SECTION V.

Is Pleroma Satan's Lair?
The subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other aspects.
Whether Milton's grandiose description of the three dayi Battle of the Angels of Light against those of Darkness justifies the suspicion that he must have heard of the corresponding Eastern tradition — it is impossible to say. Nevertheless, if not himself in connection with some Mystic, then it must have been through some one who had obtained access to the secret works of the Vatican. Among these there is a tradition concerning the "Beni Shamash'* — the *' Children of the Sun" — relating to the Eastern allegory, with far more minute de- tails in its triple version^ than one can get either from the Book of Enochs or the far more recent Rcoelalion of St. John concerning the "Old Dragon" and his various Slayers, as has been just shown.
It seems inexplicable to find, to this day, authors belonging to mystical societies who yet continue in their preconceived doubts as to the "alleged** antiquity of the Book of Enoch. Thus, while the author of the Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches is inclined to see in Enoch an Initiate converted to Christianity (! !").* the English com- piler of Eliphas Levi*s works, The Mysteries of Magic^ is also of a like opinion. He remarks that:
Outside the eniditiou of Dr. Keuealy, no modem scholarship attributes any more remote antiquity to the latter work [the Book of Enoch] than the fourth century B.ct
Modern scholarship has been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems but yesterday that the greatest literary critics in Europe denied the ver>' authenticity of that work, together with the Orphic Hymns* and even the Book of Hermes or Thoth, until whole verses from th latter were discovered on Egfyptian monuments and tombs of the
:
• p. 16.
t *■ Biognphicol mid Critical Kway." p.
EvUL
LUTNG DEVILS. 1533
•
earliest dynasties. The opiuion of Archbishop Laurence is quoted elsewhere.
The '*01d Dragon" and Satan, which have now become singly and collectively the symbol of, and the theological term for. the "Fallen Angel,'* are not so described either in the original Kabalah (.the Chal- daean Book of Nttmbers) or in the modem. For the most learned, if not the greatest of modem Kabalists, namely Eliphas Levi, describes Satan in the following glowing terms:
It U that Angel who was proud enough to believe himself God; brave enough to buy bis independence at the price of eternal suffering antl torture; beautiful enough to have adored himself in full divine light ; stroug enough to still reign in darkness amidst agony, and to have made himself a throne out of his inextin- guishable pyre. It is the Satan of the republican and heretical Milton . . . the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy of pure spirits (! !)••
This description — one which reconciles so cunningly Theological dogma and Kabalistic allegory', and even contrives to include a political. compliment in its phraseology'— is, when read in the right spirit, quite correct.
Yes, indeed; it is this grand^t of ideals, this ever-living symbol — nay apotheosis— of self-.sacrifice for the intellectual independence of humanity; this ever Active Energy protesting against Static Inertia^ the principle to which Self-assertion is a crime, and Thought and the Light of Knowledge odious. As Eliphas says with unparalleled justice and irony :
It ia this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities, who, slanderously charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and claws, which would fit far better his im- placable tormentor.t
It is he who has been finally transformed into a Serpent — the Red Dragon. But Eliphas Levi was yet too subser\Ment to his Roman Catholic authorities — one may add, too Jesuitical — to confess that this Devil was mankind, and never had any existence on Earth outside of that mankind.]:
In this, Christian Theology, although following slavishly in the steps of Paganism, has only been true to its own time-hououred policy. It
* HiUQite de la Ma^it, pp. 16, 17.
+ rbid., toe. cii.
J What drvt'l could be possessed of morr cunning, crafl and cruelty than the Whitcchapel murderer, "Jack the Ripper" of iS8£. whose uuparallcled, blood-thirsty and cool wickedness led him to aleughter and mutilate in cold blood seven unfortunate and otkerofiie innocent womeo \ One haa but to read the daily papers to Bud jii thoiwr wife- and cliild'liealing, dniuken brutes (huabands and fathers 1). & %malt percentage of whom is daily brought before the cotuta, the complete perAonifica* tiunit of the dc%-iU of the CtariBtiiui lleU I
534
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
had to isolate itself, and to assert its authorit>'. Hence it could not ao better than turn every Pagan Deity into a Devil. Every bright Sun- God of antiquity — a glorious Deity by day» and its own Opponent and Adversary by night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the germs of night and day — has now been turned into the antithetical Shadow of God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of despotic human dogma. After which all these producers of light and shadow, all the Sun- and the Moon- Gods, have been cursed, and thus the one God chosen out of the many and Satan have both been anthropomorphized. But Theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating and finally analyzing all that is artificially forced upon its reverence. History shows in every race and even tribe, especially in the Semitic nation the natural impulse to exalt its own tribal deity above all others to th hegemony of the Gods, and proves that the God of the Israelites was' such a tribal God, and no more, even though the Christian Church, following the lead of the "chosen" people, is pleased to enforce the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the others. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, neverthe- less, it was one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only a God "among" other "Gods.*'* The Lord appears to Abraham, and while saying, "I am the Almighty God" yet adds, "I will establish my covenant . . . to be a God unto thee" (Abraham); and unto his seed after him \ — but not unto Aryan Europeans.
