will, of course, reject these facts. But they may find themselves mistaken some day. We may dibparage the foolish self-glorification of the Arcadians who styled themselves "older than the Moon" (ir^xxrcATpw), and of the people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the Sun appeared in Heaven — but not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at the universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones of the Mammoth and Mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic Salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make
.568
THE SHCR:BT DOCTRINK.
away with the difficulty that, of all the Mammalians, man is the oniy one whom Science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal frames, from the giant Homo Diluvii to the creature between five and six feet that he is now.
But the "Serpents of Wisdom" have preserved their records well, and the history of human evolution is traced in Heaven as it is traced on underground walls. Humanity and the Siars are bound together indissolubly, because of the Intelligences that rule the latter.
Modem Symbologists may scoff at this and call it "fancy/' but as Mr. Staniland Wake writes :
It is unquestionable that the Deluge has [ever] been associated in the legends of some Eastern peoples not only with the Pyramids, but also with the couslellations.*
The "Old Dragon" is identical with the "Great Flood," says Mr. Proctor:
We know that in the past the constellation of the Dragon was at the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples, . . . the Dragon would be the uppermost or ruling constellation. . . . It is singular how closely these con- stellations . . . correspond in sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded respecting the [Biblical] Flood.t
The reasons for this singularity, however, have been made abundantly clear in this work. It only shows that there were several Deluges con- fused in the memories and traditions of the sub-races of the Fifth Race. The first great Flood was astronomical and cosmical, while several others were terrestrial. And yet our very learned friend Mr. Gerald Massey — an initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still only a self-initiate — declared and insisted that the Atlantean Sub- mersion and Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people, and that Atlantis was no better than an "astronomical allegory." But the great zodiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and allegory can hardly interfere with history; moreover, every student of Occultism knows what that astronomical and zodiacal alle- gor>' means. Dr. Smith shows in the Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of the allegor>'.
[Its twelve cantos] refer to the annual course of the Snn through the twelve months of the year. Each tablet answers to a special month, and contains a dis- tinct reference to the animal forms in the signs of the Zodiac; . , . [the eleventh canto being) consecrated to Rimmon, the God of storms and rain, and bannonixes with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac— Aquarius, or the Waterman.;
• The Grtat f^rramid,
T Knowlidgt, \. p. a43: quoted by Stanilnnd Wake. op. cit., pp. 81. 8?.
I THneUenth Ceninry, iftSi, p. 736 ; quoted by SUnllond Wake, ibid^t p. 81.
THB POLB3 HAVB BEEN THRICE INVERTED.
369
But even this is preceded in the old Records bj' the ^r^-astronoraical Cosmic Flood, which became allegorized and symbolized in the above Zodiacal or Noah's Flood. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. The Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the con- stellation of the Great Dragon, the "Dragons of Wisdom," or the great Initiates of the Third and Fourth Races, and the floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine reminder of the great Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of Universal History, however, are said to have had their beginnings with the third sub-race of the Fourth Root-Race or the Atlantcans, When was it? Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of the zodiacal calculations in Egypt, ike poles have been thrice inverted.
We will presently return again to this statement. Such symbols as are represented by the Signs of the Zodiac — a fact which offers a handle to Materialists upon which to hang their one-sided theories and opinions — have too profound a signification, and their bearing upon our Humanity is too important, to suffer dismissal in a few words. Meanwhile, we have to consider the meaning of the statement, in Shloka 48, concerning the "first Divine Kings," who are said to have "redescended," guided and instructed our Fifth Race after the last Deluge 1 We shall consider this last claim historically in the Sections that follow, but must end with a few more details on the subject of "Serpents."
The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further elucidation requires proofs obtained from ancient, mediaeval^ and modem works which have treated of these subjects. All such evidence has now to be gathered in, collated and brought together in better order, so as to compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical proofs. And as the manifold meaning of the weird and suggestive symbol (so often referred to) of the "tempter of man'* — in the orthodox light of the Church — can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to exhaust the subject by every available proof, at this juncture, even at the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made out by our Theologians and some pious Symbologists to be indissohibly connected with the grotesque personage called the "Devil,'' and every proof which goes against their theory has been hitherto as invariably rejected and ignored. The Occultist must, therefore, neglect nothing which may tend to defeat this conspiracy of slander. And so we propose to divide the suHects
370
THB SECRET DOCTRINE.
invoJired in these last three Verses into several groups, and to examine them as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more details may thus be added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the most disputed tenets of Occultism and the Esoteric Doctrine — the bulk of which, however, will be found in Part II, on Symbology.
SERPENTS AND DRAGONS UNDER DIFFERENT SYMBOLISMS.
The name of the Dragon in Chaldaea was not written phonetically, but was represented by two monograms, meaning probably^ according to the Orientalists, the '* scaly one." "This description." very per- tinently remarks G. Smith, "of course might apply either to a fabulous dragon, a serpent, or a fish." To this we may add that, in one aspect, it applies to Makara, the tenth Zodiacal Sign, the Sanskrit term for a nondescript amphibious animal, generally called Crocodile, but really signifying something else. This, then, is a virtual admission that the Assyriologists, at all events, know nothing certain as to the status of the Dragon in ancient Chaldxa. It was from Chaldaea that the Hebrews got their symbolism, only to be afterwards robbed of it by the Chris- tians, who made of the "scaly one" a living entity and a maleficent power.
A specimen of Dragons, "winged and scaled," may be seen in the British Museum. In this representation of the events of the Fall, according to the same authority, there are also two figures sitting on each side of a "tree," and holding out their hands to the "apple," while at the back of the "tree" is the Dragon-Serpent. Esoterically, the two figures are two "Chaldees" ready for Initiation, the Serpent symbolizing the Initiator; while the jealous Gods, who curse the three, are the exoteric profane clerg>'. Not much of the literal "biblical event" there, as any Occultist can see!
"The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom," says the Stanza; thus proving the correctness of our explanation of the two figures and the "Serpent."
"The Serpents who redescended, .... who taught and in- structed" the Fifth Race. What sane man, in our day, is capable of believing that real serpents are hereby meant? Hence the rough guess — now become almost an axiom with men of Science — that those who in antiquity wrote upon various sacred Dragons and Serpents were either superstitious and credulous people, or were bent upon deceiving
I
THE NAASENIAN GNOSTICS.
371
those more ignorant than themselves. Yet, from Homer downwards,, the term implied something hidden from the Profane.
"Terrible are the Gods when they manifest themselves" — those Gods whom men call Dragons. And j^lianus, treating in his De Naturd Animaiium of these ophidian symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he well understood the nature of these most ancient of symbols. Thus with reference to the above Homeric verse he most pertinently explains :
For the Dragon, while sacred and to be worshipped, /.c: within himulf something still more of the divine nature of which it is better [for others ?1 to remaiu iu ignorance.*
The "Dragon" symbol has a septenary meaning, and of these seven meanings, the highest and the lowest may be given. The highest is identical with the "Self-bom," the Logos, the Hiudii Aja. With the Christian Gnostics called the Naasenians, or Serpent-worshippers, he was the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.f Its seven "Stars" are the seven stars held in the hand of the "Alpha and Omega" in Revelation. In its most ter- restrial meaning, the term "Dragon" was applied to the "Wise" men.
This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and mysterious, and may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modem day it so jars on the Christian ear that, in spite of our boasted civilization, it can hardly escape being regarded as a direct denunciation of the most cherished of Christian dogmas. Such a sub- ject required, to do it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma.
Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in Heaven originate with St. John, in his Revelation f Emphatically we answer — No. St. John's "Dragon" is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean Magic.
In order that we may demonstrate this negation, the reader is asked to examine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its several aspects.
