chapter iv of Genesis, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins

teaching that "Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam/*J and the Talmud adding that "the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same "§ — it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular. There is no Devils no Evil outside mankind to prodiue a Devil. Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life — that 7?ian may live /or ever.
Satan represents metaphysically simply the reverse ox the polar opposite of everything in Nature.|| He is the "Adversar>%" allegorically, the " Murderer." and the great Enemy of a//, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides — the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called
• In the above- men tionrd work (p. 233), verae a6 of ctaaptcr iv of Gtntiis is correcUy traiulated "Uien men began to call thetmttvti. Jehovah," but less correctly expUined, perhaps, as the last word ou^t to be Mrritlen Jah Imale] Horoh (female), to show that from that time the race of distinctljr xrpAnle man nod wonum began.
t See for explanation the excellent pages of Appendix vii of the same work.
t Of. cit.. p. »y3.
( Rabha Batira, \ba.
11 In DeujonoloKy. Satan is the leader of the opposition in Hell, the monarch of which wu BeeUebub. He belongs to the fifUi kiud or class of Demons (of which there are nine nccardins la nicdLxval I>emoDOlogy). and he is at the head of wttchrs and wrcerers. But see elsewhere the true mcMninff of Bapbomct, Uie goal-beaded Salaa. one with Auxd, the Kftpe-jroat of Israel. Mature ii the God Pan.
Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and the rationale of certain early Christian sects — called heretical oji^ viewed as the abomination of the times — will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of the treacherous apostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.
As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda-baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Hlohim ; the latter representing the all-embrac- ing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the pbenomeual Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and oue with, Ophiomorphos. the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.* They taught that lurbo and Adonai were names of lao-Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda-baoth.f This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that *'Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.*'
The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes of /alien men — allegoricall}*, and those men themselves — Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni-Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrsetaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Bumouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of E\nl, '*of the Iranians with the Ar>^an BrShmans of India." And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War — the MahSbharata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans,
See /fii UnveiUd. \\. 184.
t Sec Cod€x Naxarctui, Ui. ^}
4oS
THB SECRET DOCTRINE.
simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent of Getusis^ and thus prove the new dogma.
NOAH WAS A KABIR, HENCE HE MUST HAVE BEEN A DEMON.
It matters little whether it were Isis» or Ceres, the Kabiria, or again the Kabiri, who taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolizing all the facts in history and legend. and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either a myfh along with the others, or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in Samothrace; he has. therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research. Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family arc the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc. — then biblical chrouologj' falls by its own weight, and along with it all the Patriarchs — the Antediluvian and Pre-Atlanteau Titans. As has now been discovered and proven. Cain is Mars, the God oi poxver and generation, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.* Tubal-Cain is a Kabir, *'an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron"; or — if this will please better — he is one with Hephaes- tus or Vulcan. Jabal again is taken from the Kabiri. instructors in agriculture, "such as have cattle," and Jubal is "the father of all those who handle the harp," he, or they who fabricated the harp for Cronus and the trident for Poseidon. f
The history or "fables" about the mysterious Telchines — fables echoing each and all the archaic events of our Esoteric Teachings — furnish us with a key to the origin of Cain's genealogy in the third chapter of Genesis: they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies "the accursed blood" of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines — it is argued — the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the Gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a Deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah?
The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteaus also. Says Decharme:
* He is also Vulcan or Vul-cain, the greatest God wiih the later Qiryptiaiu. and Ute ffrealest Kabir- TheGod of Time wak Chiuo iu Eerypt, or Saturn, orSeth, and Cbtuu !» the tame as Cain. {Sourer of Aftasmtes, p. 278.)
t See SCrabo, comparing them to the Cyclopes, xiv. p. 653 197. CalUm., I'n Dei., 31. Stat., Slip., iw. «. 47. etc.
THS FLOOD LKGENDS.
409
Like L«mnos and Samothrace, Rhodes, the birth-place of the Telchines, is an
island of volcanic formation.*
The island of Rhodes emerg^ed suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like the Samothrace of the Kabiri, it is connected by the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present.
But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish represen- tative of nearly every Pagan God in oue or another character. The Homeric songs contain, in poetized form, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies of Seth and Cain.t and the further equally futile attempt to show them as real, historical men. has only led to more serious enquiries into the history of the past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed revelation. For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, tlie further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Cronus-Saturn is also proved.
That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Br>'antt concurs with all those who are of opinion that Sydic, or Sadie, was the Patriarch Noah, and also Mel- chizedek; and that the name by which he is called^ Sadie, corresponds with the character given him in Genesis.^
He was ^PTL, Sadie, & just man^ and perfect in his generation. All science and ever>' useful art were attributed to him, and through his sons transmitted to posterity. B
Now it is Sanchuniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchi-zedek). True enough, as this information has descended to us through the Preparalio Evangelica
■
* MyiMoto^e tU la Grtte Antiijne, p. 971.
T Nothing cotitrl be mure Awkwnrd and childlth, we mv, than thU rruiUe^t attempt to 1 (rencalo^ea of Cain and of Seth, or to connrol the ideatfly of names under a dilTcrcat ^tdUnff. Cain has a Son Enoch, and Seth a Son Knoch (also Encw, Ch'anoch, Hanoch — one may do what Hkcs with iinvowellcd Hchrew namni). In the Cainitc line Enoch bqfcta Irad. Irad Mehujacl, the latter Methusael, and Mrthusocl, I^mech. tn the Selhtte liuc, Enoch befits Caioan, and this one Mabalaleel la vaHatfon on Mehujael), who gives birth to Jared lor Irad); Jared to Baoch (number 2,), who produces Methuselah (from MeUiusaeli, and finally Lamcch closes the list. {3ee GtmeMt, tv. v.) Now aU these are symbohi (kabalisticallyt of solar and lunar years, of astrouotuical periods and of pbyaiologicul (phallic) functions, just as io any other Pagan symbolical creed. This has been provea by a namber of writers. : €tcc Analyst i 0/ Ancient Mjtkotcgy, il. 7*0,
» Vi. g.
IJ Sec Ntw Encychpigdia, by Abraham Ree«, P.R.3.
4IO
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
of Eusebius, it may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more thau likely that he dealt with Sanchuniathon's works as he has with Mauetho*s Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic. Cronus, or Saturn, with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah's characteristic as ayW/ man, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek, "king of Salem, and priest of the most high God.'* after "his own order*';* and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmi- cally, let us now see what they became rabbinically and kabalistically. In speaking of Adam, Cain, Mars, etc., 2a persontficaiions, we find the author of the Source of Measures enunciating our very Esoteric Teach- ings in his kabalistic researches. Thus he says:
Now, Mar.s was the Lord of births and of death, of generaiion and of desiruciioii, of ploughing, of buildings of sculpture or stoae-cutting, of architecture, .... in fine, of all comprised under our KugUsh word Arts. He was the primal prin- ciple, disintegrating into the modificatioa of two opposites Jor production. Astroao- mically. too.t he held the birthplace of the day and year, the pUue of its increase of strength, Aries, and likewise the place of its dcatb, Scorpio. He held the house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as birth, was Good; as death, was Evil. Aa good, he was light; as fhul, he was night. As good, he was man; as t>ad, he was woman. He held the cardinal points, and as Cain, or ytUcan,l or Pater Sadie, or AfelchisadeJkt he was lord of the ecliptic^ or balance, or line of adjustment, and there- fore was The Just One* The ancients held to there being seven planets, or great ^oda, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadie. The Just or Right One, was Iy>rd of the eighth, which was Mater Terra,\
This makes their functions, after they had been degraded, plain enough, and establishes the identity.
The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead-letter and within the period of biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary, supposition of Bishop Cumber-
* Bee Htbrews, t. 6; t\i. i, tt te^.
f The iQuUnn name or Uars was Areua ("Apcvf), uid Ibc Greek Area (^Afn)i) is a aune over tbe -etymoloirica] HigntficBDce or which, PlitloiopBU and IndlauisU, Greek and Sanskrit Kcbolars. have vainly worked to this day. Very strangely, Max Miiller connecta both the names Mars and Ana with the Sattukrit root mar, whence he traces their derivation, and from which, he says, comes tbe name of the Morula or Stonu-ffoUa. Wclcker, however, offers a more correct etymoioyy. (See GrircM. G6UerUhrf. \. 415.) However it may be. etymotogries of roots and words uloae will never yield the Haotcric meaning fully, though they may help to uaeful guesMs.
t As the aaiue atiihur shows: "The very name Vnlcain appears in the reading, for in the first wordi (Gni., Iv. 5) ia to be found V'clcain, or V'ulcaiu, agreeably to Uie deepened « souud of tbe letter iiim. Ont of its immediate context, it may be read as. ' and ike god Catn,* or Vulcain. If, however, any- thing i* wanting to confirm the Cain-Vulcain idea, fuerst saya: 'pp Cain, l)u iron point 0/ a tatut, a. tmtlh ^blacksmith), inventor of aharp iron tools aud itmith work' " (p. 276).
\ op. cit., p. 186.
THB L3GBNOS OF IRAN.
411
land has but to follow that Deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that:
There were two distinct races of Cabiri, the first consisting of Ham and Mizraim. whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dioniisus of Mnaseas; the second, of the children of Sheni, who are the Cabiri of Sauchouiatho, while their father Sydyk is consequently the script-nral Shem.*
The Kabirim, the "Mighty Ones," are identical with our primeval Dhj'Sn Chohaus, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the Rulers and Instructors of the primeval races, who are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the Divine Dynasties.
THE OLDEST PERSIAN TRADITIONS ABOUT THE POLAR, AND THE SUBMERGED CONTINENTS.
Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the oue hand, and Persia on the other — a country ever at war with the former — there is too great a similarit^*^ of figures and numbers to admit of such coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every available source, in order to the belter compare those of the Magi with the so-called Grecian "fables.'*
Those legends have uow passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fair>' tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the history of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran ba part and parcel of the history and the pre-historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says as follows:
Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one suc- ceeding the other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000. and while the former were still in existence. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked ; the Peris were smaller in stature, but wiser and kinder.
Here we recognize the Allantean Giants and the Ar>'ans, or the Rikshasas of the Ramayana and the children of Bharata-varsha, or India; the Ante- and the Post-diluvians of the Bible.
Gyan (or Gflan, Jf^dna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge)^
• Append, de Cabitis ap. Orig. Gent., pp. 364, 376; and the Utter stAtcment on p. 357. Sec Faber*» Cadin, i. 8.
412
THK SECRKT DOCTRINE.
also called Gian-ben-Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris* He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic, the sorcery of the Devs. Gian-ben-Gian had reigned 2,000 years when Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being produced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed channs, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate, or Karma.f They count ten kings in their last metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kairaurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam. These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given by Berosus.
Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to identify them with the Chaldaan, Egj'ptian, Greek, and even Hebrew traditions, for the Jewish mj-th, though disdaining in its ex- clusiveness to speak of Pre- Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly inferred, by sending out Cain — one of the oniy ttvo liinng men on earth — into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.J
Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales *ith the 9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the sub- mersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on this, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. We read in the Crilias :
First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsed since the war of iht naiionSy which lived above and outside the Pillars of Hercules, aud those which peopled the lauds ou this side- In the Tintitui Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 3'ears ago. and that the Aryans were 200,000 years old when the first great "Island," or Continent, was
• Some drrirtr the word from Paras which produce*! Pnr«. Pen*. Persia; but it may be equallj derived from Pitanu or Pitris. the HindQ pro^nitors of the FifUi Race— the Fathers of Wisdom or the Sons of "Will and Yoga "—who were called Pitaras, as were the divine Pitris of the First Race.
+ See for these traditions the CoiUcHon of Pttrtian Leg^ntb, in Russian, Georgian, Armenian, aad Persian; Herbelot's normtiw Ligendti Ffriana, •'Diblioth^uc Orientale." p. a^e, 38;. etc., and Uunville'ft Mhmoirtz. We gi%'c in a condensed narmtive that which is scattered in hundreds ^ volume* in Kuropeaa and Asiatic languages, as well as in oriU traditions.
t Genau, iv. 16. ei jftfg.
ESOTERIC CHRONOLOGY,
413
submerged, there seems hardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldaea and Persia through whos« exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preser\'ed and passed to posterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week "seven days." and speaking of a "week of years** when each of its days represents 360 solar years, and the whole "week" is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the present times call an age a **centur>'." They of Plato's day, the initiated writers, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years; while the Hindus, more indepeudent than any, have never concealed their chronolog>'. Thus, for g.ooo years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time — i.e., from tlie first appearance of the Aryan Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking* and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato*s small island of Atlantis — the Aryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yuga, and was the Mahdbharata, or Great War, so famous in Indian history. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thou- sands of years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their isolation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era.
History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first time through Herodotus, if we do not take into account the Bible, and its queer chronolog>'.t And how little Herodotus could tell is con- fessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Sa'js, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says:
• The main Contineut perished in the Miocene times, as already stated.
♦ Pnmi Bede downwards all the chronologlats of the Church have differed among thcnwelves, and contradicted each other. "The chronology of the Hebrew text baa been groHsly altcted. especially iu the interval ncit atter the Deluge"— *ay» WliUton {Old T4Si,, p. m).
•
4»4
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Behind the chapel , , . is Xht tomb. of Ont^ w/iosemame / cortsidarU imfiious to divulge . . , In the enclosure stand large obelisks and there is a lake near, surrounded with a stone wall formed in ff r/#r^. , . . In this lake they perrorm by night, that person's adventures, which the Kfifvptians call Afysteries: ou these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the particulars of thenu / must observe a discreet silence.*
On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations. From the Egvptians down to the Jew^ it was held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them. Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates. were in every temple — especially in those of Isis and Serapis — each pressing a finger to the lips. And the Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after initiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death.
And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our conceptions of Science and the duration of things!
The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as .some think. But this is not so; they are only transformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call them Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the £ast» and count seventy-two kings of that name.f Three among them reigned for 1,000 years each. J
Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was murdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire pre- served in the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence — the origin of fire-worship, as some Orientalists think!
Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re-discovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also
* U. 170. 17a.
t Hence king Solomon, whose traces are nowberc to be fouod outside of the BihU. The descripilon of hifl mnynificpnt palace nnd dly dovetail wiUi those of the Pcnian tolu, tbouyh tbey were unknown to all Pa^an travenen, even to Herodotus.
I Herbclot, op. cit., p. 819.
THE PBRSZAX PHCENIX. 415
how to make brass-work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work called Eieriial Wisdom^ and even with having built the cities of I#uz, Babylon and Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modem Delhi is built on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend.
In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war against the Giants on a twelve-legged Horse, whose birth is attri- buted to the amours of a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This " Dodecapod" was found on the "dry island" or new continent; much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his tremendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an enormous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of Damavend.*
Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev-bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon. Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. I,ike his grand-sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far more rare and rapid — a bird called Simorgh-Auke. A marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a poly- glot, and even very religious.f What says that Persian Phoenix? It complains of its old age, for it was bom cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give us again 840,000 years.J Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the Pre- Adamites, says the " Romance of Simorgh and the good KhalLf " !§
What says the Book of Numbers ? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons—
• OrietU. Trad., p. 454- S« •*«> BaUly'S LHtw Mur tAtiantide.
* See Orient. Collect., II. 119.
J Ibid. Retnember that the Rabbins teach that there are to be seven racceuive renewal* of the Globe; that each will lost 7.000 years, the total duration being thua 49.°oo yeors. (See Rabbi Parcha'a H^heet:alaQK.tn^uly'*Booko/ Gcd,p. 170.) ThU refrra to aevcn Rounds, seven Root - R»ce». and sub- race*, the truly Occult fig uro, tbongh aorely confuted.
) Taiei 0/ Detbent.
4l6
SECItBT DOCTRINB.
K.a-yin» Habel, and Seth — represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah-Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo- geological key), the Third Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which uncovered the "nakedness** of the Parent Race, and of the " Mindless," i.e.^ cnm- mitted sin.
Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh-Kai or Kaph. He finds there the Peris ill-treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana ♦ whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her u^^er to the *'dr)' island,'* /.^., the new continent of Europe.f After him came Giamschid, who builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his great pride, believes himself immortal, ana demands divine honours. Fate punishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of Dhulkaruayn, the *' two-horned." But this epithet has no connection with the " two-homed '* gentleman of the cloven foot. The "two-horned" is the epithet given in A.sia — which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of tlie attributes of the De>41 — to those conquerors who have subdued the world from the East to the West.
Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad» who founded a new Dynasty.
Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To begin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf?
Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far beyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors of the Parsis or Farsis. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea. and to a dark region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the ** Fortunate Islands,'* wherein, from the beginning of life on earth, bubbles the ' Fountain of I*ife."J The legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first " dry island*' (continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the Mountains of Koh-Kaf, "the stony
" Mcrjfjlin, or Mor^ona, Ihv fairy Rlster of Kinf( Arthur, is thus abown of Oricntnt desctnl.
*- Where wc find her. indeed, in Great Britain, in the romance of the Knig-hts of the Koiind Tables Whence the identity of name and fairy-hood, if both heroines did not tfymbolixe the same historioil event which passed inlu ■ IcKeiitl f
X Herbelot, p. 593; Armtntan TOJes, p. 35.
THS ARCTIC CONTINKNT.
417
girdle that surrounds the world." A journey of seven months' duration will bring him who is possessed of "Soliman's Ring" to that " Foun- tain," if he keep on journeying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying, therefore, from Persia straight North, will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the Caucasus to^ the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one between the sixtieth and forty-fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath. or Taimuraz, upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.^
Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow-capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus, ih^re is a great continent now concealed from, all; that it is reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve-legged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will twelve wings,\ or by those who have the patience to wait for the good pleasure of Simorgh- Anke. who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the "dry island" and its severed parts.J This relates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric Cycl-.
It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth century a.i>., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first, in a country *' beyond the Ocean," a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldaean. He says:
The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky: and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise. During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his posterity now inhabits.^
* To this day the nbori^nn of Caucastu speak of their mountoina as Kap-kai. nsiag' the cotuonant p tnitemcl of Uie usual v (Kav.koz or Caucasus^. But their banls say that it re({mre« seven months for a nrifl hone to nach th« " dry land " beyond Kaf, holdiug North without ever deviatinir from one's way.
» Bailly thongbt he taw in this Hone a twrlve-oarcd ship. The Secret Doctrine teaches that Ihc early Third Race built boats and flotillaa before it built hou later animal, has, nevertheless, a more occult primitive meaning. The crocodile and the hippopota- mus were considered sacred and represented divine symbols, both with the ancient Bgyptions and with the Mexicans. Poseidon is, in Homer, the C^od of the irorse, and auumrN that form himself to please Ceres. Arion, their progeny, is one of the aspects of that " Horse." which is n Cycle.
] The severed parts must be Norway and other lands in the neighbourhood of the Arctic Circle.
I Coemas Indicoplcustca in GMect. Nova Paitum, t. ii. p. 188; also aec/oHnf. da Havamti, SuppI* J707, p.
4i8
THE SBCRBT DOCTRIN«.
The twelve-legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the "dry island.**
The "Christian Topography" of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which has now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Ever>- arctic traveller suspects a continent or a "dry island'* beyond the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer.