But. then, there was the grandiose and ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth to be set ofif against a dark background, to gain in radiance by the contrast; and a darker one the Church could hardly invent, lacking the Old Testatnetit symbology, ignorant of the real connotation of the name of Jehovah — the Rabbinical secret substitute for the In efFable and Unpronounceable Name — the Church mistook the cunningly fabricated shadow for the reality, the anthropomorphized generative symbol for the one Secondless Reality, the ever Unknowable Cause of All. As a logical sequence the Church, for purposes of duality, had to invent an anthropomorphic Devil^^reated, as taught by her, by God himself. Satan has now turned out to be the monster fabricated by the Jehovah- Frankenstein — his father's curse and a thorn in the divine side, a monster, than whom no earthly Frankenstein could have. fabricated a more ridiculous bogey.
I
»
Pialm, Ixxsoi.
T CtnesU, xvU. 7,
JEHOVAH^ A PERSONATING SPIRIT.
535
The author of New Aspects of Life describes the Jewish God very
correctly from the kabalistic standpoint as:
The Spirit of the Earth, which bad revealed itself to the Jew as Jehovah.* . , , It was that Spirit again who, after the death of Jeaus, assumed his fonn and personated him as the risen Christ
— the doctrine of Cerinthus and several Gnostic sects with slight varia- tion, as one can see. But the author's explanations and deductions are remarkable :
None knew . . . better than Moses, . . . [and] so well as be, how great was the power of those [Gods of Egypt] with whose priests he had contended, . . . the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the God [by the Jews only].
Asks the author:
What were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah, the Achad, is claimed to be the God ... by overcoming them ?
To which our Occultism answers: Those whom the Church now calls the Fallen Angels and collectively Satan, the Dragon — overcome, if we have to accept her dictum, by Michael and his Host, that Michael being simply Jehovah himself, one of the subordinate Spirits at best. Therefore, the author is again right in saying:
The Greeks believed iu the existence of . . . daimons. But . . . they were anticipated by the Hebrews, who held that there was a riass of personating spirits which they designated demons, *'personators.'* . . Admitting with
Jehovah, who expressly asserts it, the existence of other gods, which were pcrsonators of the One God, were these other gods simply a higher class of personating spirits, . . . which had acquired and exercised greater powers? And is not personation the key to the mystery of the spirit state f But once granting this position, how are we to know thai Jehovah was not a personating spirit, a spirit which arrogated to itself that it was, and thus became, the persouator of the one nnknown and unknowable God? Nay, how do we know that the spirit calling itself Jehovah, iu arrogating to itself his attributes did not thus cause its own designation to be imputed to the One who is in reality as nameless as incognizable ?t
Then the author shows that "the spirit Jehovah is a personator" on its own admission. It acknowledged to Moses "that it had appeared to the patriarchs as the God Shaddai" and the "God Helion.''
With the same breath it assumed the name of Jehovah; and it is on the faith of the assertion of this pcrsonator that the names El, Eloah. Elohim, and Shaddai, have been read and interpreted in juxtaposition with Jehovah as the ** Lord God Almighty." [Then when] the name Jehovah became ineffable, the designation Adonai, "Lord,'* was substituted for it^ and ... it was owing to this substi-
• Op. dt.t p. »09.
t ibid., pp. M4* M5*
536
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
lution that the "Lord" passed from the Jewish to the Christian "Word" and World as a designation of God.*
And how are we to know, the author may add, that Jehovah was not many spirits personating even that seemingly one — Jod or Jod-He?
But if the Christian Church was the first to make the existence of Satan a dogma, it was because, as shown in /sis UnveiUd, the Devil — the powerful Enemy of God (? ! !) had to become the comer stone and pillar of the Church. For, as a Theosophist, M. Jules Baissac, truly observes in his Satan on k Diabie:
n fallait ^viter de paraitre autoriscr le dogme du double principe en faisant de ce Satan cr(5ateur une puissance r^elle, et pour cxpliqucr Ic mal origiiiel, on profdre centre Manes Thypothiise d'une permission de rutiique Toul-Puissantt
The choice and policy were unfortunate, anyhow. Either the per- sonator of the lower God of Abraham and Jacob ought to have been made entirely distinct from the mystic "Father" of Jesus, or — the "Fallen "Augels should have been left unslandered by further fiction.s.
Ever>' God of the Gentiles is connected with, and closely related to, Jehovah — the Elohim; for they are all One Host, whose units differ only in name in the E.*^oteric Teachings. Between the "Obedient" and the "Fallen" Angels there is no difference whatever, except in their respective functions, or rather in the inertia of some, and the activity of others, among those Dhyan Chohans, or Elohim, who were "commissioned to create," i.e., to fabricate the manifested world out of the eternal material.
The Kabalists say that the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah turned upside down, for "Satan is not a black God but the negation of the white Deity," or the Light of Truth. God is Light and Satan is the necessary Darkness or Shadow to set it off, without which pure Light would be invisible and incomprehensible. | "For the Initiates." sa^ Eliphas Levi, "the Devil is not a person but a creative Force, for Good
• Hud., p, 146.
t Op. cit., p. 9. After the Polymorphic P*nthelMn of some Onofltica nme Oie Exoteric Dualixra of Manes, who was accused of personj Tyinjc Kvit and ranking of the Devil a Cod— the rival of God him- self. We do not vee that the Chri»Uao Church haij bo much improved on thai exoteric idea of the ManichcaiM, for nhe calU God her KJng of T.tf^hl, and Satan the King of Darknrtut, to thift day.