THE SIDEREAL AND COSMIC GLYPHS. Every Astronomer— not to speak of Occultists and Astrologers- knows that, figuratively speaking, the Astral Light, the Milky Way,
♦ op. at., XI. xviL
t As shown by H. Uwrmy la hla THniU Ckrttifmne Z>evoilit, Uie Dragon, bring: placed bctwncn the immutable Father (the Pale, a fixed point) and mutable Matter, transtnitA to the latter the lofluencM he recciTCs from the ronner, wbencc bis name— the Verbum.
37*
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
and also the Path of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, as well as the Circles of the Sidereal or Tropical Year, were always called "Serpents" in the allegorical and mystic phraseology of the Adepts.
This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a "Dragon" — the Dragon "Chozzar, called by the profane Neptune" according to the Peratse Gnostics, the "Good and Perfect Serpent," the Messiah of the Naaseni, whose symbol in Heaven is Draco.
But we ought to discriminate between the various characters of this symbol. Now Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret Doctrine, and when an Occultist reads in the Vendidad com- plaints uttered against the ** Serpent," whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal spring of Airyana Vaejo, changing it into winter, generating disease and death, and at the same time mental and psychic consumption — he knows that the Serpent alluded to is the North Pole, and also the Pole of the Heavens.* These two axes produce the seasons according to their angle of inclination to each other. The two axes were no more parallel : hence the eternal spring of Airyana Vaejo "by the good river Daitj^a" had disappeared, and "the Ar>an Magi had to emigrate to Sogdiana" — say the exoteric accounts. But the Esoteric Teaching states that the pole had passed from the equator, and that the "Land of Bliss" of the Fourth Race, its inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo-Aryans of the post-diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognize the mountains, on the summits of which their fore- fathers had met before the Flood, and conversed with the pure " Yazatas" or celestial Spirits of the Elements, whose life and food they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein :
The Vendid&d secma to point oat a great change la the atniosphcre of central Asia; strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a whole range of mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kara-Korum cliain.t
The Egyptians, according to Eusebius. who. for a wonder, once wrote the truth, symbolized Kosmos by a large fiery circle, with a serpent with a hawk's head lying across its diameter.
Here we see the pole of the earth within the plane of the ecUptic, attended with all the fiery conseqnencea that must arise from such a state of the heavens: when
* Symbolized by the EgypUani nndcr the form of a serpent vHth ■ hawk's head. T JUvut Archloio^qu*, lUj.
THE TWO MYSTIC P0I3S.
373
the whole Zodiac, in*2S,ooo [odd] years, must have "reddeuM with the solar blaze*' ; and each sign must have been vertical to the polar region.*
Mem, the Abode of the Gods, as explained before, was placed in the North Pole, while Pitila, the Nether Region, was supposed to lie towards the South. As each symbol in Esoteric Philosophy has s^en keys, Meru and Patdla have, geographically, one significance and represent localities, while, astronomically, they have another, and mean the "two poles"; the latter meaning led to their being often ren- dered in exoteric sectarianism as the ** Mountain" and the "Pit," or Heaven and Hell. If we for the present hold only to the astronomical and geographical significance, it may be found that the Ancients knew the topography and nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modem Astronomers. They had reasons, and good ones, for naming one the "Mountain" and the other the "Pit." As the author just quoted half explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same. "Heli-on is the Sun in his highest," Heli-os or Eli-os meaning the "most high," and Acheron is 32 degrees above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded the southern pole, the first astronomers called the Pit, while observing, toward the northern pole, that a certain circuit in the heavens always appeared above the horizon — they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the high abode of the Gods, these were said to ascend and descend periodi- cally; by which (astronomically) the Zodiacal Gods were meant, the passing of the original north pole of the Earth to the south pole of the Heaven.
In that age at noon, the ecliptic would be parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from the north pole to the north horizon : crossing the eight coils of the serpent [eight sidereal years, or over 200.000 solar years], which would seem like an imaginary' ladder with eight staves reaching from the earth up to the pole, i.e., the throne of Jove. Up this ladder, then, the Gods, i.f„ the Signs of the Zodiac, ascended and descended. [Jacob's ladder and the Angels] . . . , It is more than 400^000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this ladder.t
This is an ingenious explanation, even if it is not altogether free from Occult heresy. Vet it is nearer the truth than many of a more scientific and especially theological character. As said, the Christian
• Mackey's Sphinriad.- or. The Mrthotogica! Asfromomy of Uu AncitnU DimonztraUd by Restoring i7 their Fables and Symbols their OHfinal MemntHgi^ p. 42. -r Ibid,, p. 4;.
374
THE SECRttT DOCTRINE.
N
Trinity was purely astronomical from its beginning. This it was which made Rutilius say of those who euhemerized it: ^*Judiza gens, radix: stuitorum."
But the profane, and especially Christian fanatics who are ever in search of scientific corroboration for their dead-letter texts, persist in seeing in the Celestial Pole the true Serpent of Genesis, Satan, the enemy of mankind; whereas it is really — a cosmic metaphor. When the Gods are said to forsake the Earth, it means not only the Gods, the Protectors and Instructors, but also the minor Gods — the Regents of the Zodiacal Signs. The former, as actual and existing Entities which gave birth to, nursed, and instructed Mankind in its early youth, appear in every Scripture, in that of the Zoroastrians as well as in the Hindu Gospels. Ormazd. or Ahura Mazda, the "Lord of Wisdom." is the synthesis of the Amshaspands, or Amesha Spentas, the '•Immortal Benefactors,"* the "Word," or the Logos, and its six highest aspects in Mazdeanism. These "Immortal Benefactors" are described iu Zamyad Yasht as :
The Amesha Spentas, the shining, having efficacious eyes, great, helpful . . . imperishable and pure .... which are all seven of like mind, like speech, all seven doing alike .... which are the creators and destroyers of the creatures of Ahura M&zda, their creators and overseers, their protectors and rulers.
These few lines are sufiBcient to indicate the dual and even the triple character of the Amshaspands, our DhySn Chohans or the "Serpents of Wisdom." They are identical with, and yet separate from Onnazd (Ahura Mazda). They are also the Angels of the Stars of tlie Chris- tians— the Star-Yazatas of the Zoroastrians — or again the seven Planets (including the Sun) of every religion.! The epithet, "the shining^ having efficacious ej'es," proves it. This on the physical and sidereal planes. On the spiritual, they are the Divine Powers of Ahura Mazda; but on the astral or psychic plane again, they are the "Builders," the "Watchers," the Pitris. or Fathers, and the first Preceptors of Mankind.
When mortals have become sufficiently spiritualized, there will be no more need oi forcing them into a correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men will know then, that there never yet was a great World-reformer whose name has passed into our generation, who (a) was not a direct emanation of the Logos (under whatever name known
* Also trajulaled OS " BUuful ImiiiorUla"by Dr. W. RHfer; but the fint !a more comet.
■^ These " teven " beciunv^ the eight, Uie Ofrdoad, or the Utrr maUriaUted rellffioos, the serenth, or Uie highest "principle," bdnttr no louger Uie perrmdins Spirit, the Synthoti^ but bccocninf mm anthropomorphic number, or ■ddillonal unit.
GOD AND NATURE ANTHROPOMORPHIZED.
375
t
to us) »>., an esseniiai incarnation of one of the "Seven," of the •'Divine Spirit who is sevenfold"; and {h) who had not appeared before, in past Cycles. They will recognize, then, the cause which produces certain riddles of the ages, in both history and chrono- logy; the reason, for instance, why it is impossible yi^r ik^m to assign any reliable date to Zoroaster, who is found multiplied by twelve and fourteen in the Dabisian; why the numbers and individualities of the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up; why Krishna and Buddha speak of themselves as reincarnations, Krishna identifying himself with the Rishi Narayana, and Gautama giving a series of his prexaous births; and why the former, especially, being "the very suprtnu Brahma.'* is yet called Anshinshavatara — **a part of a part" only of the Supreme on Earth; finally, why Osiris is a Great God, and at the same time a "Prince on Earth,'* who reappears in Thoth Hermes; and why Jesus {in Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognized, kabalistically, in Joshua, the sou of Nun, as well as in other personages. The Esoteric Doctrine explains all this by sajnng that each of these, as also many others, had first appeared on Earth as one of the Seven Powers of the Logos, individualized as a God or Angel (Messenger); then, mixed with Matter, they had reappeared in turn as great Sages and Instructors who *'taught" the Fifth Race, after ha\'ing instructed the two preceding Races, had ruled during the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn under various circumstances for the good of Mankind, and for its salvation at certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had become truly only the "parts of a part" on Earth, though de facto the One Supreme in Nature.