In the first beginnings of [human] life^ the only dry land "ttms on the right end* of the Sphere^ where it \^the Giobe~\ is motionless:] The 7vhole Earth was one vast watery desert^ and the waters were tepid. .... There, man was bom on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara.X There was eternal spring in darkness, [Buf^ (hat which is darkness to the man of to-day^ was light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohai% reigns ever since, . . . l^hus the wise Fathers say that man is bom in the head of his Mother \^Earth\ and that her feet at (he left end generated [begof] the evil 7tnnds that bl/>w from- the mouth of the lower Dragon . . . Between the First and Second [liaces] the Elerfial Central \_Land] was divided by the Water of JLife.\\
I( flows around and animates her \^Mother EaHh's^ body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole], Ft gels purified [*?w its returjt] to her heart — which beats under the foot of the sacred Sham balah, which thai \_in the beginnings] was not yet bom. For it is in the belt of man*s dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the life and health of all (ha( lives and brea(hcs.\ During the First and Second [Races'] (he belt was covered with the great waters. \_But] the great
• The two Poles are called the "right" and "left ends" of our Globe — the Rif^ht bdng the North Pole— or the bead tnd feet of the Earth. Brcry beneficcut (astral and conmici action comca frtnu the North ; every tcihal influence fVttm the South Pote. They are much connected with and iafluencc "right" ond "left" hand magic.
t The more one approaches the Poles the less rotation is felt : at the Poles proper, the dinmal rcvo* lution is quite neutralixed. Hence the expression that the Sphere is "molioulesa."
S U is averred in Occultism that the land or tst&iid, which crowns the North Pole like a ftkutt-cap, is the only one which prevails during the whole Manvantara of our Round. All the central cooti- nenti and lands will emerge from the s«a bottom many times in turn, but this land will never chan^.
I Bear in mind that the Vedic and Avestaic name of Pohat is Apam-Nap£t. In Xhe Aveita he stands between the Pire-yazatas and the Water -yozatas. The literal meaning is "Son of the Wnten," buk these "Waten" are not the liquid we know, hut .fither— the Piery Waters of Space. Pohat Is the "Son of jfUfaer" in its highest aspect, AkAsha, the Mother^Pathrr of the primitive Seven, aod of Sound or the Logos. Fohat la the Light of the Logos.
fl Thi«"Water' is the blood or fluid of Life which anlmatcft the Earth, compared heir toa Uvlajg body.
H Occult teaching corroborates the popular tradition which asserts the ezi.itence of a Fountain oC Ufe In the bowels of the Earth and In the North Pole. It is the blood of the Earth, the electn>- ■asgnetic current, which circulates through all the arteries, and which Is said to be foood stored In tkc "navel" of the Earth.
TH^ UNRKACHABI^ UAND.
4X9
Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first cne which our wise meft call the head^gear \the cap\ She travailed harder for the Third \^Race^ and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the saered Himavat, which stretches around the World. • She broke toward the setting Sun from her ncckf downward [to the South- Wesi\ into many lands and islands, but the Eternal Land [the cap'] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished {in their tum\ Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds frotn the Dragon's mouthy etc.
This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of human life its Root-Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part of the world now known as Asia was only cut oflF from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters.
If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day. beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachable mirage to the few arctic travellers who perceived it.
During the Second Race more laud emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the *'head*' from the "neck." Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most northern part of Spitzbergen.J
* Occultism points to Ibe Himllayui Chaia as that "belt," and mnintains that whether under the water or abore, it eudrcles the Clot>e. The "navel" is described as situated towards the setting Sun or to the West of the Rimavat in which Ue the roots of Mem, which mountain is Xorth of the HioUlaya. Mcru Is lurf "the fnhulous mountain in the navel or centre of the eurth," but its roots and foundations are in that " navel," while it is in the far North itself. This connects it with the "Cefitral" I.antt "that never perishes"; the Innd in which "the day of the mortal lasts six months and his ni^ht another six months." As the yifhnu Purana has it: "For the North of Mem there is, therefore, always nigfht durinff day in oUur regtonj; for Mem is North of all the Dvtpos and Vanihas" (islands nnd countries]. (Book ii. chap, viii.) Meru is therefore neither on Atlas as WUford suggests, nor. OS Wilson tried to show, "sbsolutely in the centre of the globe," only because "relatively wit:: the iuhsbitaDtti of the several portions, to alt of whom the Bast is that quarter where the sun firs'. appciirs."
« Bven the Commentaries do not refrain from Oriental metaphor. The Globe is likened to th? body of a woman, "Mother-Earth." From her neck downward, means from the inland sea nor. beyond the impassable barrier of ice. The Earth, as Porishara says, "is the mother and nurse, Augtnented with all creatures and their qualities, the comprefiendtr of oil the worlds."
X Fur the stanz.-is call this locality by a term translated in the Commentnry as a plact of no latitude (Ninksha), the Abode of the Omls. As a scholiast says in the Sttrya Siddhanta *44):
" Above them goes the sun when situated at the equinoxes; they have neither equinoctial shadow tior elevation of the pole {akih&nitati\.
"In both directions from Meru are two pole-stars KUrivm/ifrJ), fixed in the midst of the sky, to those -who art lituaUd tn places 0/ mo talitud^ i.Hiiaksha's, both these have their place in the horizon.
" Hence there is. In those cities [in that land], no elevation of the poles, the two pole-stars bciug situated in their horison ; but their degrees of co-latitude {iambaka) are ninety : at Meru the degrcei «f Utitade {aiuha\ are of the same number." (See Vishnm Purina, Wilson's Trans., U. aoS.)
4^0
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
on Mcrcator's Projection, on our side, it may have included, on tht American side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin's Bay and the neighbouring islands and promontories. Th^e it hardly reached, southward, the seventieth degree of latitude; here it formed the horse- shot continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the fiftieth degree a little South- West, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared.
western specui^ations, founded on the greek and paurAnic traditions.
Thus it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have reached the profane historian. Rudbeck, a Swedish Scientist, about two centuries ago, tried to prove that Sweden was the Atlantis of Plato. He even thought that he had found in the configuration of ancient Upsala, the situation and measurements of the capital of "Atlantis*' as given by the Greek sage. As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so was Bailly likewise, and still more so, for Sweden and Norway had formed part and parcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just as Eastern and Western Siberia and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the Asiatic. Only, once more, when was it? We can find it out approximately only by studying the PuranaSy that is to say if we will have nought to do with the Secret Teachings.
Three-quarters of a century have already elapsed since Wilford brought forward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the "White Iftlnnd,'* llie Atala of the Puranas. This was sheer nonsense, as the AtnU ift one of the seven Dvipas, or Islands, belonging to the netber Ix>kaH, one of the seven regions of P3tila (the antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford* shows, the Puranas place it "on the seventh zone or seventh climate" — rather, on the seventh measure of heat — which thus locates M ' 1 tl)'.' Iiititudes of 24' and 28* North. It is then to be sought
• • "|«|Nfii1 In Ihn iimthrin imrt uf Tuyninbhiiili," wiUi Bng'Ittnd. and then tries to idcnliry tl with AIaIb |li)"-Ht«-r f%Ufn\ «rt'1 Allanll«. K«.>w ih« 8lir«tn-dv1pa iitbentKxle of Vishnu (ezotericalty), and AUla. U a tirll U* «l*«i plarf^ II In the Kttxlne or Uuhu (Black) Sea, and then acema to connect U, in aiHrtlof |iIm« wllh Africa and Atlaa.
ORIENTALISTS IN THB WRONG BOX.
421
on the same degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the latitudes of 50° and 60*. Wilford speaks of it as Atala. Atlantis, the White Island. Its enemy is called the '* White Devil," the Demon of Terror, for he says :
Id their [the Hindft and Persian] romances, we see Cai-caiis going to the mountain of Az-hurj^ or As-bupj, at the foot 0/ which the sun sets, to fight the Div- sefid, or white devil, the Tdra-daitya of the Pur&nas, and whose abode was on the seventh stage of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the Bauddhists; . . , or, in other words, to the Wliite Island.*
Now here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx's riddle, the erroneous solution of which will ever destroy their authority — if not their persons — in the eyes of every Hindii scholar, whether or not an Initiate. For there is not a statement in the Purdnai—on the conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations — which has not several meanings, and which does not apply to both the physical and the metaphysical worlds. If the old Hindiis divided the face of the Globe into seven Zones, Climates, Dvipas, geographically, and into seven Hells and seven Heavens, allegorically. tlie measure of seven did not apply in both cases to the same localities. Now it is the North Pole, the country of **Meru," which is the seventh division, as it answers to the seventh Principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the Occult calculation. It xepresents the region of AtmS, of pure Soul, and Spirituality. Hence Pushkara is shown as the seventh Zone, or Dvipa, which encompasses the Kshira Ocean, or Ocean of Milk (the ever-frozen white region) in the Vishnu and other Purdnas.f And Pushkara, with its two Varshas, lies directly at the foot of Mem. For it is said that :
The two conntrtes north and south of Mem are shaped like a bow, . . . [and that] one half of the surface of the earth is on the south of Meru and the other half on the north of Mcru — beyond which is half of Pushkara.
Geographically, then, Pushkara is America, Northern and Southern; and allegorically it is the prolongation of Jarabu-dvipa^ in the middle of which stands Meru, for it is the country inhabited by beings who
* Asiatick Resmrcktt, vilL ato.
♦ Op- cit., ibid., p. aoi.