: To quote in this relation Mr. S. I«aing, in his admirable work Modern Sa'tnce and .yfodtm Thcughi altogether the idea of an Anthropomorphic deity, and adopt fmnkly the •icientiBc idea of a First Cause, inscnitable and past finding out : and of a universe whose laws we can trace, but of whose real eatencc wi: know nolhinR, and can unty suspect or faintly discern a fundamental law which may malcc the polarity of good and evil a ncccssarj- condition of existence." Were Science to know " tlie real cvbcnce," iostead of knowing nothing of it, the faint suspicion would turn into the certitnde of the existence of such a law. and tite knowledge that this law is connected with Karma.
• -t.. it'v
AKA5HA, THE MYSTERIUM MAGNUM.
537
as for Evil/' The luitiates represented this Force, which presides at physical generation, under the mysterious form of Cxod Pan — or Nature; whence the horns and hoofs of that mythical and symbolic figure, as also the Christian "goat" of the "Witches' Sabbath/' With regard to this too, Christians have imprudently forgotten that the "goat" was also the \4ctim selected for the atonement of all the sins of Israel, that the scape-goat was indeed the sacrificial martyr, tlie symbol of the greatest myster\' on earth — the "fall into generation/' Only, the Jews have long forgotten the real meaning of their (to the non -initialed) ridiculous hero, selected from the drama of life in the Great Mys- teries enacted by them in the desert; and the Christians have never known it.
Eliphas Levi seeks to explain the dogma of his Church by parodoxes and metaphors, but succeeds ver>' poorly in the face of the many volumes written by pious Roman Catholic Demonologists under the approbation and auspices of Rome, in this nineteenth century of ours. For the true Roman Catholic, the Devil or Satan is a reality ; the drama enacted in the Sidereal Light according to the seer of Patmos — who desired, perhaps, to improve upon the narrative in the Book of Enoch — is as real, and as historical a fact as any other allegory and symbolical event in the Bible. But the Initiates give an explanation which differs from that given by Eliphas Le\n, whose genius and crafty intellect had to submit to a certain compromise dictated to him from Rome.
Thus, the true and "uncompromising" Kabalists admit that, for all purposes of Science and Philosophy, it is enough that the profane should know that the Great Magic Agent^alled by the followers of the Marquis de St. Martin, the Martinists. the Astral Light, by the mediaeval Kabalists and Alchemists the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum, and by the F,astern Occultists ^^ther. the reflec- tion of Akasha — is that which the Church calls Lucifer. That the Latin scholastics have succeeded in transforming the Universal Soul and Pleroma — the Vehicle of Light and the receptacle of all forms, a Force spread throughout the whole Universe, with its direct and indirect effects — into Satan and his works, is no news to any one. But now they are prepared to give out to the above-mentioned profane even the secrets hinted at by Eliphas Levi, without adequate explanation, for the latter^s policy of veiled revelations could only lead to further supersti- tion and misunderstanding. "WTiat. indeed, can a student of Occultism, who is a beginner, gather from the following highly poetical sentences
538
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
of Eliphas Levi, which are as apocal>TJtic as the writings of any of the Alchemists?
Lucifer [the Astra! Light] ... is an intermediate force exiating in creation; it serves to create and to destroy, and the Fall of Adnni wits an erotic id toxication which has rendered his generation a slave to this fatal Light, . . every sexual passion that overpowers our senses is a whirlvrind of that l^iji^ht whicb seeks to drag us towards the abyss of death. Madness, halluclnatiorifl. viaiou ertasies, are all forms of a very dangerous excitation due to thU interior phou phonis [?]. Thus light, finally, is of the nature of fire, the intelligent use of which warms and vivifies, and the excess of which, on the contrary, dissolves and ansi' hilates.
Thus man is called upon to assume a sovereign empire over thi» [Astral] Light and conquer thereby his immortality, and is threatened at the same time writh being intoxicated^ absorbed, and eternally destroyed by it.
This Light, therefore, inasmuch as it is devouring, revengeful, and fatal, would thus really be hell-fire, the serpent of the legend; the tormented errors of whidh it is full, the tears and the gnashing of teeth of the abortive Iwings it devours, the phantom of life that escapes them, and seems to mock and insult their a^ony, oil this would be the Devil or Satan indeed.*
There is x\o/aise statement in all this; nothingsave a superabuadance of ill-applied metaphors, as, for instance, in the application of the myth of Adam to the illustration of the astral effects. Akasha.f the Astral Light, can be defined in a few words; it is the Universal Soul, the Matrix of the Universe, the Mysterium Magnum from which all that exists is bom by separation or difftrentiation. It is the cause of existence: it fills all the infinite Space, h Space itself, in one sense, or both its sixth and .seventh principles.^ But as the finite in the Infinite, as regards manifestation this Light must have its shadowy side — as already remarked. And as the Infinite can never be manifested, hence the finite world has to be satisfied with the shadow alone, which its actions draw upon humanity and which men attract and /orct into
* Hiitoitt de la Magie, pp. 196, 197.
t Akisha is not thr Ether of Science, sb lome OHentBllstji traiulBte it.