This is the metaphysics of Theogony. Now every "Power" among the Seven, once he is individualized, has in his charge one of the elements of creation, and rules over it;* hence the many meanings in every symbol. These, unless interpreted according to the Esoteric methods, generally lead to inextricable confusion.
Does the Western Kabalist, who is generally an opponent of the Eastern Occultist, require a proof? I^et him open Eliphas Levi's Hisioire de la Magi€,\ and carefully examine his "Grand Symbole Kabbalistique" from the Zohar, He will find there, in the engraving, a development of the "interlaced triangles,'* ^ white man above and a Slack woman below reversed, the legs passing under the extended arms
* Thew elcmedts mrv: the cosmtc, Ihc trrr^ne, thr mineral, the vegetable, (be Animal, the kqaeotu, and finally the human— in their physical, spiritual, and paychtc aspects.
376
THB SBCJmr DOCTRINE.
of the male figure, and protruding behind the shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on each side. Eliphas Levi makes of this symbol, God and Nature; or God, •'Light," mirrored inversely in Nature and Matter, "Darkness." Kabalistically and sjTnbolically he is right; but only so far as emblematical cosmogony goes. Neither has he invented the symbol, nor have the Rabalists. The two figures in white and black stone have existed in the temples of Egypt from time imme- morial, agreeably to tradition, and historically^-ever since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them. Therefore the symbol must have been in existence for nearly 2,500 years. This, at the very- least, for Cambyses, who was a son of Cyrus the Great, succeeded his father in the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two Kabiri personi- fying the opposite po Us. Herodotus* tells posterity that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he burst into an inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought to be a man erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate "the passing of the original north pole of the earth to the south pole of the heaven," as perceived by Mackey.f But they also represented the poles inverted^ in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, which each time re- sulted in the displacement of the oceans, the submersion of the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial regions, and vice versa. These Kabirim were the "Deluge" Gods.
This may help us to get at the key of the seemingly hopeless con- fusion among the numbers of names and titles given to one and the same Gods, and classes of Gods. Faber, at the beginning of this century, showed the identity of the Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscuri,. Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei, Dact>*li, Lares, Penates, Manes.t Titans, and
• Thatia, Ixxvii.
t Ulio adtlv that "th« Egyptians had various wajn or rcpnscntlng the anffle of the poles. la Pcny'9 View of the Levant there is a figure rrprencnting the sottth pole of the Earth la the constella- tion of the Harp, Ic which the poles appear like two straight rods Burmounted with hawks' wiuKK, to distinguiflh the north from the south. But the symbols of the poles .... arc, sometimes, iu the form of serpeats, with the beads of hawka to distinguifih the north from the sooth end." {Op. eit.y p. ^i.)
; Faber and Bishop Cumberland would make these all the later pagan personi5cation« of " the NoKtic Ark, and . . . do other than the patriarch [Noah] and bis family" (0, as the former writer put»it in his Cabiri {\. 136); because, we are told, that most probably oAcr the DeluReln comraemora- Uon of the event, the pious Noachidse established a religious festivnl. which waji, later on, corrupted by their impious dcficendoats, who made of " Noah and hw family '* demonfl or hero-gods ; " and at length unblushing^ obscenity usurped the name and f^arb of rclifnon" [ibid., 1. p. lo). Now this is indeed putting an extinguisher upon the humon reasoning powers, not only of antiquity, hut even of our present genenitiona. tteverse the slAtcmcnt, and aflcr the words " Noah and his family " explain Uiai what waa meant is simply the Jewish version of a Samotbradan mystery, of Satam, or Cronus- C/dyk and his Sons, and then we may say Amen.
I
WHO WERE ENOCH AND THE OTHERS?
377
Aletae with the Kabiri. And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manns, the Rishis, and our Dhyan Chohans who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth Races. Thus, while iu Theogony the Kabiri- Titans were seven Great Gods, cosmically and astronomi- cally the Titans were called Atlantes, because, perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected with ai-ai-as^ the "divine sun/' and with tii, the ■**deluge." But this, if true, is only the exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on the appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe-inspiring Great Gods^the Dioscuri,* the deities surrounded with the darkness of Occult Nature — become the Idei Dactyli, or Ideic "Fingers," with the Adept-healers by metals. The true etymolog>' of the name Lares, now signifying "Ghosts," must besought iu the Etruscan word lars, "conductor," "leader." Sanchu- niathon translates the word Alet« as "fire worshippers," and Faber believes it to be derived from ai-orit^ the "God of fire." Both are right, for in both cases it is a reference to the Sun, the "highest" God, toward whom the Planetarj' Gods "gravitate" (astronomically and allegorically), and whom they worship. As I^ares, they are truly the Solar Deities, though Faber's etymolog>', that " Lar is a contraction of EUAr, the solar deity»"t is not very correct. They are the Lares, the Conductors and Leaders of men. As Aletae, they were the seven Planets — astronomically; and as Lares, the Regents of these Planets, our Protectors and Rulers — mystically. For purposes of* exoteric or phallic worship, and also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, whose attributes and dual capacities were denoted by the names of the temples to which they respectively belonged, and also by those of their priests. They all belonged, however, to the septenary creative and informing groups of DhySn Chohans. The Saba?ans. who worshipped the "Regents of the Seven Planets" just as the Hindus worship their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes (Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the Planetary Gods. Seth and Euos were borrowed from the Sabaeaus and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but the truth about them can still be discovered even in Genesis.X Seth is the " Pro-
* Who were later oo, with Uie Greeks. limited to Castor and PoUux only. But In the dajrt oT I^emuria, the Dio»curi, the " Egg-bom," were the Seven Dhyln Chohans iA^nishvitta-Eumlra} who incarnated in the Seven Elect of the Third Race.
t Op.cit ,\.ii^.
t Clement of Alexandria recognized the astroDomical significance of Chapters x.i.w tt srtjq.af Exodus. Be sajrs that, according to the Mosaic doctrine, the seven Planets help in the generation of terrestrial things. Tbe two Cherubs standing on tbe two sides of the sacred Tetragrammaton represent Ursc Major and Ursa Minor.
H
378
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
■
genitor" of those early men of the Third Race in whom the Planetary Angels had incarnated; he was himself a Dhyin Chohan and belonged to the informing Gods, and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch), or Hermes, was said to be his son — Enos being a generic name for all the early "Seers'* (Enoichion), Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of Saba- ism, and that the pyramids which embody the planetar>' system were regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idrus (Hermes or Enoch);* that thither Sabaeans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers seven times a day, turning to the North (Mount Mem, Kaph» Olympus, etc.).t Abd Allatif also tells us some curious things about the Sabseans and their books. So also does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 200 years later. While the latter maintains *'that each pyramid was consecrated to a star"* (a Star Regent rather), Abd Allatif assures us that he had read in ancient Sabsean books that ''one pyramid was the tomb of Agathodaemon and the other of Hermes": J
Agathodaemon was Doue other than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hennes was his son,
adds Mr. Staniland Wake in The Great Pyramid.%
Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples the Kabiri were the Great Cosmic Gods— the Seven and the Forty-nine Sacred Fires — in the Grecian fanes their rites became mostly phallic^ and therefore, to the profane, obscene. In the latter case they were three and four, or seven — the male and female principles — the crux ansata. This division shows why some classical writers held that they were only three, while others named four. And these were Axieros (in his female aspect Demeter); Axiokersa (Persephone); |1 Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or Kasmilos (Hermes — not the ithy- phallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus,^! but "he of the sacred
• Vyse, Operniions, etc., ii- »58.