X Bv«rv name ia the Pitrantu has to be examined at least under two aspects, ffeofcrsphicall^r and metaphynk-TUy. in its allegorical application; e^., Ntia, the (blue) mountniti which is one of the Vnuidiiriiri to the north of Meru, is a^nin to be Aouf;:ht neogmphically in n mountain ran8:e in OriSM, and yet asrain in a mountain quite different Trom the others, in Western Arricn. Jarabu-dvlpM Is Vishnu's dominion— the World, limited in the Puranas to our Globe, the rejoon which contains Hem only, and again It is dividnl tu contain Bhnratd-vHmhm (India), lis best division, and the fairest, •ays Parisbara. likewise with Pushkara and all others.
422
THK SECRET DOCTRINB.
live ten thousand years, who are free from sickness or failing ; where there is neither virtue nor vice, caste or laws, for these men are **ot the same nature as the Gods."* Wilford is inclined to see Mem in Mount Atlas, and locates there also the Lokiloka. Now Mertx. we are told, which is the Svar-loka, the abode of BrahmS, of Vishnu, and the Olympus of Indian exoteric religions, is described geographically as ''passing through the middle of the earth-globe, and protruding on either sidc."t On its upper station are the Gods, at the nelher. or South Pole, is the abode of Demons (Hells), How then can Mem be Mount Atlas ? Besides which, Tiradaiiya, a Demon, cannot be placed on the seventh zone if the latter be identified with the White Island, which is Shveta-d\npa, for reasons given in the foot-note above.
Wilford accuses the modem Brahmans "of having jumbled them [islands and countries] all together"; but it is Ar who has jumbled them still more. He believes that as the Brahmanda and l^ayu Puranas di\ide the old Continent into seven Dvipas. said to be surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond which lie the regions and mountains of Atala, hence :
Most probably the Greeks derived their notion of the celebrated Atlantis, which. as it conld not be found after having once been discovered, they conceived to have been destroyed by some shock of nature. J
As we find certain difficulties in belie\'ing that the Eg>'ptian priests. Plato, and even Homer, all built their notions of Atlantis on Atala — a nether region located at the Southern Pole — we prefer holding to the statements given in the Secret Books. We believe in the seven Conti- nents, four of which have already lived their day, the fifth still exists, and two are to appear in the future. We believe that each of these is not strictly a continent in the modem sense of the word, but that each name, from Jambu down to Pushkara,§ refers to the geographical names given (i) to the do* lands covering the face of the whole Earth during the period of a Root- Race, in general ; (ii) to what remained of these after a geological Race Pralaya, as Jambu. for instance; and (iii) to those localities which will enter, after future cataclysms, into the formation of new universal Continents, Peninsulas, or Dvipas l^-each Continent being, in one sense, a greater or smaller region of dry land
• fhid., p. lot.
t SHryQ SiddMmia, Whitoer's Ttub.. v. 5.
t Asiatick RntarxMes, iU. 300.
I Jambu, nakshn. AhAlmali. Kuaha, Crvimcha. Sh&kx, and Pushkara.
I S«ch aa Sbika aiid Puahk&ra, for Instance, which do not yrt exist, but Into which wiU enter landa aa some portions uf America, of Africa, and Central Asia, with the Gobi refioo. I^ec ai in miad Uiat UpadvlpMi mean " root " ialanda. or the dry land in gcneraL
FUTURE CONTIlfBNTS, SYMBOLIZED.
433
m
surrounded with water. Thus, that whatever "jumble" the nomencla- ture of these may represent to the profane, there is none, in fact, to him who has the key.
Thus, we believe we know that, though two of the Pauranic Islands — the Sixth and Seventh Continents — are yet to come, nevertheless there wa^e, or there are, lands which will enter into the composition of the future dry lands, of new Earths whose geographical faces will be entirely changed, as were those of the past. Therefore we find in the Purdnas that Shaka-dvipa is (or will be) a Continent, and that Shankha- dvipa, as shown in the Vdyu Purdna, is only *• a minor island," one of the nine divisions (to which Vdyu adds six more) of BhSrata- varsha. Because Shankha-dvipa was peopled by '*Mlechchhas [un- clean foreigners], who worshipped Hindu divinities," therefore they were connected with India.* This accounts for ShankhSsura, a King of a portion of Shankha-dvipa, who w^as killed by Krishna; that King who resided in the palace " which was an ocean shell, and whose sub- jects lived in shells also," says Wilford.
On the banks of the NllAt there were frequent contests between the DevatAa [Divine Beings, Demi-gods] and the Daityas [Giants]: but the latter tribe having prevailed, their king and leader, Shankh&sura, who resided in the ocean, mode
ireqnent incursions .... in the nighL^
It is not on the banks of the Nile, as Wilford supposes, but on the coasts of Western Africa, South of where now lies Morocco, that these battles took place. There was a time when the whole of the Sahara Desert was a sea. then a continent as fertile as the Delta, and then, only after another temporary submersion, it became a desert similar to that other wilderness, the Desert of Shamo or Gobi. This is shown in Pauranic tradition, for on the same page as above cited, it is said;
The people were between two fires; for, while Shanlchilsura was ravaging one side of the continent, Cracflchfl[or Krauncha], king of Crauncha-dwip [KraunchaHlvipa], used to desolate the other: both armies . . . thus changed ifu mos,t feriiie of regions into a barren deseri.
That not only the last island of Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large Continent, first di\'ided, and then broken later on into seven eninsulas and islands (called Dvipas), preceded Europe, is sure. It covered the whole of the North and South Atlantic regions, as well as
* They were called Oetaooft, Asoros, Giants, aiKl monsters, baoanse of thofr wickedness; and thus their coontry was likeucd to Atals— a HelL t Not on the river Nile, surely, but near the Nila numntains or the Atlas range. 4 Axiatick JituarcA^s, Hi. 2a$,
424
THR SBCRBT DOCTRINB.
portions of the North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the Indian Ocean (relics of Lemuria). The claim is corroborated by Indian Purdnas, Greek writers, and Asiatic, Persian, and Mahommedan tradi- tions. Wilford, who sorely confuses the Hindu and the Mussulman legends, shows this, however, clearly.* His facts and quotations from the Purdnas give direct and conclusive evidence that the Aryan Hindus and other ancient nations were earlier navigators than the Phoenicians, who are now credited with having been the first seamen that appeared in the post-diluvian times. This is what we read in the Asiaiick Researches :
In this distress the few natives, who survived [in the war t>etween Devatds and Daityas] raised their bauds and hearts to Bhagavdn, and exclaimed, " Let him that can deliver us ... be our king" ; using the word IT [a magic term not under- stood by WUford, evidently] which reechoed through the whole country. t
Then comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kili are strangely agitated, "when there appeared from the waves ... a man, afterwards called It, at the head of a numerous army, saying * abkaya7i,' or there is no fear" ,, and scattered the enemy. '*The King It," explains Wilford, "is a subordinate incaniation of Mrira" — Mrida, a form of Rudra, probably? — who "reestablished peace and prosperity throughout all Shankha-dvipa. through Barbaradesa, Misra-st'h&n and Arva-st'hSn, or Arabia," % etc.
Surely, if the Hindu Purdnas give a description of wars on continents and islands situated beyond Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean ; if their writers speak of Barbaras and other people such as Arabs — they who were never known to navigate, or cross the Kila-pSni, the Black Waters of the Ocean, in the days of Phoenician navigation — then these Purdnas must be older than those Phoenicians who are placed at from 2,000 to 3,000 years b.c. At any rate, their traditions must have been oider,§ for an Adept writes:
* See vols. tIU, x, and xl, of Anah'ck X4starch*x,
T op. eiL, Ui. jao. *
t Ibid.
\ Says Wilford of the division of Atlautla and BhArata or India, confasinx^ Uie two accounts and Friynvrata with McdhiUtht : " This division was made by Priyavrata. . . . He had ten sons, and it was his Intention to divide the whole world between them equally. ... In the same manner Neptune divided the Atlantis between his ten sons: one of them had . . . the extremity of the Atlantis"— which " is probably the old contiuent, at the extremity of which is Gadcs . . . This Atlantis was overwhelmed with a flood : and it seems that by tJu AtiaHtu. we ihouid uHtUrstditd the anUdilHvian Earth, over which ten princes were bom to rule, according to the mythology of the West ioud of the Bast, also] but instn of them only sate upon the throne." {Op. ci't, viii. jH6.) Some alao oie of opinion that of the seven Dvfpas lur were destroyed by a flood. Wilford tolccs it tO be "Oades which included Spain," but it was Plato's island— rather.
THE PUZZLES OF ANTIQUITY.
42i
In the above accounts^ the Hindus speak of this island as existing and in great power: it mustt therefore, have Seen more than elroen ihomand years ago.
But another proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindu Annans who described the last surviving island of Atlantis, or rather of that remnant of the Eastern portion of that Continent which had perished soon after the upheaval of the two Americas* — the two Varshas of Pushkara. And they described what they knew, for they had once dwelt on it. This may be demonstrated, moreover, on an astronomical calculation by an Adept who criticizes Wilford. Recalling what that Orientalist had brought forward concerning the Mount Ashbuij "at the foot of which the sun sets," where was the war between the Devatis and the Daityas,t he says:
We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lest island^ and of the remaining Mount Ashburj. It was on the seventh stage of the worldy i.e., in the seventh climate (which is between the latitude of 24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north). . . This island, the daughter of the Ocean^ is frequently described as lying in the West; and the Sun is represented as setting at the foot of its mountain (Ashburj^ Atlas, Taieriffe or Ntla, no matter the name J, and fighting the White Devil of the " White Islandr
Now, if we consider this statement from its astronomical aspect, as Krishna is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God, and as he is said to have killed Div-sefid, the White Devil — a possible personifica- tion of the ancient inhabitants at the foot of the Atlas — he may per- chance be only a representation of the vertical beams of the Sun. Again, these inhabitants, the Atlantides, as we have seen, are accused by Diodorus of daily cursing the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is, however, only an astronomical interpretation. It will now be proved that Shankhasura, and Shankha-dvipa^ and all their history, is also geographically and ethnologically Plato's Atlantis in Hindii dress.
