book volume of the brain," and through countless aeons, with more

truth and accuracy than inside any written document or record. "That which is part of our souls is eternal," says Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our Souls than that which happens at the dawn of our lives? Those lives are countless, but the Soul or Spirit that animates us throughout these myriads of existences is the same; and though "the book volume" of the physical brain may forget events within the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollec- tions can never desert the Divine Soul within us. Its whispers may- be too soft, the sound of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical senses; yet the shadow of events that were, yusi as much as the shadow of the events that are to cotne^ is within its perceptive powers, and is ever present before its mind's eye.
* This may account for the BinuUrity of Uie artificial mounds in the United States of America, and the tumuli In Norway. II is this identity that has led some American Archoxilogists to suffffest that Norwegian mahncni had ducowrrd America about one thousand yearn ago. (See Holmboc's Tracts de Bouddkisme en Norvtgi, p. 03.) There is no doubt that Americn is that "far distant land iulo which pious men and heavy stomu hnd trimsferred the sacred doctrine," as a Chinese writer suegrcstcd by his description to Ncuniann. IKit neither Professor Holmbor. of StockJiolm, nor the American Archieotoffists, have gruessed the rifirht age of the mounds, or the tumult. The fact that Norwegians may have re-discovered the land that their long- forgotten forefathers believed to have perished in the general submersion, does not conflict with the other fact that the Secret Doclrioe of the Und which was the cradle of physical mau. and of the Firih Kace. had found its way into the so- called New World ages and ages before the "Sacred Doctrine" of Buddhism.
■
THB OLDEST RECOilDS ABOUT ATLANTIS,
443
It is this Soul-voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe in tradi- tion more than in written historj', that what is said below is all true, and relates to pre-historic facts.
This is what is written in one passage:
The Kings of Light have departed in wrath. The sins of men have become so black that Earth quivers in her great agony. . . . The A sure Seats remain empty. Who of the Brown, who of the Red, or yet among the Black \_Raees~\, can sit in the Seats of the Blessed, the Seats of Know- ledge and Mercy? Who can assume the Flower of Power, the Plant of the Golden Stetn and the Asrurc Blossom ?
The "Kings of Light" is the name given in all old records to the Sovereigns of the Divine Dynasties. The "Azure Seats" are translated "Celestial Thrones" in certain documents. The "Flower of Power" is now the I/)tus; what it may have been at that period, who can tell?
The writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his people. They had become bereft of their "Azure" (Celestial) Kings, and "they of the deva-hue," the moon-like complexion, and "they of the refulgent (golden) face" have gone "to the Land of Bliss, the Land of Fire and Metal"— or, agreeably with the rules of s>Tnbolism, to the lands lying North and East, from whence "the Great Waters have been swept away, sucked in by the Earth and dissipated in the Air." The wise races had perceived "the black Storm -dragons, called down by the Dragons of Wisdom" — and "had fled, led on by the shining Protectors of the most Excellent Land" — the great ancient Adepts, presumably; those the Hindus refer to as their Manus and Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata Manu.
They "of the yellow hue" are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations; and the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There, entirely new races were bom; there, they lived and died until the separation of the nations. But this "separation" did not take place either in the localities assigned for it by Modem Science, nor in the way the Arj'ans are shown to have divided and separated by Prof. Max Miiller and other Ar^'anists. Nearly two-thirds of one million years have elapsed since that period. The yellow-faced giants of the Post-Atlantean day had ample time, through this forced con- finement to one part of the world, with the same racial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, during a period of nearly 700,000 years, to branch oflf into the most heterogeneous and diversified
444
THB SECRET DOCTRINH.
t>'pes. The same is shown in Africa; nowhere does a more extra- ordinary variability of types exist, from black to almost white, from gigantic men to dwarfish races; and this only because of their forced isolation. The Africans have not left their continent for several hun- dred thousands of years. If to-morrow the continent of Europe were •to disappear and other lands to rcemerge instead, and if the African tribes were to separate and scatter on the face of the Earth, it is they who, in about a hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured nations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative savageo'- Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into sjtfieriar and zn/irrior races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.
Such are the facts g^ven in the Archaic Records. Collating and com- paring them with some modern theories of evolution, minus Natural Selection,* these statements appear qaite reasonable and logical. Thus, while the Ary'ans are the descendants of the yellow Adam, the gigantic and highly civilized Atlanto-An,'an race, the Semites — and the Jews along with them — are those of the red Adam^ and thus both De Quatrefages and the writers of the Mosaic Genesis are right For> could chapter v of the First Book of Moses be compared with the genealogies found in our Archaic Bible, the period from Adam unto Noah would be found noticed therein, though of course under different names, the respective years of the Patriarchs being turned into periods^ and the whole being symbolical and allegorical. In the MS. under consideration many and frequent are the references to the great know- ledge and civilization of the Atlantean nations, showing the polity of several of them and the nature of their arts and sciences. If the Third Root-Race, the Lemuro-Atlanteans, are already spoken of as having been drowned "with their high civilizations and Gods,"t ^^w much more may the same be said of the AtlanteansI
It is from the Fourth Race that the early Aryans got their knowledge of "the bundle of wonderful things." the Sabhd and Mayasabhfi, men- tioned in the Mahdbharata, the gift of Mayasura to the Pandavas. It is from them that they learnt seronautics, VimSna Vidyi, the "know- ledge of flying in air-vehicles," and, therefore, their great arts of Meteorography and Meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Ajyans inherited their most valuable Science of the hidden virtues
* dit^ Physiotogical SeUctiom^ by O.J. ftonuoes, P.R.S.
+ Esoteric Buddhitm, p. 65.
of precious and other stones, of Chemistry, or rather Alchemy, of Mineralogy, Geolog)% Physics and Astronomy.
Several times the writer has put to herself the question: Is the story of £xodm—m its details at least — as narrated in the O/d Testament^ original? Or is it, like the story of Moses himself and many others, simply another version of the legends told of the Atlanteans? For who, upon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail to perceive the great similarity of the fundamental features? Remember the anger of "God" at the obduracy of Pharaoh, his commaud to the **chosen** ones to spoil the Eg>*ptians, before departing, of their "jewels of silver and jewels of gold,"* and finally the Egyptians and their Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea. Then read the following fragment of the earlier story from the Commentar>':
And the " Great King of the Dazzling Face^' the chief of all the Yellow- faced, was sadt seeing the sins of the Black-faced.