^ PmlgTAve, ii. 26>4.
{ Vy»e, ibid., ii. 341.
» P. 57.
II The apeculation of Mackey. the fteir-made adept of Norwich, In hi* Mytkolofteal Astronomy, is a ciirioos idea— >'el one perhaps not so very far from the truth. He says thai the Kabiri iwmed Ajderos and Axiokersa (a) derived their names from kab or cab, a " measure," and from ut-im, Uie "heavens '• — Lhe Kabirim beinir thus " a mraitunf of the heavens " ; and {b) that their distinctive names, imply- ing the principle of generation, referred to the sezes. For " the word sex was formerly understood by ox ; which . . . has, Id our time, settled into sex. [And he refers to Encjrdoptrdia LfOndinitnHs, at the word 'aspiration.'] Now if we 0tc the aspirated sound to Axieros, it would become Sax or S*xirros ; and the other pole would be Seriok^rta. The two poles would thus become the grener8lor& of the other powers of nature — they would be the Biremts of the other powers ; Lbereforc, the moat powerful Coda." {Qp. cit., p. 39.)
% tt.51.
THE POLES, THE "HKAVKNLV MBASXJRK/
legend/' which was explained only during the Samothracian Mysteries). This identification, which is due. according to the Scholiast on ApoUo- nius Rhodius,* to an indiscretion of Mnaseas, is really no identification at all» as names alone do not reveal mucb.f Others again have main- tained, being equally right in their way, that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. These two personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial pole, and the pole of the "heavens, astronomically; and also the physical and the spiritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus, Bimater, with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read esoteri- cally for the understanding of the allegory. The parts played in the event by the Fire, Water, Earth, etc., in the many versions, will show how the "Father of the Gods" and the "merry God of Wine" were also made to personify the two terrestrial poles. The telluric, metal- line, magnetic, electric and the fier>' elements are all so many allusions and references to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In Astronomy, the poles are indeed the **heavenly measure"; and so are the Kabiri-Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the Kabiri-Titans, to whom Diodorus ascribes the "invention of Fire" J and the art of manufacturing iron. Moreover, Pausanius§ shows that the original Kabiric deity was Prometheus.
But the fact that, astronomically, the Titan-Kabirim were also the Generators and Regulators of the Seasons, and, cosmically, the great Volcanic Energies — the Gods presiding over all the metals and terres- trial works — does not prevent them from being, in their original divine characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, brought light to the world, and endowed Humanity with intellect and reason. They are preeminently in every Theogony — especially in the Hindu — the Sacred Divine Fires, Three, Seven, or Forty-nine, accord- ing is the allegory demands it. Their very names prove it, for they are the Agni-putra, or Sons of the Fire, in India, and the Genii of the Fire under numerous names in Greece and elsewhere. Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme. show the name kabeiros meaning "the powerful through fire," from the Greek *ta«ii "to bum." The Semitic
•I. 9.. 7-
t Decharme. Afyihotogu dt ia Griee A niufme, p. a?*.
} The word gutbra comes rrom Kabiri \Gairiri), and tneauii the Penisa ancient (ire*wor»hippert, or faiffls. Kabiri became Gnbiri and Uieu remained aa an appellation of Uie Zoroaatxiaju in Pertu.
I L ix. 751,
38o
THB SECRET DOCTRINE.
»
word kabirim contains the idea of "the powerful, the mighty, and the great," answering to the Greek /tcyoXot, SwartK, but these are later epithets. These Gods were universally worshipped, and their origin is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia. Phoe- nicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was always connected with Fire, their temples ever built in the most vol- canic localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to the Chthonian Divinities, and therefore has Christianity made of them Infernal Gods.
They are truly "the great, beneficent and powerful Gods," as Cassius Hormone calls them.* At Thebes, Core and Dcmeter, the Kabirim, had a sanctuar>%t and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter its holy pre- cincts.J But we must not, at the same time, lose sight of the fact that the title of Kabiri was generic; that the Kabiri. the mighty Gods as well as mortals, were of both sexes, and also terrestrial, celestial and cosmic; that while, in their later capacity of rulers of sidereal and terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon — as it is now re- garded— was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in the beginning of times, the Rulers of Mankind, when, incarnated as Kings of the "Divine Dynasties," they gave the first impulse to civili- zation, and directed the mind with which they had endued men, to the invention and perfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the menior>' of nations. To these Kabiri or Titans is ascribed the invention of letters (the Deva-nigari, or alphabet and language of the Gods), of laws and legislature, of architecture, as also of the various modes of magic, so-called, and of the medical use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus, Asclepius, all those Demi-gods and Heroes, to whom is ascribed the revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Brj-ant, Faber, Bishop Cumberland, and so many other Chris- tian writers — too zealous for plain truth — would force posterity to see only Pagan copies of one sole prototype, named Noah — all are generic names.
It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed the great boon of agriculture, by firodticing^ Qora or wheat. What Isis-Osiris, the once living Kabiria. did in Eg>Tit, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; they all belong to one class.
That serpents were ever emblems of wisdom and prudence is agaia
Sec Macrab., Sat., I. lU. c. ^, p. 376.
r Pcaamn., Ix. u; 5.
t HerodoCns, UL 37,
THE DRAGON HUMAN YET DIVINH.
38r
shown by the Caduceus of Mercur>', one with Thot. the God of Wisdom, with Hermes, and so on. The two serpents, entwined round the rod» are phallic symbols of Jupiter and other Gods who transformed them- selves into snakes for purposes of seducing Goddesses— only in the unclean fancies of profane Symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the Adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercur>% in bis psychopompic character, conducting and guiding the souls of the dead to Hades with his Caduceus and even raising them to life with it. is a simple and very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret Wisdom: black and white Magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding the Soul after death, and displaying the power of calling to life that which is dead — a very deep metaphor if one but thinks over its meaning. All the peoples of anti- quity, with one exception, reverenced this symbol; the exception being the Christians, who chose to forget the "brazen serpent" of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and prudence of the "serpent" by Jesus himself, "Be ye wisezs serpents and harmless as doves." The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate successors of the "Serpents" or Initiates, who ruled the early races of the Fifth Humanity, The Emperor's throne is the "Dragon's Seat," and his dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the Dragon, The aphorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the Dragon is a human, albeit divine. Being. Speaking of ;the "Yellow Dragon," the chief of the others, the Twan-ying-Vn says: His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable .... he tioes not go in company and does not live in herds [he is an ascetic]. . . . He wanders in the wilds leyond the heavens. He goes and comes, fulfilling the decree [Karma]; at the proper seasons if there is perfection he comes forth, if not he remains [invisible].
And Lii-lan asserts that Confucius said:
The Dragon feeds in the pure (water) [of Wisdom] and disports in the clear
(water) [of Life]/
OUR DIVINE INSTRUCTORS.
Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of
the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or
continent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kaempfer and Faber
spell " Maurigasima." for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their
* Quoted tn Gould's Mythical Mofuiers, p. 399,
382
THE SKCRKT DOCTKINK.
own. Ksempfer, in his Japan^* gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiru- tin, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and Ills descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.
At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings — spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical — just as is described in the present -work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.
Our races — they all show — have sprung from Divine Races, by what- ever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchau-gy — their •'Divine Man" and Demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil — the Creative God and the "Gods of the Ghost-world"; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco-Capac and his Peruvian progeny — the story varies no- where. Every uatiou has either the sev^n and ten Rishi-Manus and Praj^patis; the seven and ten Ki-y; or iefi and seven Amshaspandsf (six exoterically) ; ten and seven Chaldsean Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhy3n Chohans of tlie Esoteric Doctrine, or the "Builders" of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode J and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in ■nascent man, to finally emerge as '"Divine Kings and Rulers." But this fact has beea gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Eg^'ptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis-Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods, "though they had become princes in human form." And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:
• Appendix, p. 13 ; quoted by Paber, Cabiri, it, pp, s8g-99i.