It has just been remarked that since, in the Pauranic accounts, the island is still existing, these accounts must be older than the 11,000 years which have elapsed since Shankha-dvipa, or the Poseidonis of Atlantis, disappeared. But is it not barely possible that Hindus should
* Amenca, the " new " world, is Uiub. Uiough not much, older— still it it cilder— thaD Burope, Lbe "old" world.
t ir Div or Dcv-»efid*g (Uie TiradKityii'a) abode was on the seventh stage, it Is because he came from Pushkara, the Pit&la (antipodes) of India, or from America. The tatter touched the walla, so to sa^, of AtLintls, before the latter finally aank. The word P^tlla meaning both the antipodal countries and infemal regions, these became s^monymous In ideas and attributes as well as in name.
426
THK SBCRKT DOCTRINE.
have known the island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical demonstrations, which make this quite plain if with the said Adept one assumes that:
At the time when the summer tropUat **coture" passed through the Pleiades^ when Cor Leonis would be upon the equator^ and when Leo was vertical to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island of Atlantis at noon.
This explains, perhaps, why the Sinhalese, the heirs of the Rakshasas! and Giants of Lanki, and the direct descendants of Sinha, or Leo, became connected with Shankha-dvipa or Poseidonis (Plato's Atlantis). Only, as shown by Mackey's Sphinxiad, this must have occurred about 23,000 years ago, astronomically; at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must have been rather more than 27 degrees, and consequently Taurus must have passed over Atlantis or Shankha-dvipa. And that it was so is clearly demonstrated. Say the Commentaries:
The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bhdrata to Shankha to meet Rishabha \^Taurus'\ every Kalpa. But when those of the imte Island \who descended originally from Shveia-dvipa\* who had mixed with the Daityas [Giants'] of the land of iniquity^ had become black with sin, then Nandi remained for ever in the White Island [or Shveta-dvipa]. . . , Those of the Fourth World [Race'] lost A UM.
Asburj, or Azburj, whether the peak of Teneriffe or not, was a volcano, when the sinking of the "Western Atala," or Hell, began, and those who were saved told the tale to thdr children. Plato's Atlantis perished between water below and fire above; the great mountain vomiting flames all the while.
The ** fire-vomiting Monster*^ survived alone out of the ruins of the unfortunate island.
Do the Greeks, who are accused of borrowing a Hindu fiction (Atala), and inventing from it another (Atlantis), stand also accused of getting their geographical notions and the number seven from them?
'*The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt that it did once," says Proclus, "for Marcellus, who wrote a history of Ethiopian affairs, says that such, and so great, an island once existed, and this is evidenced by those who
* Neither Atlantb, nor yrt Shaokha-dv^pa, wu ever called " White IftlaDd." When tradition uys that "ttic White Ulaiid became black on account of the sia« of the people," it only means the dcnuceni of the " WHiile Island." or Siddhapurn, or Shvctn-dvlpB, who descended to the Atlantis of the Tbihl and Fourth Races, to "inform the latter; and who, haring Incamnted, t>ecamc blnck with ain"— * figure of speech. All the AvalAtas of VUhnu are said to come originally from Xhr White Island. AccordinsT to Tibetan Iraditlon the \Vh\it Utand is the only locality which escapes the gcncnd fate of ulhcr Dvipsa; it can be destroyed by neither fin aor water, for— it U the " Eienial r,.'.iid,*'
WHAT MAHCKLLUS SAYS.
4^
composed histories relative to the external sea. For they relate thai in this time ihert were seven isfattds in the Atlantic sea sacred to Proserpine; and besides these, three of iuimense ma^iitude, sacred to Plato, . . . Jupiter, . . . and Nep- tune. And, besides this, the inhabitants of the last island [Poseidonis] preserved ^he fptemory of the prmiigioiis niag^iitude of the Atlantic island as related by their .ancestors, and of its goveming for many periods all the islands in the Atlantic sea. From this isle one may pass to other large islands beyond, which are not far froin the firm land, near which is the true sea."
These seven Dvipas [inaccurately rendered islands] constitute, according to Mar- cellus, the body of the famous Atlantis. . . . Thb evidently shows that Atlantis is the old continent. . . . The Atlantis was destroyed after a violent storm [?]: this is well known to the Panrflnics, some of whom assert that in consequence of this dreadful convulsion of nature, six of the Dvipas disappeared.*
Enough proofs have now been g;iven to satisfy the greatest sceptic. Nevertheless, direct proofs based on exact Science will also be added. And yet even though volumes were written, it would be to no purpose for those who will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their respective authorities.
Hence the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon, the mount in the land of Mizpeth — meaning "anathema," "destruction" — is the same as Mount Arraon. As a proof of this, Josephus is often quoted, as affirming that still in his own day enor- mous bones of giants were daily discovered on it. But it was the land of Balaam the prophet, whom the "I/ord loved well." And so mixed up are facts and personages in the said scholiasts' brains, that, when the ZjjAfl/' explains the "Birds" which inspired Balaam to mean "Ser- pents," to wit, the Wise Men and Adepts at whose School he had learnt the mysteries of prophecy — the opportunity is again taken of showing Mount Hermon inhabited by the "winged dragons of Evil, whose chief is Samael" — the Jewish Satan! As S^ '-ncer says:
It is to those unclean spirits chained on Mount Hermon of the Desert, that the scape-goat of Israel, who assumed the name of one of them [Azaz(y)el], was senL
We say it is not so. The Zohar has the following explanation on the practice of magic which is called in Hebrew Nehhaschim, or the "Serpents' Works." It says (part iii. col. 302):
It is called Nehhaschim, because the magicians [practical Kabaliats] work sui^ rounded by the light of the Primordial Serpent, which they perceive in heaven as r. luminous zone composed of myriads of small stars.
This means simply the Astral Light, so called by the Martinists, by filiphas Levi, and now by all the modem Occultists.
* Asiatuk HtuarcAttt xi. 17.
428 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
THE "CURSE" FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL POINT OF VIEW.
The foregoing teachings of the Secret Doctrine, supplemented by universal traditions, must now have demonstrated that the Brdhnianas and Purunas, the Vendiddd and other Mazdean scriptures, down to the Egyptian^ Greek, and Roman, and finally to the Jewish sacred records, ail have the same origin. None are meaningless and baseless stories, invented to entrap the unwary profane; all are allegories intended to convey, under a more or less fantastic veil, the great truths gathered in the same field of pre-historic tradition. Space forbids us, in these volumes, from entering into further and more minute details with respect to the four Races which preceded our own. But before offering to the student the history of the psychic and spiritual evolution of the direct antediluvian fathers of our Fifth (Aryan) Humanity, and before demonstrating its bearing upon all the other side branches grown from the same trunk, we have to elucidate a few more facts. It has been shown, on the evidence of the whole ancient literary world, and the intuitional speculations of more than one Philosopher and Scientist of the later ages, that the tenets of our Esoteric Doctrine are, in almost every case, corroborated by inferential as well as by direct proof, that neither the "legendary" Giants, nor the lost Continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding Races, are quite baseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume, Science will find itself more than once unable to reply; these Addenda, will, it is hoped, finally dispose of ever>' sceptical remark with regard to the sacred number in nature, and our figures iu general.
Meanwhile, one task is left incomplete — the disposing of that most pernicious of all the theological dogmas, the Curse under which man- kind is alleged to have suffered ever since the supposed disobedience [)f Adam and Eve in the bower of Eden.
Creative powers in man were the gift of Divine Wisdom, not the result of sin. This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of fehovah, who first curses Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed crime committed, and then bies%es his "chosen people*' by saying, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."* The Curse was not brought on mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological law. Nor was the Curse of Karma called down upon them for seeking natural union, as all the mindless animal-
THB ANCIENT ANT THE MODERN MAN.
4*9
world does in its proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the life-essence for no purpose except bestial personal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of Genesis will be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the commencing Fourth Race^i. In the begin- ning, conception was as easy for woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that woman should bring forth her young ones "in sorrow." Since that period, however, during the evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity between its seed and the "Ser- pent's" seed, the seed or product of Karma and Divine Wisdom. For the seed of woman, or lust, bruised the head of the seed of the /mil of wisdom and knowledge, by turning the holy mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the Law of Karma "bruised the heel" of the Atlan- tean Race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind,* until, from being the healthy king of animal creation in the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our Race, a helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the Globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals! f This is the real Curse from the physiological standpoint, almost the only one touched upon in Kabalistic Esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the Curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolu- tion, in its progress hand-in-hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse instead of a blessing — a gift quickened by the "Lords of Wisdom," who have poured on the human Manas the fresh dew of their own Spirit and Essence. The Divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to regret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically depicted by ^schylus in his "Prometheus Bound," when. at the close of the first Titanic Age (the Age that followed that of Ethe- real Man, of the pious Kandu and Pramlocha), nascent, physical man- kind, still mindless and (physiologically) senseless, is described as —
* How wi lire, when compared with the licence tadlly allowed to man In dvlllxed countries. That those lawi have been neglected for the tost two millenniums does not prevent iiit from admiring: their forethought. The Brllituiin wb« q Grihasta, a family man, till a certain period of his life, when, afler be^tttng a ■on, be broke with married life and became a chaste Yogi. HU very connubial life was regulated by his Brlhuan astrologer in accordance with his a«taTe. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjib, for instance, where the lethal influence of Muj^sulman, and later on of European, HrentiouAnesa, has hardly touched the orthodox Aryan castes, one still finds the finest men— so far as stature and physical strength go -on the whole Olotie; whereas the miKhty men of old have found themselves replaced in the Deccan, and esprciatly in Qengal. by men whose generation bccomea with every century— and almost with every year—dwarfed and weakened.
i Discaaca and over •population aie facts that can never be denied.