He sent his air-vehicles [ Vimanas^ to all his brother-chiefs ^chiefs of other Tialions and tribes^ with pious men unthin^ saying:
^'Prepare. Arise, ye men of the Good Law, and cross the land while [yet] dry.
" The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the land. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face [the Sorcerers] live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires [the Gnomes and Fire Elententah] are preparing their magic Agnyastra [fire- weapons worked by Magic\ But the Lords of the Dark Eye ['*Evil Eye'*] are stronger than they [the Elefnenials] and they are the slaves of the mighty ones. They are versed in Astra [ Vidyd, the highest magical knowledge],^ Come and use yotirs [i.e., your magic powers^ i?i order to counteract those of the Sorcerers]. Let every Lord of the Dazzling Face \_an Adept of the White Magic] cause the Vimdna of every Lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands [or posses^ sio?i\ lest any [of the Sorcerers] should by its means escape from the waters, avoid the Rod of the Four [Karmic Deities\ and save his wicked [followers, or people].
'*^May every Yellow Face send sleep from himself to [mesmerize?] every Black Faee. May even they [the Sorcerers] avoid pain and suffering. May
* Exodus, zd.
t Wrote Ibe late Brahmjichifl B«wa, * Yogi of grc^at renown and faoUnaw : " Szlcnslve worka on 'Aahtor Vidii* and such other sciences were at different times compiled in the lanf^ages of the time* from the Sanskrit originals. But the}', togrthn^ with the Sanskrit OTi|r|naU, wrrr lost at the time of the partial delu^ of our country." (The T^AUo/Arf/. June, iMo. "Some Tilings Utc Axyuu Xacw.*> Por Ajpiyaslrm, see WiUon's Specim^ni of the ffmdii Thmtrt, i. 197.
THE SKCRST DOCTRINB.
every man true (o the Solar Gods bind [^paralyze] every man under the L,unar Gods, lesi he should sujfer or escape his destiny.
**And may every Yellow Face offer of his life-water \^blood'\ to the speak' ing animal of a Black Face, lest he awakcfi his master*
** The hour /tas stnuk, the black night is ready.
**Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the Great Four.] May the Kings of Light return^
The great King fell upon his Dazzling Face and wept* . . .
When the Kings assembled, the waters had already moved, . . .
[Buf] the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the water-mark. Their Kings reached tlicm in their yimdnas, a?id led Ihcm an to the lands of Fire and Metal \^£ast and North'}.
Still, in another passage, it is said :
Stars Imetcors] showered on the lands of the Black Faces; but they slept.
The speaking beasts [^the magic watchers'] kept quiet.
The nether Lords waited for orders, but they came not, for their masters slept.
The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end of the Earth to the other. High lands ranaincd, the bottom of the Earth [the lands of the antipodes] remained dry. There dwelt those who escaped : the men of the Yellow Faces and of the straight eye [the frank and sincere people].
When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of iheir Vimanas in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone.
Then a passage shows some of the more powerful Magicians of the "Dark Faces,'* who awoke earlier than the others, pursuing those who had "spoilt them" and who were in the rear-guard^ for — "the nations that were led away were as thick as the stars of the milky way," says a more modern Commentary, written in Sanskrit only.
Like as a dragon-snake uncoils slowly its body, so the Sons of Men, led on by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their folds, and spreading out, expander like a running stream of sweet waters .... many of the faint- hearted among them perished on their way. But most were saved.
Yet the pursuers, "whose heads and chests soared high above the
* Sane wandcrftil, artlfidally-tiude beast, similar Id some way to Kraokenstein's cresUoD, irtilcli «poke and warned his master of every approachlag danger. The majiter was a "Slack Mngician," tbc mccliaoical animal was informed by a Djin, an Elemental, accordiofr to the accounli. The blood of a puR man alone could destroy him. See Part 11, Section XXV, "Seven la Astronomy, Science, and M*gic."
i The four Kumlc Gods, caUcd tbc Four Ufthir^ahs in the StanimA.
water," chased them ''for three lunar terms" until finally reached by the rising waves, they perished to the last man, the soil sinking under their feet and the Earth engulfing those who had desecrated her.
This sounds a good deal like the original material upon which the similar story in Exodus was built many hundred thousands of years later. The biography of Moses, the story of his birth, childhood and rescue from tlie Nile by Pharaoh's daughter, is now shown to have been adapted from the Cbaldsean narrative about Sargon. And if so,, the Assyrian tiles in the British Museum being a good proof of it, why not that of the Jews robbing the Egyptians of their jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and so on? The gigantic Magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the "Lords of the Dark Face." may, in the later narrative, have become the Egyptian Magi, and the yellow-faced nations of the Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of Jacob, the "chosen people"! One more statement has to be made. There have been several Divine Dynasties — a series for every Root-Race beginning with the Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity. The last seven Dynasties referred to in the Egv-ptian and Chaldsean records belonged to the Fifth Race, which, though generally called Ar>'an, was not entirely so, as it was ever largely mixed up with races to which Ethno- logy gives other names. It would be impossible, in view of the limited space at our disposal, to go any further into the description of the Atlanteans, iu whom the whole East believes as much as we believe in the ancient Egyptians, but whose existence the majority of the Western Scientists deny, as they have denied, before this, many a truth, from the existence of Homer down to that of the carrier pigeon. The civilization of the Atlanteans was greater than even that of the Egyptia-us. It is their degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato's Atlantis, who built the first Pyramids iu the country, and that certainly before the advent of the "Eastern Ethiopians," as Herodotus calls the Egx'ptians. This may be well inferred from the statement made by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the Pyramids that:
There are alao subterranean passages and winding retreats, which, it is said, meu skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of wbich they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different places leat the memory of oil their sacred ceremonies should be lost.
These men who "divined the coming of floods" were not Egyptians,
who never had any, except the periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last remnants of the Atlanteans, we maintain; those
of Bctair?