T The ADuhaapuKU are six— ir Onnaul, their chief and Logos, is excluded. But in the Sccrel I>octTiDe he is the aevenlh and btii:hect. jaat aa Phtah la the seventh Kabir amons the Kabiri. % la the PurAnai it ii identified with Vlshnu'i or BrahnU'a ShTcta-dvlpa of Mount Meni.
HBRMKS IN ASTRONOBfY AND BI^KWHKRB.
[tia said that this prince [IsU-Osiris] bailt cities in Egypt, slopped the over- flowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, mus!c, aatronomy^ and geometrj*.
When Abul Feda, in his Historia Aniaslamiiica,^ says that the "Sabseaa language*' was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch) — he means Astronomy. In the MeUlwa Nahil,\ Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodsemon. And in another account,^ Agathodaemcn is mentioned as a '*King of Eg}!)!." The Celepas Geraldintts gives ns some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the *' Divine Giant." In his Book of the Various Names of the Nile^ the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in the Bible; then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris), "the author of thirty books," was "Sabaean by origin" — i.e.^ belonged to the Saba, "a Host":
Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edcssa was the least important, tlien retunied to Egypt where he became its King.^
Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes — or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In the Burham i Kaii^ he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercur>' or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.|l The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatse, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.^ But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences from latent to active potency^ i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Eg>'pt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Graecia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.
Not only does Herodotus, the "father of history," tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but
* Ed. Pleiiher. p..i6.
T MS . 47 in Nic. Cat.
1 MS., 7A5,rri'B Cat.; quoted by Col. Vy%c^ Optratiom at the jyramids of GiMth.M, ^(>^-, se£ &ta.t^mn^ Wttke, The Great fytamtd, p. 94. I Dc MirvUlc, Pueumatoiog^ie, iil. >9. I SUniland Wake, ibiJ., p. 96. ^ /bid., p. 97.
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the wHole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus. Erato- sthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given. As Creuzer shows :
It ia, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to tlie inferior spheres. ... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophanls and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.*
It is the modem historians — French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly — who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260 b.c.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them *'a superstitious priest bom and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Hcliopolis." As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:
All those historians and priests, so veradous when repeating stories of human kings and men, suddenly become cxiretmtly suspicious no sooner do they go back to thHrgods*
But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of ChampoUion. has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Eg>'ptolo- gist. Dc Rouge:
ChampoUion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the renmiua of a list of Dynasties embracing the farthest mythic times, or the Heigns of th liiivG to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to uh; wc see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Ilonm, Thoth-Hermcs, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being AWtiKUed to the reigu of each of these.t
These Ryuchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were dis6gtired by ISuHcbius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the
* Mjrypt0. I*. 441 i tie Minrillr, op. ciL, iU. 41.
rHAT THE PRIESTS TOLD HERODOTUS.
385
been in the hands of the
and kept
ag"e of humanity, has e
secret from the profane multitudes.
Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and. secondly, through Geolog>\ Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north-east.
When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its CEdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (^) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic.
Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at the sameness of all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:
What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devus and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and Mortals.*
As says Paiiodorus :
Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that the Reign of the Sften Gods who rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanity d^rscetuicd on Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic. t
Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs- Piromis — the Arch-prophets or Malia Chohans of the temples, bom one from the othcr^ without the inter\'ention of woman — who had reigned before Menes, their first human King. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty-five iu number, each of which had Us name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus
• Hiitoire df V Asttomomir Amciemu; we De Mirville, of. at., ibid., p. 15.
T Dc MirviUe. ibid., p. 41.
386
THB SHCRBT DOCTRIHK.
— unless the most trnthful of historians, the "father of history,'* is now to be accused of fibbing, /i«/ in this instance — that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of the three Dynasties that preceded the human — namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.* These "three'* Dynasties are the three Races.
Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the DSnavas and Daityas — otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans. "Happy are those who are bom, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bharata-varsha ! " — exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root-Race. BhSrata is generally India, but in this case it s>nnbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu-dvipa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) works par excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.!
Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when^ although he was almost unacquainted with the Ar>'an Hindu philo- sophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:
We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the San. Moon, etc But we repeat again, the natural good sense and the upright judgment of the ancient peoples, quite foreign to our entirely material ideas of mechanics and physical sciences . . . could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion ; they saw in them liinng bodies, animated by spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature. . . . This doctrine o/spiritSt so consistent and conformable to nature^ from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.J
It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct con- clusion about his origin and the genesis of eveo'thing in the Universe — of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without
* Vftitf.. pp. 16, 17.
* In the VUhmu pHroma, wiUi ctreAiI leadliiK, nuy be foand many cocroboratioiis of the same (Book II, chap«. iii. iv, rt segif.). The rri^na of Oodft. lower Gods, atul Men are all eamnerBted in the descriptions of the seven islands, seven se&s, seven mountains, etc., ruled by Kings. Bach Kiog^ i* invariably said to have sfven sons, an allodon to the seven snb-raccs. One instance will do. The King of KushQ-IK-tpa had seven sons .... "after whom the seven portions or Varsha of the Island were called .... TTt^re reside wuxttkimd, along with Uai/yas and Damavas, as terllas nntk spirits of luaxmi \Gandkarvas^ YAkihas, KimpumskAs, etc.] and Gods:' (Wilson's Tntu., U. ^tg^\ TfaCTT is but one exception in the case of King Priyavrata, the son of the first Mann, SvJLyambbuva— > who had tm sons. But of these, three — Mcdha. AgnibAhu, and Putra (ibid., ii. 101)— iMrcame and ruiused their portions- Thus Priyavmta divided ibe Harth again into seven continesi^
I £tj-ptt, pp. 450-455; Oe Mirville, ibid., pp. 41, 42.
•
WHAT ARE "SPIRITS*'?
387
such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.
Occultists believe in "spirits," because they feel — and some see — themselves surrounded by them on every side * Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and eveu of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.f
Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in his CEdiptis j^gyptiaats^ writes:
I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fatles {mtras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth. J
As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his Meropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Sais when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races — a fighting,
* As a general rule, mocv that the very nature of Uie tmmr man has become as blind aa hU physical natun, man cm this Globe Is as the Amphloxns la In the ocean. Seen by millions of varioos other fiabes aod creatures thai surrouud It, the Amphioxus species— ha^nng neither brain nor any of the senses pooseascd by the other clawcs ■ sees them not. Who knows whether, on the Darwinian theory, these Branchiostoma are not the direct ancestors of our sJatcrialists?
f The Occultists have been accused of wonthipping Cods or DevUiit We deny this. Among the numberless hosts of Spirits—entities that have been or that will be men— there are some immeasurably superior to the human race, higher and holier than the hiffhest saint on Earth, and wiser than any mortal without exception. And there are those again who are no better than we are. and ftome also who are far worse and inferior to the lowest sa\-age. It is these last that command the readiest com- munication with our Earth, who perceive and sense us, as the clairvoyants perceive and sense them. The close proximity of our respective abodes and planes of perception arc, unfortunately, in favour of such iater-communication, as they ar« ever ready to interfere with our affairs for weal or woe. If «c are asked how it is that none but aensitive hysterical natures, neuro- und psycho- pathic persons, ■ee— and occasionnlly talk with— " spirits," we answer the question by several other queries. We ulc: Do you know the nature of halludnatioa, and csin you defiue its psychic process^ How can you tell that all such visions are due merely to physical hallucinations^ What makes you feel so oure that mental and ncrrous diseases, while drawing a veil over our normal senses (sO'-callcd), do not reveal at the same time vistas unknown to the healthy man. by tJirowing open doors usually closed •gainst yourscientiCc (?) perceptions; or that a psycho-spiritual faculty doej not forthwith replace llic loss, or the temporar>- atrophy, of a purely physical sense ? It is disease or the exuberance of nervous fluid which produces mediumship and visions— hallucinations, as you call them. But what don Science know even of mediumship ? Truly were the modem Charcots to pay attention to the delirium of their patients from a more psychic standpoint. Science — Phyiiology especially— might be more benefited than it \& now, and truth have a wider field of fact in lis knowledge.
t i. 70; De Mirville, tbid,^ p. j6.