430
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Seeing, they saw in vain; Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams, Through the long time all things at random mixed.
Our Saviours, the AgnishvStta and other divine ''Sons of the Flame of Wisdom" — personified by the Greeks in Prometheus* — may well be left unrecognized and unthanked, in the injustice of the human heart. They may, in our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora's gift; but to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy, as the Evil Ones, is too heavy a Karma for "Him" who, when Zeus "ardently desired" to quench the entire human race, "dared alone" to save that "mortal race" from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is make to say :
From sinking blasted down to Hades' gloom. For this by these dire tortures I am bent. Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold, I who did mortals pity. ....
The chorus remarking ver>' pertinently:
Vast boon was this thou gavest uato mortals!
Prometheus answers:
Yea, and besides 'twas I that gave them fire. Chorus: Have now these short-lived creatures flame-eyed fire? Prom. : Ay, and by it full many arts will learn
But, with the arts, the "fire" received has turned into the greatest curse; the animal element, and consciousness of its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality. f It is this which hang^ over humanity like a heavy fimereal pall. Thus arises the responsibility of free-will; the Titanic passions which repre- sent humanity in its darkest aspect;
* In Mrs. Anns 3«nmmck*a votamc. The Dramas of ydckjftus, it is saM ot '* PromeUietu Booiid'^ i"8obn'B Classical Library," p. ^M}f t^at PramcUicus traly appears in it "as the champion and bcne- iactor of mankind, whose condition .... lit depicted a* w^ak and miscmblc in the extmnc . . . . Zeus, it is said, propoiied to annihilate these puny cphrmerAls, and tn plant upon thr earth ft new race in Uieir stead." We see the l^rda of Beiofr doinir Itkewi.tc. and extemiinalinc the first product or Nature and the Sen, In the Stanxas. " Prometheus tepresenli hinutelf as haiinj; (hutnted thut design, and oft luring consequently subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most agoniaing pain, inflioted by the temorseless cruelty of Zeiis. We hare, thus, the Titan, the symbol of finite reason and free will [of intellectual humanity, or the biKh«^ aspect of Manas], depicted as the SHblimt pkiiun- thrf>pitt,vf\\\\t Z*u«, the Supreme Deity of HcIIns, is jwrtrayed as the cruel and obdurate despot, a chnmctcr peculiarly revolting: to Athenian sentiment." The reason for it is expliined further on. The "Supreme Deity" bears, In every ancient Pantheon— including that of the Jews— a tfwa/ character, composed of light and shadow.
* The animal world, having simple Instinct to guide it. baa ita ieaaons ^ proereatitm^ and the sexes become neutralixed during the t«st of the year. Therefore, the free animal knows slckneas bo. once in it:- life— before it dies.
THE TRAVESTY OF PROMETHEUS.
411
I
The restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires, when» with self-aasert. ing insolence, they bid de&ance to the restraints of law.*
Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato's Protagoras^ with that " wisdom which ministers to physical well-being." but the lower aspect of Manas of the animal (KSma) having remained unchanged, instead of "an untainted mind, heaven's first gift,** there was created the eternal vulture of ever unsatis6ed desire, of regret and despair, coupled with "the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals" (556). tinto the day when Prometheus is released by his heaven- appointed deliverer, Herakles.
Now Christians — Roman Catholics especially — have tried to pro- phetically connect this drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake could be made. The true Theosophist, the pursuer of Divine "Wisdom and worshipper of Absolute Perfection — the Unknown Deity which is neither Zeus nor Jehovah — will demur to such an idea. Point- ing to antiquity he will prove that there never has been an original sin, but only an abuse of physical intelligence — the Psychic being guided by the Animal, and both putting out the light of the Spiritual. He will say : All you who can read between the lines, study Ancient Wisdom in the old dramas, the Indian and the Greek; read carefully the "Prome- theus Bound," enacted in the theatres of Athens 2,400 years ago I The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor ^schylus; but, as Bunsen says, it "is older than the Hellenes themselves," for it belongs, in truth, to the dawn of human consciousness. The crucified Titan is the personified symbol of the collective Logos, the "Host," and of the "Lords of Wisdom" or the Heavenly Man, who incarnated in Humanity. More- over, as his name {Pn>-m^'thei^, "he who sees before him" or futurity) shows t — in the arts he devised and taught to humanity, psychological
* Introduction to "Prometheus Bound," p. 340.
♦ PTT>m Trpo-^-TTt?, "forethought." "Profc»»or Kuho," wc are told in the Bbovc-nnnicd volumca, TJtt Dramas 0/ ^schyius, "considers the name of the Titan to hit derived frora Die Sanskrit wonl Pramantha, the itutrumetit used for kindUnK fire. The root mand or maHih, implies rotatory motion, and the word mdnMJMi, uacd to denote the proccM of fire Icitidlinj;. acquired the secondary sense of snatching away; hence we find another word of the same stock, pramatha, si^ifyinr theft." This is Tcry ingenious, but perhaps not altogether correct ; be-iridrs, there Is a very prosaic element in it. No doubt in physical nature, the higher forms may develop from the tower ones, but it la hardly so in the world of thoug-ht. And as we aie told that the word manthamt passed into the Greek lan^age and became the word maMlAamd, to leara— that is to say, to appropriate knowledge, whence pvometheia, fotT'knowledge, fore^thought — tvemay find, in searching, a more poetical origin for the" fire*bringer" than that displayed in its Sanskrit origin. The Svastica, the sacred sigu and the instrument for kindling iacreJ (jre, may explain it better. "Promctheua, the fire-briuger, is the Pramantha per- sonified," continues the author, "and finds his prototyx>e in the Aryan MAtarishvan, a divine . . , personage, closely associated with Agni, the fire-god of the Vedos." Matlh, in Sanskrit, ia "under- stondiug," and a synonym o€ Mohat and Manas, and must be of some account in the origin of the name ; Fr&matih is the son of Fohat, and has his story also.
43^
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
insigbt was not the least. For as he complains to the daughters o^ Ocean us:
Of prophecies the various modes I fixed, (492)
And among dreams did first diacriminnte
The truthful Wsion . . . and mortals guided
To a mysterious art.
All arts to mortals from Prometheus came. . . I^eaving for a few pages the main subject, let us pause and see what aiay be the hidden meaning of this, the most ancient as it is the most suggestive of traditional allegories. As it relates directly to the early- Races, this will be no real digression.
The subject of ^^schylus* trilog>% of which two plays are lost, is known to all cultured readers. The Demi-god robs the Gods (the Elohim) of their secret — the mystery of the Creative Fire. For this sacrilegious at- tempt he is struck down by Cronus* and delivered unto Zeus, the Father and Creator of a mankind which he would have wished to have blind intellectually, and animal-like; a Personal \>€\\yy which will not see Man "like one of us." Hence Prometheus, the *' Fire and Light-g^iver,'* is chained on Mount Caucasus and condemned to suffer torture. But the triform Fates (Karma), whose decrees, as the Titan says, even Zeus —
E'en he the fore-ordained cannot escape. . . ^-ordain that those sufferings will lastonly to that day when ason of Zeus — Ay, a son bearing stronger than his sire (787)
One of thine [lo's] own descendants it must be (791) —is bom. This **Son*' will deliver Prometheus (suffering Humanity) from his own fatal gift. His name is, "He who has to come."
On the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other allegorical sentence, may be twisted into almost any meaning — on the authority of the words pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to lo, the daughter of Inachus, persecuted by Zeus — a whole prophecy is constructed by some Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan:
And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks
By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase,
Wast hailed as the iltustrious spouse of Zeus
(853).
. , . . stroking thee With touch aione ofunalarming hand; Then thou dark Epaphos shalt bear, whose name Records his sacred gendering .... (870),
* Croan* is "Time." and Uiiu the allegory becomes very •unreative.
CHRIST CONNECTED WITH EPAPHOS.
4»
This was construed by several fanatics — Des Mousseaux and De Mirville amongst others — into a clear prophecy. lo *' is the mother of God," we are told, and "dark Epaphos*' — Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his Father, except metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that Father; nor has the Christian Saviour hurled his Father down into Hades. Prometheus says (in verse 930) that Zeus will be humbled yet:
. . . . such marriage he prepares Which from his throne of power to nothingness Shall hurl him down; so shall be aU fulfilled His father Kronos' curse ....
.... Then let him ait Confiding in his lofty thunder-pcala. And wielding with both hands the fiery bolt; For these shall rwt avail, but fall he shall, j4 fall disgraceful, not to he endared .... (9S0).
"Dark Epaphos" was the Dionysus-Sabasius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter in the Sabasian Mysteries, during which the ** Father of the Gods," assuming the shape of a Serpent, begot on Demeter Dionysus, or the Solar Bacchus. lo is the Moon, and at the same time the Eve of a new race, and so is Demeter — in the present case. The Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but it does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours who have appeared periodically in various countries and among various nations, in their transitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the mysteries of cyclic transformations, in the series of which mankind, having passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state, from spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the opposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its Trimitivc state, when wtnnan knew no mart, and human progeny was ere*. :ed, not begottejt,
Ihat state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter sba'J discover and really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast problem of sev. It will be like "the light that never shone on sea or land/* and ban to come to men through the Theosophical Society. That light will lead on and up to true spiritual intuition. Then, as expressed once in a letter to a Theosophist,
The world will / ave a race of Buddhas and Christs, for the world will have dis- covered ihat indizmUtals have it in their mvn powers to procreate Bttddha-like children — or Demons. . . . When that knowledge comes, all dogmatic religious, and with '.\2a1t the Demons, will die out.