t Says Johuint^ Tritheim. the Abbot of Sponhcim, the greBlesl AAtrologer and Kabalist of hU daj *'The art of divine inafric consists in the ability to percet\T the essence of ihin^s in the lAt^l of Nature [Astral Ijght), nnd by uning the aouUpowem of the spirit to produce mntenal thin^ froai fht uniieen universe, and in nuch operations the Abo^-e and the Below ratutt be brought to^^her and cosde to act harnioniously. The Spirit of Nature (Astral Ught] is a unity, creatine »nd forminx everythinx. and by acting' through Uie Instrumcutolity of man it mayproduce wonderful things. Such pruceii*r« take place according to law. You will learn the law by which these things ore accompliabed. if yon lemm to know yourself. You will know it by the power of the spirit that is In yottrseir, and ocecMa- pliah it by mixing your spirit with the essence tliat come* ont of youraelf. If you wish to succeed ta such a work you must know how to separate spirit and life in Nature, and, moreover, to aeparate the astral soul in j^oursclf and to make It tangible, and then the substance of the soul will appear vioibly and tangibly, rendered objective by the power of the spirit." (Quoted in Dr. Frana Hartmaaa'a fiiraaijuj, pp. 164, 165.)
'4
THE SO0L AND HBART OF THE GREAT MOTHER.
539
activity. Hence, while the Astral Light is the Universal Cause in its tin manifested unity and in6nity. it becomes, with regard to mankind, simply the effects of the causes produced by men in their sinful lives. It is not its bright denizens — whether they are called Spirits of Light or Darkness — that produce Good or Evil, but mankind itself that determines the unavoidable action and reaction in the Great Magic Agent. It is mankind which has become the "Serpent of Genesis.** and thus causes daily and hourly the Fall and Sin of the ''Celestial Virgin" — which thus becomes the Mother of Gods and De%'ils at one and the same time; for she is the ever-loving, beneficent Deity to all those who stir her Soul and Heart, instead of attracting to themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called by Eliphas Levi — the "fatal light" which kills and destroys. Humanity, in its units, can overpower and master its effects; but only by the holiness of their lives and by producing good causes. It has power only on the manifested lower principles — the shadow of the Unknown and Incognizable Deity in Space. But in antiquity and reality, Lucifer, or Luciferus, is the name of the Angelic Entity presiding over the Light of Truth as over the light of the day. In the great Valentinian Gospel Pistis Sophia it is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy Names of the three Triple Powers (Tpi5wa/*e«), that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost accord- ing to these Gnostics — the most cultured of all), resides in the planet Venus or Lucifer.
Thus to the profane, the Astral Light may be God and Devil at once — Demon est Dats inversus — that is to say, through ever>* point of Infinite Space thrill the magnetic and electrical currents of animate Nature, the life-giving and death-giving waves^ for death on earth becomes life on another plane. Lucifer is divine and terrestrial Light, the "Holy Ghost" and "Satan/* at one and the same time, visible Space being truly filled with the differeutiated Breath invisibly; and the Astral Light, the manifested effects of the two who are one, guided and attracted by ourselves, is the Karnia of Humanity, both a personal and im- personal entity — personal, because it is the mystic name given by St. Martin to the Host of Divine Creators, Guides and Rulers of this Planet; impersonal, as the Cause and Effect of Universal Life and Death.
The Fall was the result of man's knowledge^ for his "eyes \vere opened.*' Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the Hidden Knowledge by the "Fallen Angel," for the latter had become from that da}' his
540
THR SECRET DOCTRINE.
Manas, Mind and Self-consciousness. In each of us that golden thread of continuous Life — periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous existence on Earth, and supcr-scnsuous in Devachan — is from the beginning of our appearance upon this Earth. It is the Sutratma, the luminous thread of immortal impersonal Monadship, on which our earthly *Mives" or evanescent Egos are strung as so many beads — according to the beautiful expression of the VedSntic Philosophy.
And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the "Lord of Pbosphoros" — brimstone was a Theological improvement — and Lucifer, or "Light-Bearer," is in us: it is our Mind, our Tempter and Redeemer, our intelligent Liberator and Sa\'iour from pure animal- ism. Without this principle — the emanation of the very essence of the pure divine principle Mahat (lutelligence), which radiates direct from the Divine Mind — we would be surely no better than animals. The first maji Adam was made only a living soul (Nephcsh), the last Adam was made a quickening spirit^ — says Paul, his words referring to the building or creation of man. Without this quickening spirit, or human mind or soul, there would be no difference between man and beast; as there is none, in fact, between animals with respect to their actions. The tiger and the donkey, the hawk aud the dove, are each one as pure and as innocent as the other, because irresponsible. Each follows its instinct, the tiger and the hawk killing with the same un- concern as the donkey eats a thistle, or the dove pecks at a grain ol corn. If the Fall had the significance given to it by Theolog>' ; if thai Fall occurred as a result of an act never intended by Nature — a ««, how about the animals? If we are told that they procreate their species in consequence of that same "original sin," for which God cursed the Earth — hence everything living on it — we will put another question. We are told by Theology, as also by Science, that the animal was on Earth far earlier than man. We ask the former; How did it procreate its species, before the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had been plucked off? As said:
The Christians — far less clear-sighted than the great Mystic and Liberator whose name they have assumed, whose doctrines they have misunderstood and travestied* and whose rnctnory they have blackened by ttteir deeds— took the Jewish Jehovah as
* The reml ori^nal text of / CfitiniMiant, xv. 44, rendered kaballstlcally and HBotericatly mrald read: "It is sown a stml body [not 'natural* l>odj], it is raised a spirit body." St. Paul was mn Initiate, and bia words have quite a diHcrcnt mcaninf: when read Esoterically. The body "is sowit in nvaJtmfss [paiislvity] ; U is raiaed in power" (v. 4j) — or in spiritnality aud Intellect.