? Oocs the written
e wbole ooorae of his
cAtowIiag oTcrhnii.
of ChaJdsea and of
down br traditioa, aad per-
AUed (?) A»I— fii o^ FSa&iik Kiy ftvae hcca mitmtB^d, or tbc tcene of some great pbe wlucli destzovcd
Alter this one can torn wiA iBoce iiwfth'iin to the words of a Master
who wrote, several years befere tkcse wotdB were penned by Mr. Gould *
Tke Fourth Race had its periods tf tU kigkesi amiiga/um, Greek and
Roman and even EgjpHan cmHxmiioms mre n^iking compared to the dvi-
iizations that began with the Third Rate \^ — after its separation\
But if this civilization and the mastery of arts and sciences are denied to the Third and Fourth Races, no one will deny that between the great civilizations of antiquitv*. such as those of Egypt and India, there stretched the dark ages oi ' rass ignorance and barbarism eve* since the beginning of the Christian era up to our modem civilization, during which period all recollection of these traditions was lost. As said in Isis Unvdied:
Why should we forget that* ages before the prows of the adventorous Genoew eloTC the Western waters, the Phoenician vessels had drcumnavij^ated the Globe, and spread ciWUzalion in re^ons now silent and deserted? What Archaeologist will dare assert that the same hand whicli planned the Pyramids of KjoT^ Kamak, asd the thousand ruins now cnimbling to oblivion on the sandy banks of the Nile. did mot erect the monumental Nagkon-Wat of Cambodia: or tnce the hiero- •fypfaics on the obelisks and doors of the deserted Indian village, newly diicoreiwl 1b Britiah Columbia by Lord Dufferin: or those on the ruins of Paleaqne aad o€ Central America? Do not the relics we treasure in oar mnaevm — Isat of the long "lost arts" — speak loudly in favour of ancient civiltaatMni? J not prove, over and over again, that nations and coatiisents that haw bvricd along with them arts aad saeaces. which aeitlwr tbe fini in a medijrral cloister^ aor the lasC oacfced faj a wqiVjb Mor vitl--at leasK, in tke pnamt ceMaiy.
may be put tiov tiMt w put tbca: it nar
letlge the monuxnental proofs tbat earlier explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached and occupied?
If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do they not restore to U3 the lost arts of our postdiluvian forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of Luxor — the Tyrian purple, the bright vermilion, and dazzling blue which decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on the 1
first day of their application; the indestructible cement of the pyramids and of j
ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which can be turned like a corkscrew in |
its scabbard without breaking; the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass i
that is found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of ancient ;'
cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass? And if Chemistry is so j
little able to rival even the early mediaeval ages in some arts, why boast of achieve- ments which, according to strong prot>ability, were perfectly known thousands of 1 years ago. The more Archeology and Philology advance, the more humiliating to |. our pride are the discoveries which are daily made, the more glorious testimony I| do they bear in behalf of those who, perhaps on account of the distance of their J remote antiquity, have been until now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire of superstition.
Among other Arts and Sciences, the Ancients — ay, as an heirloom from the Atlanteans — had those of Astronomy and Symbolism, which included the knowledge of the 2^iac.
As already explained, the whole of Antiquity believed, with good reason, that humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the Planets, and these with the Zodiacal Signs. The whole world's history is recorded in the latter. In the ancient temples of Eg>'pt there is an example in the Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sufi, the writer-has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of the past — and also of the /uiure — histor>' of our Globe. Yet the original records exist, most undeniably.
As Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, and those they do happen to know of they fail to understand, as witness Bentley, the reader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to turn to the work of Denon* in which the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs can be found and examined. Having seen them personally, the writer has no longer need to trust to what other students — who have examined and studied both very carefully — have to say of them. The assertion of the Eg>*ptian Priests to Herodotus, that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, has been corroborated by Mackey, who states that the Poles are represented on the Zodiacs in both positions.
• TVattfh iM £j!^f, vol. ii.
a*
J
^50 THK SECRET DOCTRINK.
And in that which shows the Poles [polar axes] at right angles, there ore marl which show, that it was not the last time they were in that position ; but the [—after the Zodiacs hail been traced]. Capricorn, is. therein, represented at North Pole; and Cancer is divided, near its middle, at the South Pole; wbjcb is cootinnation that, originally they had their winter when the Sun wm in Cani But the chief characteristics of its being a monument commemorating the first tit that the Pole had been in that position, are the Lion and the Virgin.*
^roadly calculated, it is believed by Egyptologists that the Gr Pyramid was built 3,350 B.C.;t and that Menes and his Dynasty exist 750 years before the appearance of the Fourth Dynasty — during whiclr the Pyramids are supposed to have been built. Thus 4, loo years B.C. is the age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's declaration that all the facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians had already- Made very great progress in the arts of civilization before the age of Menes, and, per/iaps before they immigrated tnto the valley of the Nile—X
is very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis of the comparatively modern civilizing of Egypt. It points to a great civilization in pre- historic times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo-Hor. the "servants of Horus," were the people who had settled in Eg>'pt; aud, as M. Maspero affirms, it is to this "pre-historic race" that —
Belongs the honour of having constituted Egypt, such as we know it, from the commencement of the historic period.
And Staniland Wake adds:
They founded the principal cities of Egypt, and estahUshed the moat important sanctuaries.^
This was before the Great Pyramid epoch, and when Egjpt had hanily arisen from the waters. Yet:
They possessed the hieroglyphic form of writing special to the Egyptians, and must have been already considerably advanced in civilization.
As says Lenormant:
It was the country of the great pre-hiatoric sanctuariM. seats of the sacerdotal
dominion, which playe
What is the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000, at the utmost of 5,000, years B.C. (Maspero). Now it is claimed that it is by
M
• Tkt Afythological Astronomy of tlu Ancitnts Ufmonjtratfdip. i), by a struiKCly iatuilionnl Svinbii- logist and Astronorocr. a kind ot a arlf-madr Adqit of Norwich, who lived in the &nt quartcx of iht* century.
-* Sr« Proctor, Knowlfdgf, 1. pp. t4i, 400.
I Rnwlin«on'i Hetodotus, il. 345.
\ Tht Gftat /yramid. pp. 36, 37.
means of the Cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal Year) that the approxi- mate year of the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained.
Assuiniug that the long narrow downward pa&iiage leading from the cutrauce as directed towards the pole-star of the pyramid builders, astronomers have shown that in the year 2,170 B.C. the passage pointed to Alpha Draconis, the tlien pole- star. . , . Mr. Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer, after stating that the pole- star was in the required position ahout 3,350 B.C., as well as in 3,170 b.c., says: "either of these would correspond with the position of the descending passage in the Great Pyramid; but Egyptologists tell us there can absolutely be no doubt that the later epoch is far too late."*
But we are also told that :
This relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an extraordinary one . . . it could not occur again for a whole Sidereal Year.t
This demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of three Sidereal Years, the Great Pyramid must have been built 78.000 years ago, or in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least as readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C.