434
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
If we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the character of the heroes, the mystery may be unriddled. Cronus is of course "Time" in its cyclic course. He swallows his children — the personal Gods of exoteric dogmas included. Instead of Zeus he has swallowed his atone idol; but the symbol has grown, and has only developed iu human fancy as mankind has been cycling down toward only its physical and intellectual — not spiritual — perfection. When it is as far advanced in its spiritual evolution Cronus will be no longer deceived. Instead of the stone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction itself. Because, the Serpent of Wisdom, re- presented in the Sabasian Mysteries by the anthropomorphized Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers, will have begotten in Time (Cronus) a progeny — Dionysus- Bacchus, or the " dark Epaphos," the "mighty one," the Race that will overthrow him. Where will he be born ? Prometheus traces him to his origin and birth-place iu his prophecy to lo. lo is the Moon -goddess of generation — for she is Isis and she is Eve, the Great Mother.* He traces the path of the (racial) wanderings as plainly as words can express it. She has to quit Europe and go to Asia's continent, reaching there the highest of the mountains of Caucasus (v. 737), the Titan telling her:
When thou hast crossed the flood, limit betwixt
Two continents, fronting the burning East .... (610)^
that she must travel Eastward, after passing the "Kimmerian Bos- phorus," and cross what is evidently the Volga and now Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, After this she will encounter "fierce northern blasts** and cross thither to the land of the "Arimaspian host" (East of Herodotus' Scythia) to —
Pluto's gold-abounding flood. . . . {825).
* It U complained by tbe author of the vcrsiou and translator of "Prometheus Bound" that !a thU traciuK of lo's wanderings. " oo cousistcucy with our own known geography is attainable" (P- 379)- Th*re may be gtxtd reaaon for it, Firal of all it ta the journey and wandering from place to place of the Race from which the " tenth." or KaUd Avat&ra. so called. i.i to issue. This he callB the "kingly race bom in Argos" (UW^. But Argnshas no reference hcrr to Argon in Greece. It coma from arg or or*o — the female grncrative power aymboUzcd in the Moon— the nQ\*i-forracd Argba of the M>-steries. meaning the Que^u of Heaven. Bustathius shows that, in the dialect of the Arg-Utii, Id signified the Moon; while Esoterici!im ejcplains it as the divine Androgyne, or the mystic Ten (lo); in Hebrew loia the perfect number, or Jehovah. Arghya in Sanskrit is the libation cup, the navi- form or boat-shaped vcsael in which flowers and fruit ar« offered to the Deities. Arghyanith is ■ UUc of the Mahi Chohan, meaning the " I,ord of Libations"; and Arghynvarsha, the "Land of IJba- tions," is tbe mystery name or th.-it region which extends from Kail&sa mountain nearly to the Shamo I>esert— frxMn within which the Kolki Avatdra is expected. The Alryina-Varsedya [? Airyana Va(jd} II the Zoroostrinns, as a locality, is ideuticnl with it. It is now said to have been situated between the Sea of Aral, Baltistan, and Ijttte Tibet ; but in olden times its area was far Larger, as it wma the birth-place ot physical humanity, of wbicta lo la the mother and aymbol.
THE MISTAKE OP ARRJAN EXPLAINED.
435
This is rightly conjectured by Professor Newman to have meant the Ural, the Arimaspi of Herodotus being "the recognized inhabitants of this golden region."
And here comes (between verses 825 and 835) a puzzle to all the European interpreters. Says the Titan:
To these [Arimaspi and Grypes] approach not; a far border land
Thou next shall reach* where dwells a swarthy race
Near the Sun's founts, whence is the .^thiop river;
Along its banks proceed till thou attain
The mighty rapids, where from Bybline heights
Pure draughts of sacred water Neilos sends.
There lo was ordained to found a colony for herself and her sons. Now we must see how the passage is interpreted. lo is told that she has to travel Eastward till she comes to the river Ethiops, which she is to follow till it falls into the Nile — hence the perplexity. "According to the geographical theories of the earliest Greeks," we are informed by the author of the version of "Prometheus Bound":
This condition was fulfilled by the river Indus. Arrian {vi. i) mentions that Alexander the Great, when preparing to aail down the Indus [having seen croco- diles in the river Indus, and in no other river except the Nile . . .], seemed to himself to have discovered the sources of the Nile; as though the Nile, rising from some place in India, and flowing through much desert land, and thereby losing ite name Indus, next . . . Bowed through inhabited land, being now called Nile by the Ethiopians of those parts and afterwards by the Egyptians. Vir^l in the rVth Georgic echoes the obsolete error.*
Both Alexander and Virgpl may have erred considerably in their geographical notions; but the prophecy of Prometheus has not in the least so sinned — not, at any rate, in its Esoteric spirit. When a certain Race is s^Tnbolized, and events pertaining to its history are rendered allegoricallyp no topographical accuracy ought to be expected in the itinerary traced for its personification. Yet it so happens, that the river Ethiops is certainly the Indus, and it is also the Nil or Niia. It is the river bom on the KailSsa Heaven mountain, the Mansion of the Gods — 22,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was the Ethiops river, and was so called by the Greeks, long before the days of Alexander, because its bankSp from Attock down to Sind, were peopled by tribes generally referred to as the Eastern Ethiopians. India and Egypt were two kin- dred nations, and the Eastern Ethiopians— the mighty builders — have come from India, as is pretty well proved, it is hoped, in /sis UnvdUd,\
436
THS SECRET DOCTRINB.
Then why could not Alexander, and even the learned Virgil, have used the word Nile or Neilos when speaking of the Indus, since it is one of its names? To this day the Indus is called, in the regions around Kalabagh, Nil, "blue," and Nila. the "blue river." The water there is of such a dark blue colour that this name was given to it from time immemorial; a small town on its banks being called by the same name, and existing to this day. Evidently Arrian. who wrote far later than the days of Alexander, and who was ignorant of the old name of the Indus, has unconsciously slandered the Greek conqueror. Nor are our modem historians much wiser, in judging as they do, for they often make the most sweeping declarations on mere appearances, as much as their ancient colleagues ever did in days of old, when no Encyclo- paedias were yet ready for them.
The race of lo, the "cow-horned maid," is then simply the first pioneer race of the Ethiopians brought by her from the Indus to the Nile, which received its name in memory of the mother river of the colonists from India.* Therefore Prometheus says to lof that the «acred Neilos — the God, not the river — shall guide her "to the land, ihree'Comercd** namely, to the Delta, where her sons are foreordained to found "that far-off colony." (833 ei segg.)
It is there that a new race (the Egyptiaus) will begin, and a "female race" (873) which, "fifth in descent" from dark Epaphos — •
Fifty in number shall retnm to Argos.
Then one of the fifty virgins will fail through love and shall —
... A kingly race in Argos bear.
But from this seed shall dauntless heroes spring, Bow-famous, who shall free me from these ills.
* AlCBSSider, who wu better ocquahitM with Attoclc than with ludia— for be never entered India proper— cirald not have fRlled to hear the Indus, uear its very sources, called NTl and NUi. The mistAkr— if mistAke it in— js thus cniiily accounted for.
4 Thst lo Ls Identical, allegorically, with Isis and the Moon is shown by her beinff "cow-homed.** Th* allcicory uudmlably reached Greece from India, where Vlcb— the "melodious Cow" of the fitg l^tda. "frvm whom mankind was produced" {BhAgavaia i^rAna) isshown in the Aitareya SrdAmama B» pttrsoed by her father Bmhmi, who was moved by on Illicit passion, and chanjcvd her into a Deer. Hence lo, refusing to yield to Jupiter's passion, becomes "homed." The Cow was in every country the symbol of the passive xenerativc power of nature, isis, Vilch, Venus— the mother of the prolific God of I^ove, Cupid, but, at the tame time, that of the Logos whose symbol, with the Bfr>'P^'"is *tid the Indiana, became the Bull, as testi5pd to by the Apia and the Hindfi Bulls in the most ancient irmpies. In Baotcrlc PhUosophy the Cow is the symbol of Creative Nature, and the Bull (her calf) tJi# Spirit which wiviAtB her, or the " Holy Spirit." as Dr. Kcnealy shows. Hence the symbol of the boms. These were sacrerl al>w> with the Jews, who placed on the altar horns of Shittim wood, fary §fi*ing which a criminal cnMurcd his safety.
WAS iESCHYLUS INITIATED?
437
When these heroes shall arise, the Titan does not reveal ; for as he remarks:
This, to set forth at large needs lengthy speech.
But '*Argos" is Arghyavarsha, the Land of Libations of the old Hierophants, whence the Deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became ages later that of its neighbour. India — the Aryavarta of old.
That the subject formed part of the Sabasian Mysteries is made known by several ancient writers; among others by Cicero* and by Clemens Alexandrinus.f The latter writers are the only ones who attribute the fact of i^schylus being charged by the Athenians with sacrilege and condemned to be stoned to death to its true cause. They say that being himself uninitiated, --Bschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his Trilogies on a public stage.J But he would have incurred the same condemnation had he been initiated; which must have been the case, as otherwise he must, like Socrates, have had a Daimon to reveal to him the secret and sacred allegorical Drama of Initiation. At all events, it is not the "father of the Greek tragedy" ■who invented the prophecy of Prometheus; for he only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed by the priests during the Mysteria of the Sabasia.§ The latter was one of the oldest sacred festivals, whose origin is to this day unknown to history. Mytholo- gists connect it through Mithras, the Sun, called Sabasius on some old monuments, with Jupiter and Bacchus. It was never, however, the property of the Greeks, but dates from days immemorial.
The translator of the drama wonders how iCschylus could become guilty of such
Discrepancy betweeu the character of Zeus as portrayed in the "Prometheus
Bound" and that depicted in the remaining drama5.||
This is just because j35schylus. like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain the intellectual "Sphinx" of the ages. Between Zeus, the Abstract Deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter represented in the Mysteries no higher a prin-
• 7V«cm/. QMtrsi., I. iL ao.