THE LOGOS AND SATAN ARE ONE.
541
he waa, find of course strove vainly to reconcile the Gospel of Light and Liberty with the Deity of Darkness and Submission.*
But it is sufficiently proven now that all the soi-disant evil Spirits who are credited with having made war on the Gods, are identical as personalities; that, moreover, all the ancient religions taught the same tenet, save the final conclusion, which differs from the Christian. The seven primeval Gods had all a dual state, one essential, the other accidental. In their essential state they were all the Builders or Fa-shioners, the Preservers and the Rulers of this World; and in the accidental state» clothing themselves in visible corporeality, they descended on the Earth and reigned on it as Kings and Instructors of the lower Hosts, who had incarnated once more upon it as men.
Thus, Esoteric Philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in both its aspects — good and evil, but Theology cannot admit this philosophical truth. Teaching as it does the dogma of the Fallen Angels in its dead-letter meaning, and having made of Satan the comer-stone and pillar of the dogma of redemption — to do so would be suicidal. Having once shown the rebellious Angels distinct from God and the Logos in their personalities, to admit that the downfall of the disobcdiaii Spirits means .simply their fall into generation and matter, would be equivalent to saying that God and Satan were identical. For since the Logos, or God, is the aggregate of that once divine Host accused of having fallen, it would naturally follow that the Logos and Satan are one.
Vet such Avas the real philosophical view in antiquity of the now disfigured tenet. The Verbum, or the *'Son," was shown in a dual
• "The Wnr in Ucarcn " ( Tluasophisi, tii. 34, 36. 67), bjr Godolphin Mitford, later tn life Mnrarl Ali Be^. Bom in India, the son of a misAionary. U. Mitford was con\*erted to Ifitam, and died a Mabomedau in iH8^. He was m. moftt extrnordioary MysUc, of great learning and remarkable IntelU- Ifcncc. But he left the Right Path nnd forthwith fell under Karmic retribution. .\s well shown hy the author of the article quoted. "The followers of the defeated 'Elohlm' first massacred by the victoriouji JewH [the Jehoviteaj, and then persuaded by the \'ictoriou)t ChrisUatis and Mohainedauii, continued [ucvertheleas]. . . . Some [of thenc scattered sects] . . , have lost even the tradition of the true raUonole of their belief— to worship in aectecy and mystery the Principle of Fire, Light, nnd Lilierty. Why do the Snbean Bedouins (avowedly Manotheista when dwelling in the Mohamedan cities) in the solitude of the desert niglit yet invoke the starry * Host of Heaven ' i %Vliy do the Yezidis, the 'Devil Worshippers.' iworship the " Muluk-Taoos'— the 'Lord Peacock'— the etnhlem of Pride and of Hundred-eyed Intelligence [and of Initiation nisoj, which was expelled from Heaven with Satan, according to an old Oriental tradition? Why do the Gholaitca and their kindred Mesopotamo- Iranian Mohamedan Sects believe lu the 'Noor lUahee*— the 'Light of the Elohim'— traji»niitte continued in ignorant superstition the traditional religion of the * Ugbt Deities* whom Jahvch over- threw!" (p. 09)— iB iaid to have ovenhrovm rather: for by overthrojring them he would have over- thrown himself. The Muluk-Ta new form of Moloch, Meiek, Molech, Malayak, and MalachJm— Mcascngcra, Angels, etc
k
542
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
aspect by the Pagau Gnostics — in fact, he was a duality in full unify. Hence, the endless and various national versions. The Greeks had Jupiter, the son of Cronus, the Father, who hurls him down into the depths of Kosmos. The Aryans had Brahmfi (in later theolog>*) precipitated by Shiva into the Abyss of Darkness, etc. But the Fall of all these Logoi and Demiourgoi from their primitive exalted position, contained in all cases one and the same Esoteric signification; the Curse, in its philosophical meaning, of being incarnated on this Earth; an unavoidable rung in the Ladder of Cosmic Evolution, a highly philosophical and fitting Kannic Law, without which the presence of Evil on Earth would have to remain for ever a closed mystery to the understanding of true Philosophy. To say, as the author of Espriis Tomb/s d£s Paiats does, that since —
Christiauity is made to rest on two pillars, that of evil (iroMjpou), and of good (HyoBovi) : on two forces, in short (^&yaBax koX Koxal Swa/w«) : hence, if we suppress the punishment of the evil forces^ the protecting mission of the good powers wiU have neither value nor sense
— is to utter the most unphilosophical absurdity. If it fits in with, and explains, Christian dogma, it obscures the facts and truths of the primitive Wisdom of the ages. The cautious hints of Paul have all the true Esoteric meaning, and it took centuries of scholastic casuistry to give them the false colouring in their present interpretations. The Verbum and Lucifer are one in their dual aspect; and the "Prince of the Air" {princeps aeris hujiis) is not the "God of that period." but an everlasting principle. When the latter was said to be ever circ!i% around the world (jjtd circttmambuiat terrain)^ the great Apostle refe simply to the never-ceasing cycles of human incarnations, in which will ever predominate unto the day when Humanity is redeemed by the true divine Enlightenment which gives the correct perception of things.