Now oil the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, the same characteristics of the signs as on the Dendera Zodiac are found. Those who know the Hindu symbols and constellations well, will be able to find out from the description of the Egyptian, whether the indi- cations of time are correct or not. On the Dendera Zodiac, as preserved by the modern Egyptian Coptic and Greek Adepts, and explained a little differently by Mackey, the Lion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is almost straight, pointing downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this position agreeing with the original conformation of these constellations. But adds Mackey:
lu many places we see the Lion [Sinha], with his tail turned up over his back, and ending with a Serpent's head: thereby, shewiugthat the Lion had been inverted: which, indeed, must have been the case with the whole Zodiac, and every other Constellation, when the Pole had been inverted.
Speaking of the circular Zodiac, which is also given by Denon, he says:
There .... the Lion is standing on the Serpent, and his tail forming a curve downward, from which we find that, though six or seven hundred thousand years must have passed between the two positions, yet they had made but little or no difference in the Constellations of Leo and the Hydra; while Virgo is repre- [aented very differently in the two— in tlie circular Sodiac, the Virgin is nursing her child: but it seems that they had not had that idea when the Pole was ^rst within
StaniUnd Wake, 0/. rft.. pp. 6, 7.
t fbid.
452
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the pl&ne of the Ecliptic; for in ifiis Zodiac, as given by Denon. we see tnree Virgins between the Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds, in her hand, an ear of wheat. It is much to be lamented that, there is in this Zodiac a breach of the figures in the latter part of Leo and the beginoing of Virgo, which has taken away one Decan out of each sign.*
Nevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong^ to three different epochs; namely, to the last three family races of the fourth sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race, each of which must have lived approximately from 25.000 to 30.000 years. The first of these, the "Aryan- Asiatics," witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the Giant Atlanteansf (the Ruta and Daitya Island-Continents) who perished some 850,000 years ago, toward the close of the Miocene Age.J The fourth sub-race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteaus — the Aryo-Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years ago. In order to understand this, the reader is asked to glance at the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root- Race — generally, though hardly correctly, called the Arj'au Race — and the explanations appended to it.
lyCt the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root-Races and the evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and concisely in Mr. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism.
1. There are seven Rounds in every Manvantara; this Round is the Fourth, and we are in the Fifth Root-Race, at present.
2. Each Root- Race has seven sub-races.
3. Each sub-race has. in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be called "branch" or "family" races.
4. The little tribes, shoots, and o£Fshoots of the last-named are countless, and depend on Karmic action.
Examine the Genealogical Tree hereto appended, and you will
* The Mythotoguai AstroHomy of thg Ancieni^ DemonsttaUd, pp. 4, 5.
t The term "AUantean" must not mtslc«d the reader lo rcfrard these u oae race onljr, orgyen a naUon. It is as though one said "Asiatics." Many, multityped, and varioas were the Atlanteaus, who rtpreaeoted severni "humanities," and almo-it a couutlc&K number of races and nations, more varied indeed Ihon would be the "Kuropeens," were this name to be given indiscriminately to the five ruHting parts of the world, which, at the rate colonization is proceeding, will be the case. perhaps, in less than two or three hundred years. There vvere bronm, red, yellow, white and black AUanteans; giants and dwarfs, as some African tribes comparatively are, even now.
X Says a tencher in EtoUric SmidMitm (p. 64): "lu the Eoceue age, even in its very first part, the gR-at cycle of the Fourth Kace men, the [Ivemnro-] Atlanteaus, had already reached iu highest point [of civilisation], and the great Continent, the father of nearly all the present coutiomtx, showed tbc first symptoms of sinking." And on page 70, it is shown that Atlantis as a whole perished durini; the Miocene period. To show how the contiDcnts, races, nations and cycles overlap each other, one has but to think of Lemuria, the last of whose lands perished about 700,000 years before the begin- nint( of the Tertiary period (p. 65}, snd the last of "Atlantis" only 11,000 years ago; thus both ovrr- lapping— one the Atlaulean period, and the other the Aryan.
THE GENEALOGICAL TREE OF OUR RACE.
453
understand. The illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist the reader in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the confusion which exists between the terms which have been used at different times for the divisions of Humanity. It is also here attempted to express in figures — but only within approximate limits, for the sake of comparison — the duration of time through which it is possible to definitely distinguish one division from another. It would only lead to hopeless confusion if any attempt were made to give -accurate dates to a few; for the Races, sub-races, etc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap and are entangled with each other until it is nearly impossible to separate them.
Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root-Race.
The Human Race has been compared to a tree, and this ser^ies admirably as an illustration.
The main stem of a tree may be compared to the Root-Race (a).
Its larger limbs to the various sub-races; seven in number (b', b', etc.).
On each of these limbs are seven "branches," or ''family'* races (c).
After this the cactus-plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy "leaves'* are covered with sharp spines, each of which may be com- pared to a nation or tribe of humau beings.
Now our Fifth Root-Race has already been in existence — as a Race sui generis and quite free from its parent stem — about 1,000,000 years; therefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding sub-races
454
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
baft lived approximately 310,000 years; thus each family race ha^ an average existence of about 30,000 years, and thus the European "family race'* ho^s 8till a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or the innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding **season*' of three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the comparative npproxiraation of duration between the lives of a "family race'* and u Sidereal Year.