388
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
warrior race, and a pious, meditative race*— which Theopompus sym- bolizes by two cities. t The pious "city" was continually visited by the Gods: the belligerent *' city" was inhabited by various beings invulnfr^ able by iron, who could be tnorlaily wounded only by stone and wood. J De Rougemont treats this as a pure fiction of Theopompus and even sees a fraud {superchcrie) in the assertion of the Saftic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mir\'ille:
A supercherie which was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity ; a SHpfyi)sition which yet gave its uaxne to a whole mountaiu chain (Alias) ; which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, the great transoceanic land situated beyond that Atlantis and which " is reached," it said, " by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits," (t else but a universal chimera f\
It is certain that, whether *' chimera" or realit>', the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source — the universal tradi- tion about the third great Continent which perished some 850.000 years ago,|| a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a ** fiction " ? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of a Holy Island beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond whi Men?^ Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men — ^who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished — have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits ?
As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:
* These wen the early Aryans and the bulk of the Pourth Root- Racf^— the fbrmer pbnis and meditative {grjven to yofra-contemplalion), the latter a figrhtiuir race of sorcerm. who were rapidly (IrgT-iirrBtitig otving to their uucontroMeti pafudons.
♦ The Narthcm ami Southern Diviaiotut of tyetnurtn-Atlantti. The H>'pcrboTran and the Equatorial lands of the two Continents.
3 I>e Rouprnmut, PitHpU Primilif, lU. 157 ; l>e Mlrville, ibid., p, iq. ThiB is Occult and refers to the property of iron which is attracted by some magruetlcelementa. and rrpeUed by others. Such elements, by on Occult process, can be made an impervious to it as water to a blow.
I tbid., toe. cii.
II The First Contjnent, or laland, if so preferred, " the cap of the Xorth Pole," has never periabeds nor will it to the end of the Seven Races.
V Sec De Rougemaul, ibid.
PLATO'S IDEA OF EVIL.
389"
^
If one hfts to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvel- lous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age. , . . One feels surprised that annals so iuteresting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment. , . . The ancieuts, from whom we hold these traditions, which tv^ accept no longer bccatise wt no longer understand thetn, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the dis- tance that separates us from them refuses to us. . . . Plato in the fourth hook of his Laws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth a certain form of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so cele- brated in ancient fables let us sec the ideas he had of that happy age,
and what was the occasion be hod to introduce this fabie into a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, in heaven and on earthy and Uie present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, aud of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in bumau memory; but one neiter hears anything of the evil which has produced these rez'otutions, nor of tfie evil which directly followed them. Yet .... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.*
That Evil, Plato seeras to .see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, far there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our Bocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd, i.e., a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but — *'Spirits and Genii (Sot/ioi'cs) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man."
It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus pre- siding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.f
• BouUngcr. R^tu dts Dteux, lulrod. ; »ct De MlrWllc, op. cit., ibid., pp. 3a. a.
t The Secrel Docirine explains and cxpouads what Plato says, for it teacbcs that tho«e '*Inwnlo« '• wm Codx and Dcmi-Kods (Drva» and Ri^ia) who had become— AOme deliberately, some compelled by Kanna— incarnated in man.
390
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired^ ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own re- sources and industr>'. Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.*
And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.
As say the Commentaries:
Fruits and grain^ unknown to Earth to thatdayy were brought by ihe*^ Lords of Wisdom y* for the benefit of those they ndedfrom other Lokas [Spheres'].
Now:
The earliest inveutious [?} of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made. . . . The ySrs/ ujtf
it caa be kindled: the domestication of animals; and, above all. the processes by which the various cereals were first developed out of some wild grasses [?] — these are all discoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, tio subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history — all lost in the light of an ejjulgeni datonjf
This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruits unknown to earth, then we may remind the reader that wheat has never beeti found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coflins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheat seven eubiis high^X
* The preceding: paragraphs arr condensed froin Plato, Ltgs.. I. iv~rrf.. in Crit., ei in JhtiHc.: De Mirvillc, itid., pp. 55, 34-
T Arjfyle, Unity of Nature.
X -Book of the Dtad, xc\x. jj; and civi. 4. The reader Is referred to Stanza VII, Sblolca i (t. moJ, wherein ihb vcrec is explained in auother of lis roeaninss, and also to the Book of the Dead, dx. 4 and .s- Thi» w a dinct refermcc to Ihc Esoteric division of maa's "priuciples " iiymhotixed b> the divine wheat. The legend which inacribca the third Regiatcr ot the papyrus {Book of the Dead, ex.) stales: "This is the region of the Manen [dlsemtKxlied men) seven cubits hlsh— [to wit, those just tranidated and suppoeed to be still sevenfold with all their *priuciple«,* even the body being repre- sented astralty in the Kima Loka or Hades, before their separation] : and there is wheat three cubits high for Mummies In a state of perfection [i-e., those already wpnrated, whose three hiKher principles are in Devachan] who are permitted to glean it." Tills region (Dcvnchan) is called "tlic land of the Re-birth of Gods." and is shown to t>e inhabited by Shoo, Tcfnoot, and Scb. The "tegion for the Manes seven cubits high"— for the yet imperfect Mummies— and the reglou for those "in a state of perfection" who "glena wheat three cubits hi^h," is as clear as possible. Tlie Kgyplians had the aame Rsoteric Philosophy which is now taught by the ds-UioLUayan Adepts, and the Utter, wbeft buried, have com and wheal placed over them.
WHEAT BROUGHT DOWN BY THB GODS,
391
Says the Egyptian Isis;
1 am the Queen of these regions; T was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and com. . . ^ I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog. . . . Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my mirse.*
Sirius was called the Dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind.
The Chinese Y-King attributes the discovery of agriculture to "the instruction given to men by celestial genii."
Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,t since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.^
The *'Sons of God" have existed and do exist. From the Hindii Brahmaputras and Mana.saputra5, Sons of Brahmd and Mind-born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the Jewish BibU, the faith of the cen- turies and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is ''independent criticism'* so-called, or "internal evi- dence"— based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics — in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter of GfttesiSt which repeats the statement* of the Secret Doctriue. though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with the Zokar.
There were giants in the earth in those days ; and also after ikaU when the sons of God [Bne Aleim] came in unto the daughters of men, and they hare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants]. $
What does this sentence, '* and also after that," signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earth before, i.e., before the Siuless Sons of the Third Race; ajid also after that when other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth — as Daksha did, when he saw that his MSnasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5, For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the " mighty men . - . men of renown," among whom is placed Nimrod the
* I. xir. There are Egyptologists who have quite erroneously tried to identify Osiris with Heces. Boiuen awigras to Menes an ojitiquity of (,,867 years B.C., and is denounced for it by ChristiaDS. But " bls-Osiris " relied in Egypt tjcfore the Zodiac was painted ou tbe ceiling of the temple of Dendera, and that is over 75,000 years agol
T In the text, "corked up" or "screwed up."
X ZohQt, part I, coL 177; De MlrviUe, ibid,, p. %A.
\ G€tUMfS, Vi. 4.
392
SBCRBT DOCTRINE.
'* mighty hunter before the Lord," that " God saw that the wickedness of man was great," nor in the builders of Babel, for this was after the Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who produced ntorisira qtuzdam de gmere gigi^nteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable d>'ing-out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes.