It is easy to disfigure vague expressions written in dead and long- forgotten languages, and palm them off on the ignorant masses as truths and revealed facts. The identity of thought and meaning is the one thing that strikes the student in all the religions which mention the tradition of the Fallen Spirits, and in those great religions there is not one that fails to mention and describe it in one or another form Thus. Hoaug-ty, the Great Spirit, sees his Sons, who had acqui active wisdom^ falling into the Valley of Pain. Their leader, the Flying Dragon, having drunk of the forbidden Ambrosia, fell to the Earth
Lt an
:lin^A rrco^B^ evil 1
%
THE SEVENTH MYSTERY OP CREATIOK.
543
with his Host (Kings). In the Zend Avesta^ Angra Mainyu (Ahriraan), surrounding himself with Fire (the "Flames" of the Stanzas), seeks to conquer the Heavens,* when Ahura Mazda, descending from the solid Heaven he inhabits, to the help of the Heavens ihal revolve (in time and space, the manifested worlds of cycles including those of incarna- tion), and the Arashaspands. the "seven bright Sravah,'* accompanied by their stars, fight Ahriman, and the vanquished Devas fall to the Earth along with him.t In the Vendiddd the Da^vas are called "evil- doing," and are shown to rush away "into the depths of the .... world of hell," or Matter.J This is an allegory which shows the Devas compelled to incarnate^ once that they have separated themselves from their Parent Essence, or. in other words, after the Unit had become multiple, after differentiation and manifestation.
Typhon the Eg>'ptian Python, the Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all belong to the same legend of Spirits peopling the Earth, They are not '^Demons commissioned to create and organize this visible uni- verse," but the Fashioners or "Architects" of the Worlds, and the Progenitors of Man. They are the Fallen Angels, metaphorically — the "true mirrors" of the "Eternal Wisdom.'*
What is the complete truth as well as the Esoteric meaning about this universal myth? The whole essence of truth cannot be transmitted from month to car. Nor can any pen describe it, not even that of the Recording Angel, unless man finds the answer in the sanctuar>' of his own heart, in the innermost depths of his divine intuition. It is the great Seventh Mystery of Creation, the first and the last; and those who read St. John's Apocalypse may find its shadow lurking under the seventh seal. It can be represented only in its apparent, objective form, like the eternal riddle of the Sphinx. If the Sphinx threw herself into the sea and perished, it is not because CEdipus had unriddled the secret of the ages, but because, by anthropomorphizing the ever-spiri- tual and the subjective, he had dishonoured the great truth for ever. Therefore, we can give it only from its philosophical and intellectual planes, unlocked with three keys respectively — for the last four keys of the seven that throw wide open the portals to the Mysteries of Nature are in the hands of the highest Initiates, and cannot be divulged to the masses at large — not in this century, at any rate,
* So do«
an taugbt. Why then should such a deaire make of any one a DerQ ? r Acad, del TnsCTt'p., xxmxx. 690. i Fargard zU. 4;; Danaeateter's Timns., p. Ji8.
I
544
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
The dead-letter is everywhere the same. The dualism in the Mazdeau religion was born from exoteric interpretation. The holy Airyaman. the *'bestower of weal/'* invoked in the prayer called Airyama-ishyo, is the divine aspect of Ahriman, **the deadly, the Da^va of the Da^vas/'f and Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. "Keep us from our hater, O Mazda and Armaita Spenta,*'^ has, as a prayer and invocation, an identical meaning with "Lead us not into temptation," and is addressed by man to the terrible spirit of dnaliiy in man himself. For Abura Mazda is the Spiritual. Divine, and Purified Man. and Armalcr Spenta. the Spirit of the Earth or materiality, is the same as Ahriman or Angra Mainyu in one sense.
The whole of the Magian or Mazdean literature — or what remains of it — is magical, occult, hence allegorical and symbolical, even its "mystery of the Iaw/*§ Now the Mobed and the Parsi keep their eye on the Baresma during the sacrifice — the divine twig off Ormazd's "Tree" having been transformed into a bunch of metallic rods — and wonder why neither the Amesha Spentas, nor "the high and beautiful golden Haomas, nor even their Vohu-Mano (good thoughts), nor their Rata (sacrificial offering),*' help them much. Let them meditate on the "Tree of Wisdom," and by study assimilate, one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the Tree of Eternal Life, the white Hadma, the Gaokerena, is through one end of the Earth to the other; and Haoma is in Heaven as it is on Earth. But to become once more a priest of it, and a "healer," man must heal himself, for this must be done before he can heal others.