The knowletigc of the foregoing, and the absolutely correct divisions of time, formed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were taught to the Disciples, and where they were transmitted by one Hierophaut to another. Everyone is aware that the European Astrono- itierH flAAign— arbitrarily enough — the date of the iuvention of the KKVpttun Zodiac to the years a.ooo or 2,400 B.C. (Proctor); and insist that the dale of this invention coincides with that of the erection of the (iri?nt Pyrnniid. This, to an Occultist and Eastern Astronomer, uiuikt appeiir begun lictwccn the 17th and 18th of February in the year 3,102 B.C. Kow the MIuiIAh claim that in the year 20.400 before Kali Yugam. the Oilglii of their Zodioc coincided with the Spring Equinox— there being at lliti tim*? n conjunction of the Sun and Moon— and Bailly proved by a Inigthy and careful c^omputntion of that date, that, even if fictitious, thr i'|r.iih from which they had started to establish the beginning of \Utit Kiill Vnga was rrrv reai. That "epoch is the year 3,102 before our #ra," \\% wrllcn.* The lunar eclipse arriving just a fortnight after the fiKUliiniiig nf the HInck Age— it took place in a point situated between \\\v Whcnt Kar of Virgo and the star B of the same constellation. One of (heir nuwl cuolcric Cycles is based upon certain conjunctions and r(i»|M'i livo ponitions of Virgo nnd the Pleiades (Krittika). Hence, as tnt» UgV|>tluu»i liroughl their Zodiac from Southern India and Lankfi.f th* •*iiol«tric niriinlng was evidently identical. The '' three \lrgins," or VlfKO In Ihrrr different positions, meant, with both, the record of the f\}%\ fhriT "DlvitK- or Astronomical Dynasties," who taught the Third K/M»t Knrr. luirl uflcr having abandoned the Atlanteans to their doom. nWmwA^ Of rcdettcended rather, during the third sub-race of the Fifth. In ofd**! to rcvciil to aaved humanity the mysteries of their birth-place
Oil* Hld^r(•aI Heavens. The same symbolical record of the human HiuaN and Ihc three Dynaatles (Gods. Manes— Semi-divine AstraLs of lh» Third and Fourth— and the Heroes of the Fifth Race) which pre-
Nm An'// ^ PAHt9m0mi* tmdtintu H OritntaU, pul tii.
Ceytoo.
THE BGYPTIAN LABYRINTH.
455
ceded the purely human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and passages of the E^'ptian Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles of course changed the face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed each time. In Mackey's Sphinxiad the speculations tof the bold author must have horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, for he says, fantastically enough:
But, afler all, the greatest length of time recorded by those monuments [the labyrinth, the P>Tamids and the Zodiacs] does not exceed five miUions o/ years:* which falls short of the records given us both by the [esoteric] Chinese and Hindoos; which latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or eight millions of years: t which I have seen upon a talisman of porcelain. t
The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura Maya, as the modem Hindus still have. As stated in Esoteric Buddhism, the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and "Romans'* some thousand years ago. were "remnants of the Atlanto- Aryans" — the former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans; the last-named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose sudden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Eg>'ptiau Initiates. The human Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes. had all the knowledge of the Atlan- Iteans, though there was no longer Atlantean blood in their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic Records. All this has been shown long ago.§ And it is just because the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75,000 and 80,000 years old that the Zodiac of the Greeks is far later. Voluey has correctly pointed out that it is only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.11
CONCLUSION.
Space forbids us to say anything more, and this part of The Secret Doctrine has to be closed. The forty-nine Stanzas and the few frag-
Thii U not so. The foreCathcTS of Che Aryan Brlhtnans had thHr Zodiac and Zodiacal colcula- iMons from thoK bora by Kriy&ahakti power, the "Sous of Yoga": the B^'ptUns from the Atlan- tcouaof Ruta.
T The former, therefore, may have registered time Tor acveD or eight milliooa of yean, but the Egyptians could not. i Op. cii., p. 6.
) This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed and answered. 5tee Five Ytan 0/ Thtoiophy, Art., "Mr. sinuett's Esoteric Buddhism," pp. 525-346.
ffnins 0/ Empires, p. 360. Volney says that, as Aries was In its 15th degree 1,447 B-t-, it follows Uiat the first degree of Libra coutd not have coincided with the Vernal Equiuos more lately than 15.194 year? B.C., to which if you add 1,790 since Christ, when Volney wrote this. It appears that 16,984 jreats have elapsed since the IGreelc or rather HeUenicj origin of the Zodiac.
456
THE SECRET DOCTRIXK.
tncnts from the Commentaries which have been given are all that can be published in these Volumes. These, with some still older Records — to which none but the highest Initiates have access — and a whole library of comments, glossaries, and explanations, form the synopsis of Man*s Genesis.
It is from these Commentaries that we have hitherto quoted and tried to explain the hidden meaning of some of the allegories, thus showing the true views of Esoteric Antiquity upon Geolog>', Anthropologn,*. and even Ethnolog>'. In the Part which follows we will endeavour to establish a still closer metaphysical connection between the earliest Races and their Creators, the Dtvitu Men from other Worlds; accom- panying the statements proffered with the most important demonstra- tions of the same in Esoteric Astronomy and Symbolism.
The duration of the "periods'* that separate, in space and time, the Fourth from the Fifth Race — in the historical* or even the legendary beginnings of the latter — is too tremendous for us to offer, even to a Theosophist, any more detailed accounts of them. During the course of the Post-diluvian Ages, which were marked at certain periodical epochs by the most terrible cataclysms, too many races and nations were bom, and disappeared almost without leaving a trace, for anyone to offer any description of the slightest value concerning them. Whether the Masters of Wisdom have a full and consecutive history of our Race from its incipient stage down to the present times; whether they pos- sess the uninterrupted record of man since he developed into a complete physical being, and became thereby the king of the animals and master on this Earth — is not for the writer to say. Most probably they have, and such is our own personal conviction. But if so, this knowledge is only for the highest Initiates, who do not take their students into their confidence. The writer can, therefore, give but what she has herself been taught, and no more, and even this will appear to the profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic dream, than as a possible reality.
This is only natural and as it should be, since for years such was the impression made upon the humble writer of these pages herself. Bom and bred in European, matter-of-fact and presumably civilized, countries, she aHsimitatcd the foregoing with the utmost difficulty. But there are proofs of a certain character which become irrefutable and are undeni-
* The wur iiaed. beaitue, ftlUiooKh historians have almost obaurdly dwarfed the
dalmi that #•)'>. m aQcrptrd, thry lielunir !•• liUtury. Thu«, the TTX>jan War it a bifttorical went, which, though even less U*aa 1,000 year* n.c. nrc aMlif-iiiM to it, rcaUy took place more nearly 6.000 than 5,000 yvaxt B.C.
WRITTKN IN THK STARS.
aye in the long run, to every earnest and unprejudiced mind. For a Series of years such were oflfered to her. and now she has the full certitude that our present Globe and its human Races must have been bom, grown and developed in this, and in no other way.