And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For. as the Rev. Father P^ronne puts it:
Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Alcim, or sons of God.*
This biblical riddle — "the real sense of which no author has ever understood/* as is candidly confessed by Fourmontf — can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through the Zohar to the Western, and the Book of Dzyan to the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen ; what the Zohar tells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.^
We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the "Adversary," is included in Job among the "sons" of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father. § But of this later on.
Now the Zohar says that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim. were not guilty, but mixed themselves with mortal men because ikey were sent on earth to do so,l Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub-division of the "Thrones." ^ It also explains that the Ischins — "Men-spirits," viri spirituales'^ — now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi \vhich are not "small men" but "men smaller {In the sense of inferiority) than men," Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then, i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.
• f^altctionei Thtol., ch. 11; Dc Mirville. ibi'd., p. 84.
♦ fHflenoma Criti^tus nr rOtigtHt des Ancient l^ntpln, t KabbiParcha.
Ii.6.
II Bock 0/ flutk and SekndaiM, fo|. 65, col. 3. ^msteniain «
H Zohaf, part ii, col. ra; O* Mlrvmr", ibid,, p. »6.
•• Ibid., p. »7.
THE MYSTERY OF AZA2EL.
3^
But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is a mystery, as explained else- where, and it is so expressed by Maimonides:
There is an impenetrable mystery in tbe narrative concerning Azazel.*
And SO there is, as Land, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says:
This venerable divine name {notne divino € ventfabiU) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he-goatt
Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) aud El (God), hence "one separated from God" — the Devil. In the Zohar, Azazel is rather the "sacrificial victim** than the "formal adversary' of Jehovah," as Spencer would have it.J:
The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this "Host" by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his "Host" are simply the Hebrew "Prometheus," and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. The Zohar shows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these "Spirits" as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the "trans- gressing" Angels in the Book of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to make one see what is behind him — viz.. "magic mirrors." Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asarade! taught the motion of the Moon.§ "These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man" {i,e.^ of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead-letter expresses?
It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psuche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven — because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform the atiimai of clay into an immortal God. For, as Eliphas Levi tells us;
* Afort NrvocktM, xxvl. 8.
t Sagta Scrittmra.
t U. pp. 14, a9.
I Chap. vUi; Laurence's TnuuIaUon, pp. 7 and S.
394
THE SECRET DOCTRIXE.
The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God. is above even AngeU.
On Earth — because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.
Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man- like God with the Hindus, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the myster>'; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in the Bible and even in the New Testament which has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth — belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical inter- pretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological inter- pretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead-letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.
Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in Isis Unveiled^ and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preeminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit — Occult Wisdom on Earth — which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesi- astical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the "bride" of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master "Get thee behind me. Satan" was justl.v addressed; and again the Protestant Church which» while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated — both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodaemon Christos, or the Theoso- phical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of Genesis — they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words: "Say we not well thou hast a devil?"
DRUNKEN INDRA.
3gi»
Read the account of Indra (Viyu) in the Rig Veda, the Occult volume par excdletice of Aryanistn, and then compare it with the same in the Purdnas — the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In the Rig Veda, Tndra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In the Pnranas, Indra becomes a profli- gate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terres- trial way. He is the conqueror of all the **enemies of the Gods" the Daityas, Nagas (Serpents), Asuras. all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpents Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindu Pantheon — the chief of the militafit Host. Turning to the BibU, we find Satan, one of the "Sons of God,"* becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in the Kaba!ah,\ Samacl, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Saraael, who are one f Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the Chaldaean Book of Numbers Samael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher terrestrial Wisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) is influenced hy Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remains ttninfittenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael-Satau — the most wise and spiri- tual spirit of all — the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
THE ORIGIN OF THE SATANIC MYTH. Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic mjrth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts
•/oft, \. 6.
t The Chaldiean Book of JVmmben.
396
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries.
Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together^ and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.*
Among the religious of the past, it is in Eg>'pt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun -gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kali3''a, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names — the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon, As Michael is '• one as God," or his ** Double" for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohini, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply f permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the nllegory of the *' War in Heaven," its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (6) the " Dragons'* held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the "Sons of the Dragon" and "Serpents"; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.
There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldsea, some of them of a ver>' vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crj'pts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Lybian desert, and were known as the Serpent's Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were per- formed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkes, the *' Unavoidable Cycle," more generally known as the "Circle of Necessity**; the in- exorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Ameiitian region.
In De Bourbourg*s book, Votau, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on under- ground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this
* Arehaolagy, sucv. aao, London.
THE SECRET OF THE DRAGON.
397
passage was a Snake's hole, '* un a^ijero de coiubra" ; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a '*Son of the Snakes," or a Serpent.*
This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the "Snake's hole" is that of the ancient Egyptiaa crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Eg>'pt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the **Sons of the Serpent-god," or *• Sons of the Dragon."
"The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God," says Movers. The Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called them- selves Snakes. " I am a Serpent, I am a Druid." they exclaimed. The Eg>'ptian Kamak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne. the latter Camac meaning the Serpent's Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God — the Phoenician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.f Besides the sur- name of Serpents, they had also the appellation of "Builders" or "Architects," for the immense grandeur of their temples and monu- ments was such that even now the pulverized remains of tliem *' frighten the mathematical calculations of our modem engineers," as Taliesin
says.J
De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quctzo- Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. " I am Hivim," they say. " Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim."§
Furthermore, the ** War in Heaven" is shown, in one of its signifi- cations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship — struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightened Inner Mait had to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the *' Dragon- Slayer," as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a •* Son of the Serpent" and a Serpent himself, haxnng cast off his old skin and being born in a new body, becoming a Son of Wisdom and IramortaHty in Eternity.
* Di£ Pkoinvrier, 70.
1 Sc« Sauchuaiathon In Ruaebius, /V. Ev.. 36; Genesis, xtL
] Society 0/ Antiquartri 0/ Ijtndon. zxt. 330.
) Car/oj, 51 ; vex Isis Unveiltd, \. SM, et leqg.
398
THE SECRET DOCTRIXE.
Seth. the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat. Seth, Set. and Satan. He is also T>*phou, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus: for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the dark side of Osiris, his brother, as Ang^ra Main>Ti is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.
Rdhu, mjiihologically, is a Daitya — a Giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon*s or Serpent's tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became im- morta]. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, RShu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for R3hu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun's (Vikartana's) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.
The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nagas — the Hindu King-Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand-headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon-serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliest Purdnas. The children of Surasi are the mighty •* Dragons." The Vtiyti Purdnu replacing the "Dragons" of Surasi of the Vishnu Purdtia by the Dinavas, the descendants of Dauu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Danavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the *' Dragons" and "Serpents" of Wisdom.
We have only to compare the Sun-gods of every country*, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in
»
exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely dift'ering from each other in appearance — the old Aryan, the ancient Greek, and the modem Christian schemes — several Sun-gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copi^ from each other.
Let us take Agni the Fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Karttikeya from the Hindus; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the *' Angel of the Sun," the first of the ^ons, called by the Gnostics the "Saviour" — and proceed in order.
(i) Agni, the Fire-god, is called VaishvSnara in the Rig Veda, Now VaishvSnara is a Dinava. a Giant-demon,* whose daughters Puloma and Kilaka are the mothers of numberless Dinavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,t and live in Hiranyapura, "/^ golden city, floating in iJu air'*X Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two as a son of Kashvapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire-god, or Sun (Kashyapa- Aditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or KSrttikeya, God of War, the six-faced planet Mars astrono- mically, a Kumara, or Virgin-youth, bom of Agni,§ for the purpose of destroying Taraka, the Dinava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyaksha.il Taraka's Yoga austerities were so extraordinai-y that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.^ While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra. or Ahi, the Serpent-Demon — for which feat he is called Vritra-han, the "Destroyer of Vritra" — he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against BrahmS, for which he is sumamed Jishnu, "Leader of the Celestial Host." Karttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing TSraka, the Dinava, he is
* He is thtu named and included in the tist of Uic D&naraa in V&jfu Pur&na ; the Commentator of BhAgavata J^rdna calls him a son of Danu. but the name means also "Spirit of Humanity."