This proves once more that, in order to be dealt with, with at least an approximate degree of justice, the so-called " myths" have to be closely examined from all their aspects. In truth, every one of the seven keys has to be used in its right place, and never mixed with the others — if we would unveil the entire cycle of mysteries. In our day of dreary soul-killing Materialism, the ancient Priest-Initiates have become, in the opinion of our learned generations, the synonyms of clever impostors, kindling the fires of superstition in order to obtain an easier sway over the miuds of men. This is an unfounded calumny, generated by scepticism and uncharitable thoughts. No one believed more than they did in Gods — or, we may call them, the spiritual and
I
* Veni\
t ibid.. Par, lix. 43; ofi. cit, p. 318.
} From Uie I'fHdIddd Sidak, quoted by Dannestcter, op, c$i., p. U3.
) See Uie Gitbs in Yuna xUv.
THE NUMBER 888.
545
aow invisible Powers, or Spirits, the Noumena of the phenomena; and they believed simply because ihcy knew. And though after being initiated into the Mysteries of Nature, they were forced to withhold their knowledge from the profane, who would have surely abused it, such secrecy was undeniably less dangerous than the policy of their usurpers and successors. The former taught only that which they w^ll knew. The latter, teaching what they do not know, have invented, as a secure haven for their ignorance, a jealous and cruel Deity, who forbids man to pry into his mysteries under the penalty of damnation: as well they may, for his mysteries can at best be only hinted at in polite ears. never described. Turn to King's Gnostics and their Remains, and see for yourself what was the primitive Ark of the Covenant, according to the author, who says :
There is a Rabbinical tradition . . . that the Cherubim placed over it were represented as male and female, in the act of copulation, in order to express the grand doctrine of the Easence of Form and Matter^ the two principles of all things. When the Chaldeans broke into the Sanctuary and beheld this moat astounding emblem, thej* naturally enough exclaimed, "Is this your God, of whom you boast, that He is such a lo\'er of purity ! " •
King thinks that this tradition "savours too much of Alexandrian philosophy to demand any credit." to which we demur. The shape and form of the wings of the two Cherubim standing on the right and left sides of the Ark. these wings meeting over the '*Holy of Holies." are an emblent quite eloquent in itself, not to speak of the "holy" Jod within the Ark! The Mystery of Agathodaemon, whose legend states, **I am Chnumis, Sun of the Universe, 700," can alone solve the mys- tery of Jesus, the number of whose name is "888." It is not the key of St. Peter, or the Church dogma, but the Narthex — the Wand of the Candidate for Initiation — that has to be wrenched from the grasp of the long-silent Sphinx of the ages. Meanwhile:
The augurs, who, upon meeting each other, have to thrust their tongues into their cheeks to suppress a fit of laughter, may be more numerous in our own age than they ever were in the day of Sylla.
• op. di.. p. 441.
Kl
SECTION YI.
Prometheus, the Titan.
HIS ORIGIN IN ANCIENT INDIA.
In our modern day there is not the slightest doubt in the minds of the best European syrabologists that the name Prometheus possesse the greatest and most mysterious significance in antiquity. While giving the history of Deucalion, whom the Boeotians regarded as tht ancestor of the human races, and who was the son of Prometheus* according to the significant legend, the author of the Mylhologie dt la Gfice Antique remarks :
Thus Prometheus is something more than the archetype of humanity; he iaits generator. In the same way that we saw Hephiestus moulding the first womta [Pandora] and endowing her with life, so Prometheus kneads the moist day, of which he fashions tlie body of the lirst man whom he will endow with the soul- spark.* After the flood of Deucalion, Zeus, they said, had commanded Prome' theus and Athena to call forth a new race of men from the mire left by the waters of the deluge.t and, in the day of Pausanias, the slime which the hero had used for this purpose was still shown in Phocis.^ On several archaic monuments we still see Prometheus modelling a human body, either alone or with Athena's belp.$
The same author reminds us of another equally mysterious person- age» though one less generally known than Prometheus, whose legend offers remarkable analogies with that of the Titan. The name of this second ancestor and generator is Phoroneus, the hero of an ancient poem, now unfortunately no longer extant, the Phoroneidae. His legend was localized in Argolis, where a perpetual flame was preserved on his altar as a reminder that he was the bringer of fire upon earth-U A benefactor of men, like Prometheus, he had made them participators
• ApaUodorus, I. 7, 1.
T Ovid., AfiCam., I. 81. Etym. M.. v. UpOfiJjBev^.
t Pausania*, X. 4. 4.
I Qp. at., p. S64.
I Paunsiu, n. 19, 5; c/. m, 3.
THE ASH YOGDRASIL.
547
of every bliss on earth. Plato* and Clemens Alexandrinusf say that Phoroneus was the first man, or the *' father of mortals." His genealog>', which assigns to him the river Inachos as his father, reminds us of that of Prometheus, which makes that Titan the son of the Oceanid Clymcne. But the mother of Phoroneus was the nymph Melia; a significant descent which distinguishes him from Prometheus.^
Melia, Decharme thinks, is the personification of the "Ash-tree," whence, according to Hesiod, issued the race of the age of Bronze,§ and which with the Greeks is the celestial tree common to every Aryan mythology. This Ash is the Yggdrasil of Norse antiquity, which the Noms sprinkle daily with the waters from the fountain of Urd, that it may not wither. It remains verdant tiil the !ast days of the Golden Age. Then the Noms — the three sisters who gaze respectively into the Past, the Present, and the Future — make known the decree of Orlog or Fate (Karma), but men are conscious only of the Present.