* Strom., I. U, O^.. i. 467, Ed. Potter's.
t Berodotus and Psusanias supposed that the cause of the condcianatioa was that .£scfaylus. adoptlsK the Theo^ony of the Sfryptians, made Diana the daughter of Cocb. and not of Latona. (Sec JEXiin, Var. Hist., I. v. xviii; i. 433, Ktlttiim r.ronov.) But .fischyUta was initiated.
\ The sabnsia waa a periodical festival wilh Mysteries enacted in honour of iwirae Gods, a variant on the Mithraic Mysteries. The whole cvuluUon of the Races was performed in thcae Mysteries.
II Mn. A. Swanwick, op. cit.
438
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
ciple than the lower aspect of human physical intelligence — Manas wedded to KSma; whereas Prometheus — the divine aspect of Manas merging into and aspiring to Buddhi — was the divine Soul. Zeus, whenever shown as yielding to his lower passions, is the Human Soul and nothing more — the j'eaious God, revengeful and cruel in its Egotism or '*I-am-nes5." Hence, Zeus is represented as a Serpent — the intellec- tual tempter of man — which, nevertheless, begets in the course of cyclic evolution the ** Man-Saviour," the Solar Bacchus or Dionysus — matr than a man.
Dionysus is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha, the heavenly Wise One, and with the coming (tenth) AvatHra, the glorified. Spiritual Christos, who will deliver the suffering Chrestos — mankind, or Prometheus, on its trial. This, say Brahmanical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the latter only occasionally), will happen at the end of the Kali Yuga. It is only after the appearance of Kalki Avatira, or Sosiosh, that man will be bom from woman without sin. Then will BrahmS. the Hindu deity, Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), the Zoroastrian, Zeus» the Greco-Olym- pian Don Juan, Jehovah, the jealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their likes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy — vanish and disappear in thin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the dark aspects of all these Deities, ever represented as their "twin brothers" and creatures, in exoteric legend — their own re- flection on Earth, in Esoteric Philosophy. The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion \\'ill be subdued.
There is one Eternal Law in Nature, one that always tends to adjast contraries, and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this Law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false Gods, and find itself finally — Self- redeemed.
In its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus, of whom the proto- and anti-types are found in every ancient Theogony, stands in each of them at the very origin of physical evil, because at the threshold of human physical life. Cronus is "Time," whose first law is that the order of the successive and harmonious phases, in the pro- cess of evolution during cyclic development, should be strictly pre- served— under the severe penalty of abnormal growth with all Its ensuing results. It was not in the programme of natural development
that man — higher animal though he may be — should become at once, intellectually, spiritually, and psychically, the Demi-god he is on Earth, while his physical frame remains weaker, more helpless and ephemeral, than that of almost any huge mammal. The contrast is too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its indwelling God. The gift of Prometheus thus became a Curse— though foreknown and foreseen by the Host personified in that personage, as his name well shows .♦ It is in this that rests, at one and the same time, its sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a portion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free-will to passive slavery, intellectual self-conscious pain and even torture, "while myriad time shall flow,*' to inane, imbecile, instinctual beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the programme of Nature, the Heavenly Host, "Prometheus," still sacrificed itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind. f But while saving man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the tortures of the self-consciousness of his responsibility — the result of his free will — besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir. This torture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became henceforward blended with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was still un- achieved at that period of formation.
Spiritual evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical, once its homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the chief cause, if not the sole origin, of Evil.J Highly philosophical
* See Uic Toot-note (p. 431) coDccming the etymoloiry of vpo-fkiyTi^ or /orttAoMg-ht. It In the dninu when Myiug :
O holy cthcT, BwifUy-wingM galc% .... Behold whAt I, a god, rrom god» caduxe.
Promcthcu:
l»os)
And yrt what My I? Ciiarty I /orekntna
All that mtut happen
.... The Destined it bchoveft, As best I may. to bear, for well I wot How tnconlcstablc the strenirth of Fate. . . *' Fate " stands here for Karniii, or Nemesis.
t Mankind i* oh^Hously divided into Ood-informed men and lower human creatoreti. The latellec- tnat diOcrence between the Aryan and other ctvilixed uations and such savages as the South Sea iBlaoders, Is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, no geoerations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so* called. The "Sncrcd Spiirk " is missing iu them, and it is ibey who are the only inferior races oa the Glolje, now happily— owing to the wise adjustment of Nature which ever works in that directton —fast dying out. Verily mankind is "of one blood," but not 0/ thr same fisence. Wc are the hot- bouse, artificially quickene
: TIiE phllDsopbical view of Indian metaphysics places the Root of ^vil in the diSenatlatlon of the Hoznogeneoufl into the Hctcrogeueous, of the Cnit into Plurality.
44©
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
is the allegory which shows Cronus cursing Zeus for dethroning hinip in the primitive Golden Age of Saturn, when all men were Demi-gods^ and for creating a physical race of men weak and helpless in com- parison; and then as delivering to his (Zeus') revenge the culprit, who despoiled the Gods of their prerogative of creation and who thereby raised man to their level, intellectually and spiritually. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus represents the Host of the Primeval Progenitors, of the Pitaras, the "Fathers" who created man senseless and without mind; while the Divine Titan stands for the Spiritual Creators, the Devas who "fdl" into generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger, than the "Prometheans"; therefore, the latter are shown con- quered. **The lower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of Zeus," was on this Earth in its own sphere and plane of action ; whereas the superior Host was an exile from Heaven^ who had got entangled in the meshes of Matter. The inferior Host were masters of all the Cosmic and lower Titanic Forces; the higher Titan possessed only the Intellectual and Spiritual Fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind: the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of Matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance. In every such case one sees once more —
A god ... in fetters, anguish franglit; The foe of Zeus, in hatred held of all —
a God, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, wha suffered in self-sacrifice —
For that to men he [I] bore too fond a mind —
as the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by selfish- ness and egoism in every instance
Ihe modem Prometueus has now become Epi-metheus, "he who sees only after the event"; because the universal philanthropy of the former has long ago degenerated into selfishness and self-adoration. Man will rebecome the free Titan of old, but not before cyclic evolution has reestablished the broken hannony between the two natures — the terrestrial and the divine; after which he becomes impermeable to the lower Titanic Forces, invulnerable in his Personality, and immortal in his Individuality — ^but this cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated from his nature. When mau understands that **Deus non
BUDDHAS OF CONFESSION.
fecit moriem"* but that man has created it himself, he will re-become the Prometheus before his Fall.
For the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mvLhos in Greece, the reader is referred to Part II of this Volume, Section XX, "Prometheus, the Titan," etc. In the said Part — a kind of supplemen: to the present portion — every additional information is given upon those tenets that will be the most controverted and questioned. This work is so heterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged standards oi Theolog>' and Modem Science, that no proof which tends to show that these standards often usurp an illegal authority should be neglected.
ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE VERSES
OF STANZA XII.
The MS. from which these additional explanations are taken belongs to the group called Tongsliaktchi Sangye Songa^ or the "Records of the Thirty-five Buddhas of Confession," as they are exoterically called. These personages, however, though called in the Northern Buddhist religion Buddhas, may just as well be called Rishis, Avatiras, etc., as they are "Buddhas who have preceded ShSkyamuni" only for the Northern followers of the ethics preached by Gautama. These great Mahatmd.s, or Buddhas, are a universal and common property; they are historical Sages — at any rate for all the Occultists who believe in such a Hierarchy of Sages, and who have had its existence proved to them by the learned ones of the Fraternity. They are chosen from among some ninety-seven Buddhas in one group, and fifty-three in another,! mostly imaginary personages, who are really the personifica- tions of the powers of the first-naraed4 These "Baskets** of the oldest writings on *'palm leaves'* are kept very secret. Each MS. has appended to it a short synopsis of the history of that sub-race to which the particular Buddha-Lha belonged. The one special MS. from which the fragments which follow have been extracted, and then rendered into more comprehensible language, is said to have been copied from stone tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest days of the
• Sap., \. 13.
t Gautama Buddha, named Shikya ThQb-pa. ia the twtnly-scwnth of the last ffroup, a» most of these Buddhas bclOBg to the iMvine Dynasties which Instructed msnkind.
X Of these Buddhas, or the "EaliKhtened." the far lUsUnt predecessors of Gautama, the Biuldha, who reprefient. we are Uught, once Uving men. great Adepts and Saints, in whom the 'Sons of Wisdom" had inoamated. and who were, therefore, bo to speak, minor AvatAras of the Ctl^Ul Beiugs-elcTcn only belong to the Atlantcan Kacc, and twcmty-four to the Fifth Race, from »ti beifiQ- aings. They are identical with the Tlrttaankaras of the Joinaa.
442
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Fifth Race, who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the chief continents of the Atlantean Race. The day when much, if not all, of that which is given here from the Archaic Records, will be found correct, is not far distant. Then the modern Symbologists will acquire the certitude that even Odin, or the God Woden, the highest God in the German and Scandinavian mythology, is one of these thirty-five Buddhas; one of the earliest, indeed, for the Continent to which he and his Race belonged is also one of the earliest — so early, in truth,, that in those days tropical nature was to be found, where now lie eternal unthawing snows, and one could cross almost by dry land from Norway via Iceland and Greenland, to the lands that at present sur- round Hudson's Bay.* In similar fashion, in the jialmy days of the Atlantean Giants, the sons of the "Giants from the East,'* a pilgrim could perform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara Desert, to the lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events which were never -written outside the human memor>', but which were religiously transmitted from one generation to another, and from race to race, may have been preserved by constant transmission "within the