■* K.aHhyapa is called the aon of Bnihm4, and i» the "Self^born" to whom a great part uf the work of creation is attributed. He ia one of the seven Rishis; exoterically, tbe son of MaHchi, the «on of Brohmi; while the AtAarva Veda says, "Tli« Self-bom Kashyapa sprang from Time," and Esoleri- catty Time and Space are forms of the One imcQfmtiab/e Deity. As an Aditya, Indra ia son of Kashyapa, as also Vaivasvata Manu, our Progenitor. In the instance given in the text, he is Koshyapa-Adttya, the Sun and the Sun-Rod. from whom all the "Cosmic " IJeraons, Dragons (N&gas), Serpent or Snake-gods, and Dinavas or Giants, are bom. The meaning of the allegories given above if> purely astronomical and cosmical. but will srrvr to prove the identity of all.
i yisktiy Purama, WiWon's Trans., ii. 71.
I All such stories differ in the ejroieric texts. In the Afaka^araia, Klrttikeya, "the six-faced Mars," is the son of Kudra or Shiva, Self-bom ivUkoui a mother from the seed of Shiva cast into the fire. But RaTttikeya ia generally called Agnibha, "Firc-bom."
9 Hirwy^Ksan, Is th« ruler or king of tbeji/th region of PltUa, a Snake-god.
II 7*he Rlohim al«o feared the Knowledge of Good and Bvil for Adam, sud therefore are ahown a« cspelliBg him (ram £dcn or killing him spirituatty.
H
400
THS SKCRKT DOCTRINE-
called Taraka-jit. "Vanquisher of Taraka,"* Kiimara Guha, the "mys terious Virgin-youth," Siddha-sena, "Leader of the Siddhas, auu Shakti-dhara, *' Spear-holder."
(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun-god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, KSrttikeya, and even Kashyapa-Aditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the "Angel of the Sun," who is "like," and "one with, God." Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be- questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.
Apollo is Helios, the Suu, Phoibos- Apollo, the "Light of Life and of the World,*' t who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun-god par excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth.J and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy — like KSrttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing TSraka, the (00 holy and wise Demon. Apollo is bom on a sidereal island called Asteria — the "golden star island," the "earth which floats in the air," which is the Hindu golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ayro?) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt "from all sensual love."§ He is, therefore, a Kumira, like Klrttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and bio- graphies. Python, moreover, the "red Dragon," connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the
* Tbe story told t liad obtained all the divine knowledge of Yoga-vldyi and the Occult poweni of the Gods, who con- spired againtit him. Here we see the "obedient" Host of ArchangcU or minor Oodfl cotiAfHiiiig against the (future; Fallen Aiigclfl. whom Huoch accuses of tbe great crime of disclosing to the world all "the ucrtt things done in heaven." It Ib Michael, Gabriel, Kaphacl, Suryal and Uriel who drnonnced to Ihc I^rd God those of their Brethren who were said to havf pritd into the divinf myittriei and taught thcin to men: by Ibis means they themselves escaped n like punishnicnl. Michael was commifuioned to fight the Dragon, and m was KArttifceya, and under the same circum- stances. Both are " l.eflderB of the Celestial Host," both Virgin*, lioth "Leaders of Saints." "Spear- holders" (Shakti>dlinnui). etc. Kirttikcya is the original of Michael and St. George, «a surely as Indra is the prototype of KArttikeya.
■» The "life and the light" of the material physical world, the delight of the senses— not of the soul. Apollo Is prermiiicntly tbe human God, the God of emotional, pomp-loving and theatrical Chnrch ritualism, with lights and music.
. See gnvlatiom (xii) where we &nd Apollo's mother persecuted by the Python, llie Red Drayoa« who ia ahto Porphyrion, the scarlet or red Titan.
I S0ak 0/ God, p. K.
SfBRODACH-MICHABl..
401
Spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of the esoteric meaning of the Iliad and Odyssey^ he would have understood St. John's Reveiaiion, and even the Pcnlaieuch, better than he does. For the way to the Bible lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindu and Chaldzean religious symbols.
(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John's Revelation^ and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian stor>', in its turn, had its
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origin in the allegories of the Aryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalj'pse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:
Onr . . . fragntent refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, . . . but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamal, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, who curses tiim, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.*
This Ls followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of enl, or chaoH on one side and the gods on the other.
Tlie gods have weapons forged for them.t and Merodach [the Archangel Michael in /^ei'r/a/ion] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of cotirse in the triumph of the principles of good.;
This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Ar>'aa Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who dis- appeared in the Deluge.
The symbols of the "Dragon" and "War in Heaven" have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra wth Vritra. In the Vedas this Ahi- Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the
• No "God"— whether catled Bel or Jehovnli— who curses hia {suppoaed) own work, because he has made it imperTect, can be the One Infinite AbaoluLe Wudom.
* In the Indian allegory of TArakAmaya, the War between the God& nnd the Asuras headed hy Soma (the Moon, the King or P1ant«). it is Vi»hvakiimi4, tlic artificer of the Gad&, who, like Vulcan. (Tubal -Cain), forges their weapons for them.
t Ckaidean Account of Genesii^ p. J04. We have aoid elsewhere that the "woman with child" of RevttaiioH was Aima, the Great Motfarr. or Binah, the third Sephlra, "whoae name la Jehovah"; and the " Ura||^>n." who seeks to devour her coming child (the Universe), is the Dracon of Absolute WiMlom— that Wisdom which, reco^nizintr the noa-separateness of the Universe and everythlnfr in it from the Alisolulc Au., sees in it no better than the great Illusion, Mahiraiyi, hence the cause of misecy oad suSerinj:.
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terrible hot Wind, Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi- Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the "Slayer of Vritra,'* as Michael is called the Conqueror and **Slayer of the Dragon." Both these "Ene- mies" are then the **01d Dragon" precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.
The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in the Vendiddd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zara- thushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to "invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares* of the Earth" ;t which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., accord- ing to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words: "I invoke the seven bright Sravah witli their sons and their flocks/'J: The "Sravah" — a word which the Orientalists have given up as one **of unknown meaning"^means the same Amshas- pands. but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of those manifested Powers; and "their sons and their flocks" refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations. "Amshaspand" is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the "maker of the material world." Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Armaiti), who is referred to, when personifled, as "the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,"§ who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.
Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent of Genesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the "Red Dragon." He
■ The "seven Kanhvares of the Bartli"-~Uie seven Spherci of our ftanetury Chain, the aevva Worlds, aldo mcutioued ia the Rig Veda, are fully referred to elaevlicre. There are six Rijatnsi (Worlda) abow Prithid, the Earth, or "this" (IdAm), as opposed to that which i« yomUt (the alK Gtobca on the three other planes). (See Rtg Veda, i. 34 : iii. 5b ; vU. 10411, and V. 60, 6.)
t Danneateter's Trana., "Sacred Books of the East," vol. Iv. p. 207.
t Ihid.^ p. »i7.
t itrd., p. aoS.
THB SUN-GODS, CREATIVE POWERS.
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is the Angel of Death, for the Talmud says that "the Angel of Death and Satan are the same." He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the trans- formations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra; "Simoon is called Atabutos" or — Diabolos, the Devil.
Typhon. or the Dragon Apophis — the Accuser in the Book of iht Dead — is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebel- lious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set. he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archaeology demonstrates that Horus is identical witli Anubis,*whoseeffigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also repre- sented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.f
Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their "Slayers" are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-god.s or Creative Powers. In the