But this is the personal view of the writer; and her orthodoxy cannot be expected to have any more weight than any other ''doxy," in the eyes of those to whom every fresh theory is heterodox until otherwise proved. Therefore are we Occultists fully prepared for such questions as these; How do we know that the writer has not invented the whole scheme? And supposing jA^ has not, how can one tell that the whole of the foregoing, as given in the Stanzas, is not the product of the imagination of the ancients? How could they have preserved the records of such an immense, such an incredible antiquity?
The answer that the history of this world since its formation and to its end is "written in the stars," i.e., is recorded in the Zodiac and Universal Symbolism, whose keys are in the keeping of the Initiates, will hardly satisfy the doubters. The antiquity of the Zodiac in Egypt is much doubted, and it is denied point-blank with regard to India. "Your conclusions are often excellent, but your premises are always doubtful," the writer was once told by a profane friend. To this, the answer came that it was at least one point gained on scientific syllogisms, for, with the exception of a few problems from the domain of purely Physical Science, both the premises and conclusions of men of Science are as hypothetical as they are almost invariably erroneous. And if they do not so appear to the profane, the reason is simply this: the said profane are very little aware, taking as they do their scientific data on faith, that both premises and conclusions are generally the product of the same brains, which, however learned, are not infallible — a truism demonstrated daily by the shifting and re-shifting of scientific theories and speculations.
However it may be, the records of the temples, zodiacal and tradi- tional, as well as the ideographic records of the East, as read by the Adepts of the Sacred Science or VidyS, are not a whit more doubtful than the so-called ancient history of the European nations, now edited, corrected, and amplified by half a century of archaeological discoveries, and the very problematical readings of the Assyrian tiles, cuneiform fragments, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Our data also are based upon the same "readings" — in addition to an almost inexhaustible number of secret works of which Europe knows nothing — plus the perfect know
«
458
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
ledge by the Initiates of the symbolism of every word so recorded. Some of these records belong to an immense antiquity. Every Archaeologist and Palaeontologist is acquainted with the ideographic productions of certain semi-savage tribes, who from time immemorial have aimed at rendering their thoughts symboUcally. This is the earliest mode of recording events and ideas. And how old this know- ledge is in the human race may be inferred from some signs, evidently ideographic found on hatchets of the Palaeolithic period. The Red Indian tribes of America, only a few years ago, comparatively speaking, ^titioned the President of the United States to grant them possession of four small lakes, the petition being written on the tiny surface of a piece of fabric, which was covered with barely a dozen representations of animals and birds. The American savages have a number of such differ- ent kinds of writing, but not one of our Scientists is yet familiar with, or even knows of. the early hieroglyphic cypher, still preser\'ed in some Fraternities, and named in Occultism the Senzar. Moreover, all those who have decided to regard such modes of writing — e.g,^ the ideographs of the Red Indians, and even the Chinese characters — as *' attempts of the early races of mankind to express their untutored thoughts," will decidedly object to our statement, that writing was invented by the Atlauteans, and not at all by the Phoenicians. Indeed, such a claim as that writing was known to mankind many hundreds of millenniums ago, in the face of the Philologists who have decreed that writing was un- known in the days of Pinini, in India, as also to the Greeks in the time of Homer, will be met by general disapprobation, if not with silent scorn. All denial and ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will maintain the claim, and simply for this reason: from Bacon down to our modern Royal Society, we have too long a period full of the most ludicrous mistakes made by Science, to warrant our believing in modem scientific assumptions rather than in the statements of our Teachers. Writing, our Scientists say, was unknown to Panini; and this Sage nevertheless composed a grammar which contains 3,996 rules, and is the most perfect of all the grammars that were ever made! Pinini is made out to have lived barely a few centuries B.C., by the most liberal; and the rocks in Iran and Central Asia — whence the Philologists and Historians .show us the ancestors of the same Panini, the BrShmans, coming into India — are covered with writing, two and three thousand years old. at least, and twelve thousand, according to some fearless Palaeontologists.
WHOLESALE DENIAL.
459
Writing was an ars incogriifa in the days of Hesiod and Homer, agreeably to Grote, and was unknown to the Greeks so late as 770 B.C. ; and the Phoenicians who had invented it, and knew writing as far back as 1.500 B.C. at the earliest,* were living among the Greeks, and elbow- ing them, all the time! All these scientific and contradictory conclu- sions disappeared, however, into thin air, when Schlieraann discovered (a) the site of ancient Troy, whose actual existence had been so long regarded as a fable, and {J>) excavated from that site earthenware vessels with inscriptions in characters unknown to Palaeontologists and the all- denying Sanskritists. Who will now deny Troy, or these archaic inscriptions? As Professor Virchow witnesses:
I was myself an eye-wilness of two such discoveries, and helped to gather the articles together. The slanderers have long since been silenced, who were not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an imposture.!
Nor were truthful women spared any more than truthful men. Du Chaillu, Gordon Gumming, Madame Merian.J Bruce, and a host of others were charged with lying.
Says the author of Mythical Monsters, who gives this information in
the Introduction :§
Madame Merian was accused of deliberate falsehood in reference to her descrip- tion of a bird-eating spider nearly two hundred years ago. But now-a-days . . . reliable obser\'ers have con firmed it in regard to South America, India, and elsewhere.
Audubon was similarly accused by botanists of having invented the yellow water- lily, which he figured in his Birds of the South under the name of Nymph^a lutea, and after having lain under the imputation for years, was confirmed at lost by the discovery of the long-lost flower in Florida .... in ... . 1876.II
And. as Audubon was called a liar for this, and for his Halisetus Washingtonii.f so Victor Hugo was ridiculed for his marvellous word- painting of the devil-fish, and his description of a man becoming its helpless victim.
The thing was derided as a monstrous impossibility; yet within a few years were discovered, on the shores of Newfoundland, cuttle-fishes with arms extending to
* It is a historical fact that Soncbuoiatboa compiled the full recoTd of the Phcenician religion from annaU and state documents in the archives of the older PhoeaiciaD cities, and wrote it in PhoEntcian characters in i.a^ B.c,
T Prof. Virchow, ia Appendix I, to Schllcmann's llios. Murray, iS8o.
% Oouc writes of the latter: "She is set down a thorough heretic, not at all to be believed, a manu- bctoicr of unsound natoral history, an inventor of false facts in Bclence." \Romance of Natural NiiKtry, 2nd Series, p. 317-)
» Pp. 9. 10.
1) fhfiuUiw Scimce Monthly, No. 60, April, 1877.
H Dr. Cover writes : " That famous bird of Washington was a myth ; either Audubon was miataken^ or cite, as some do not hesitate to aAnn. he tud about it."
460
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
thirty feci in length, and capable of dragging a good-sized boat beneath the sur- face; and their action has been reproduced for centuries past ... by Japanese artists.*
And if Troy was denied, and regarded as a myth ; the existeace of Herculaneum and Pompeii declared a fiction ; the travels of Marco Polo laughed at and called as absurd a fable as one of Baron Miin- chausen's tales, why should the writer of Ish Unveiled and of The Secret Doctrine be any better treated? Mr. Charles Gould, the author of the above-cited volume quotes, in his excellent work, a few lines from Macmillan (i860), which are as true as life, and too much to the point not to be reproduced:
When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game. ... As soou as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the great (mis?) guiding spirit, h priori by name, who furnishes philosophers with their omniscience pro re uatd^ whispers that no such thing can be, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax. The heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When Leverrier and Adams predicted a planet by calculation, it was gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet which had been calculated was not Ihe planet but another which had clandestinely and im- properly got into the neighbourhood of the true body. The disposition to suspect Jtoax is stroftger than the disposition to hoax. Who was it that first announced that the classical writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax perpetrated by the monks in what the announcer would be as little or less inclined than Dr. Maitlond to call the dark ages.'t
Thus let it be. No disbeliever who takes The Secret Doctrifu for a "hoax" is forced, or even asked, to credit our statements, which have already been proclaimed to be such by certain very clever American journalists even before the work went to press.J
Nor. after all, is it necessary that any one should believe in the Occult Sciences and the Old Teachings, before he knows anything of, or even believes in his own Soul. No great truth has ever been accepted a
* /bid., pp. ID, It.
^ Mythical MotuUrx, p. 13, oote.
$ So fv back as July. iBW, at a time wliea the MS. of this work hod not yet left my wriUnfi: table, and Tht Sfctet Doctritu was utterly unknown to the world, il was already being denounced as a pro- duct of my brain and no more. Thei*c are the flattering terms in which the Jtvcming Tttffra^k (of America) referred to thin still unpublished work in its issue of June 50, t&dS: "Among tftt /azcinattng books /or July rtading is Mme. Blavatsky's new book on Theo»ophy ...(!) The Secrtl Doctrint, . . . . But because she can sour back into the Brahmin ignorance ....(! }) ts no proc/ that ewrytking the sayi is trtu." And once the prejudiced verdict has been given on the mistaken notioii that my book was out, and that the reviewer hod read it— neither of which was or could be the case- now that it is really out, the critic Yirill have to support his first statement, whether correct or other- wiac, and will ftt out of it, probably by a more alashinf criticism than ever.
HISTORICAl, "LIARS."
pricriy and generally a century or two has passed before it has begun to glimmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in such cases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths of to-day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and ificf Vfrsa. It is only in the twentieth century that portions, if not the whole, of the present work will be vindicated.
It is not destructive of our statements, therefore, even if Sir John Evans does affirm that writing was unknown in the Stone Age. For it may have been unknown during that period in the Fifth Aryan Race, and yet have been perfectly known to the Atlanteans of the Fourth, in the palmy days of their highest ci\nlization. The cycles of the rise and fall of nations and races are there to account for it.
If told that there have been cases before now of forged pseudographs being palmed off on the credulous, and that our work may be classed with JacolHofs Bible tfi India — although, by the way, there are more truths mixed up with its errors than are found in the works of orthodox and recognized Orientalists — the charge and comparison will dismay us very little. We bide our time. Even the famous Esour Veda of the last centur>', considered by Voltaire "the most precious gift from the East to the West," and by Max Miiller "about the sifliest book that can be read," is not altogether without facts and truths in it. The cases when ih^ a priori negations of specialists have become justified by sub- sequent corroborations, form but an insiguificant percentage of those that have been fully vindicated by subsequent discoveries and con- firmed, to the great dismay of the learned objectors. Ezour Veda was a very small bone of contention compared with the triumph of Sir William Jones, Anquetil du Perron, and others in the matter of Sanskrit and its literature. Such facts are recorded by Professor Max Miiller himself, who, speaking of the discomfiture of Dugald Stewart and Co. in connection with this, states that:
If the facts about Sanskrit were true. Dugald Stewart was too wise not to see that the conclusions drawn from them were inevitable. He" therefore denied the reality of such a language as Sanskrit altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanskrit had been put together after the model of Greek and Latin, by those arch-forgers and liars, the Brahmans, and that the whole of Sanskrit Utera- ^^ ture was an imposition.*
^B The writer is quite willing and feels proud to keep company with
^^ these Br3.hmans, and other kisiorical "liars," in the opinion of our I modem Dugald Stewarts. She has lived too long, and her experience
Sdtnct 0/ LMMguage, p. 168.
*
*
H
461
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
has been too varied and personal, for her not to know at least some- thing of human nature. "When you doubt, abstain/' says the wise Zoroaster, whose prudent aphorism is found corroborated in every case by daily life and experience. Yet, like St. John the Baptist, this Sage of the past ages is found preaching in the desert, in company with a more modern Philosopher, namely Bacon, who offers the same price- less bit of practical wisdom, when saying:
In contemplation fin any question of knowledge, we add], if a man begin with certiiiniien, he Jihall end i» doubts; hut if he will be content to begin with doubts, he ihatl fnU in rrrtaintm.
With this piece of advice from the father of English Philosophy to the representatives of British Scepticism we ought to close the debate, but our Theosophical readers are entitled to a final piece of Occult hiforumtion.
KnouKh has been said to show that evolution in general, events, nmnkitul, «nd everything else in Nature proceed in cycles. We have rKpokiMi of "leven Race,'*, five of which have nearly completed their fMithlv cHrerr, iind have claimed that every Root-Race, with its sub-
icct» MUd Innnincrttbic family divisions and tribes, was entirely distinct
lolM il« prccciliiiK rtud f*ucceeding Race. This will be objected to, on tlip rtuthdrily of" unitorm experience, in the question of Anthropology tind lOhiinloijv. Man— save in colour and type, and perhaps a differ* mttxi III faelttl peculiarities and cranial capacity— has been ever the ■NUU' Milder ••very clinifttc and in every part of the world, say the ^)^m(ui«i|Im|m| ay, even in stature— this, while maintaining that man dMOVitdH frotu the unmc nnknown ancestor as the ape; a claim that is louii'»illv iiiipuMiido wilhtMil an infinite variation of stature and fonn riniii hl« flint cvolnlion into n biped. The very logical persons who mtiliiliilli bi>lh pu»posllion» are welcome to their paradoxical views. OiHK moiv wo uddrcdH only lho! •if iiivHin fiinii "iho contemplation of the visible workings of external hutiiif," lliliik it
Mm hunt lo l»oU«v« thnl these wonderful stories of gods and demi-godi, of hIhmIn tuu) -iwurftt, nf druKunii and monsters of all descriptions, are transformatious, lltuii 1)1 Imi|Ii«vm IhiMU lt> hv iuveulions.
It U niily nuch "transformations" in physical nature, as much as in Iho HKfinory and conceptions of our present mankind, that the Secret DiM'irlne tcnchcM. It confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of MoilMiu Hdcncc, based upon the experience and exact observations of
»arely a few centuries, with the unbroken tradition and records ot its Sanctuaries; and brushing away that tissue of cobweb-like theories, spun in the darkness that covers a period of hardly a few millenniums, which Europeans call their '* history/' the Old Science says to us: Listen, now/to my version of the memoirs of Humanity.
The Human Races are born one from the other, grow, develop, become old, and die. Their sub-races and nations follow the same rule. If your all-denying Modem Science and so-called Philosophy do not contest that the human family is composed of a variety of well- de&ned types and races, it is only because the fact is undeniable; no one would say that there was no external difference between an Englishman, an African negro, and a Japanese or Chinaman. On the other hand, it is formally denied by most Naturalists that mixed human races, /.r, the seeds for entirely new races, are any longer formed in our days, although indeed the latter is maintained on good grounds by De Quatrefages and some others.
Nevertheless our general proposition will not be accepted. It will be said that whatever forms man has passed through in the long pre- historic past there are no more changes for him — save certain varia- tions, as at present — in the future. Hence that our Sixth and Seventh Root- Races are fictions.
To this it is again answered: How do you know? Your experience is limited to a few thousand years, to less than a day in the whole age of Humanity and to the present types of the actual continents and isles of our Fifth Race. How can 5'ou tell what will or will not be? Meanwhile, such is the prophecy of the Secret Books and their not un- certain statements.
Since the beginning of the Atlantcan Race many million years have passed, yet we find the last of the Atlanteans still mixed up with the Ar>'an element, 11,000 years ago. This shows the enormous over- lapping of one Race over the Race which succeeds it, though in characters and external type the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new features of the younger Race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human races. Now, Occult Philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new Race and races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that the trans- formation will take place, and has already silently commenced.
Pure Anglo-Saxons hardly three hundred years ago, the Americans of the United States have already become a nation apart, and, owing
466
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
scious mission, or get ritl of the burden of its cooperative work witb Nature. Thus will Mankind, race after race, perform its appointed Cyclic Pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already' begun to, change, each Tropical Year after the other dropping one sub-race, but onlj' to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other less favoured groups — the failures of Nature — will, like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind.
Such is the course of Nature under the sway of Karmic Law; of Ever-present and Ever-becoming Nature. For» in the words of a Sage, known only to a few Occultists:
The Pnsmt is the child of the Past: the Future, (he begotten of ike Present, And yet ^ O present moment I knowest tkou not that thou hast no parent^ nor canst thou have a child: thai thou art ever begetting but thy sel/f Be/ore thou hast ezrn begun to say "I am the progeny of the departed mometii, the child of the past" thou host become that past itself Brfore thou uiiercst the last svlhxble^ behold! thon art no more (he Present but verily that Future, Thus, are the Past, the Present, and the Future ike Ever-imng Trinity in One — the Mahamayd of the Absolute **/Sf
THB VXJTCTRR MANKIND.
465
I
Still changing in stature, general physique, and mentality, just as the Fourth overlapped our Aryan Race, and the Third had overlapped the Atlanteans.
This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout the whole sixth and seventh sub- races.* But the /asi remnants of the Fifth Continent will not disappear until some time after the birth of the n^w Race; when another and new dwelling, the Sixth Continent, will have appeared above the new waters on the face of the Globe, so as to receive the new stranger. To it also will emi- grate and there will settle all those who will be fortunate enough to escape the general disaster. When this shall be — as just said — it is not for the writer to know. Only, as Nature no more proceeds by sudden jumps and starts, than man changes suddenly from a child into a mature man, the final cataclysm will be preceded by many smaller submersions and destructions both by wave and volcanic fires. The exultant pulse will beat high in the heart of the race now in the American zone, but there will be no more Americans when the Sixth Race commences; no more, in fact, than Europeans; for they will have now become a « die, but will survive for a while; overlapping the new Race for many hundred thousands of years to come, it will, as we have just said, become transformed with it more slowly than its new successor — still getting entirely altered in mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind will not grow again into giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the Atlanteans; because while the evolution of the Fourth Race led the latter down to the very bottom of materiality in its physical development, the present Race is on its ascending arc ; and the Sixth will be rapidly growing out of its bonds of matter, and even of flesh.
Thus it is the mankind of the New World, the senior by far of our Old one — a fact men had also forgotten — of Pitala (the Antipodes, or the Nether World, as America is called in India), whose mission and Karma it is, to sow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and far more glorious Race than any of those we know of at present. The Cycles of Matter will be succeeded by Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind. On the law of parallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind will be composed of glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of Cyclic Destiny, and not one of its Units can escape its uncoa-
* See above, Uie diar^axn of the Genealogical Tree of Uie Fifth Race.
Thb namtiTes of the Doctrine are its cloak. The ample look only at the gaiment— that is, npoo the narratiTe of the Doctrine; more they know not. The instmcted, bowerer, see not merely the cloak, bat what the cloak covers.— ZoAar (iii. 15a; Fkanck, X19).
The Mysteries of the Faith (are) not to be divulged to all. . . . It is requisite to hkle in a mystery the wisdom tpokea.—Stromaitu
THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE VORLD-RELIGIONS.