[But when] Gultweig Osfold-ore) comes, the bewitching enchantress . . . who, thrice cast into the fire, arises each time more beautiful than before and fills the souls of gods and men with unappeasable longing, then the Noms . . . enter into being, and the blesaed peace of childhood's dreams passes away, and sin comes into existence with all its evil consequences [and Karma]. |
The thrice-purified Gold is — Manas, the Conscious Soul.
With the Greeks, the Ash-tree represented the same idea, Iti luxuriant boughs are the Sidereal Heaven, golden by day and studded with stars by night — the fruits of Melia and Yggdrasil, under whose protecting shadow humanity lived during the Golden Age without desire as without fear, "^hat tree had a fruit, or an inflamed bough, which was lighlning'* — Decharme guesses.
And here steps in the killing Materialism of the age, that peculiar twist in the modern mind, which, like a Northern blast, bends all on its way, and freezes every intuition, allowing it no hand in the physical speculations of the day. After having seen in Prometheus no more than "fire by friction," the learned author of the Myikohgie de la Grhe
Anliqut perceives in this "fruit" a trifle more than an allusion to ter-
^ .. - . ^^^»
• Timtrut, p. 33.
+ Strom., I. p.^So.
t llecltarmt. i^irf . p. »6s.
} opera tt Dies. 143.145. According to the Occult Teaching, three Vugas passed away during the llni« of the Third Soot-Race, i>., tbt Satya. the TreiA, and the Dvipara Vuga— aaswering to the Golden Akc in iu early inuocence; to Uie Silver, when it reached its raaturityi aad to the Bronse Age, when, aeparating Into Kxes, it iKC&me the mighty Demi-gods of old.
Q Aigard and Ike Godt, pp. tt. i.^.
L
548
THE SECRET DOCTRINB.
>D of
'^
of
TO-
restrial fire and its discovery. It is no longer fire, owing to the fall of lightning setting some dry fuel in a blaze, and thus revealing all its priceless benefits to palseolithic men — but something more mysterious this time, though still as earthly!
A divine bird, oeslled in the branches [of the celestial Ash-tree], stole that bongh [or the fruit] and carried it down on the earth in its bill. Now the Greek word ^optAtyivi is the rigid equivalent of the Sanskrit word bhuranyu, "the rapid," an epithet of Agni. considered as the carrier of the divine spark. Phoroneua* soo of Melia or of the celestial ash, thus corresponds to a conception far more ancie probably, than that one which transfonned the pramantha [of the old A HindQs] into Uie Greek Prometheus. Phoroneus is the [personified] bird, brings the heavenly lightning to the earth. Traditions relating to the birth of the race of Bronze, and those which made of Phoroneus the father of the Argo lians, are an evidence to us that this thunderbolt [or lightning], as in the legend Hephaestus or Prometheus, was the origin of the human race.*
This still affords us no more than the external meaning of the symbols and the allegory. It is now supposed that the name of Pro- metheus has been unriddled. But the modern Mytholog^sts and Orientalists see in it no longer what their fathers saw on the authority of the whole of classical antiquity. They only find therein something far more appropriate to the spirit of the age, namely, a phallic element But the name of Phoroneus, as well as that of Prometheus, bears n one, nor even two, but a series of esoteric meanings. Both relate the seven Celestial Fires; to Agni Abhimanin. his three sons, and their forty-five sons, constituting the Forty-nine Fires. Do all these numbers relate only to the terrestrial mode of fire and to the flame of sexual passion? Did the Hindii Ar>'an mind never soar above such purely sensual conceptions; that mind which is declared by Prof. Max Miiller to be the mos^ spiritual and mystically inclined on the whole globe? The number of those fires alone otight to have suggested an inkling the truth.
We are told that one is no longer permitted, in this age of rationa thought, to explain the name of Pro-metheus as the old Greeks di The latter, it seems:
Baaing themselveA on the apparent analogy of yrpofirjOeik with the verb wpofioM- davctf, saw in him the type of the "foreseeing" man. to whom, for the sake of symmetr>', a brother was added— Kpi-metheus, or "he who takes counsel a/i^r the event, "t
But now the Orientalists have decided otherwise. They know the real meaning of the two names better than those who invented them
O^. tit., p. «66.
f Ibid,, p. ss'*
THB PORTRY OF MODRKN ORIENTAUSTS.
549
The legend is based upon an event of universal importance. It was built to commemorate
A great event which must have strongly impressed hself upon the imagination of the first witnesses, and its remembrance has never since faded out from popular memory**
What was this? Laying aside every poetical yfr/ww, all those dreams of the Golden Age, let us imagine — argne the modem scholars — in all its gross realism, the first miserable state of humanity, the striking picture of which was traced for us after ^schylus by Lucretius, and the exact truth of which is now confirmed by Science; and then we may understand better that a new life really began for man, on that day when he saw the first spark produced by the friction of two pieces of wood, or from the veins of a flint. How could men help feeling grati- tude to that mysterious and marvellous being which they were hence- forth enabled to create at their will, and which was no sooner born, than it grew and expanded, developing with singular power.
This terrestrial flame, was it not analogous in nature to that which sent them from above its light and heat, or which frightened them in the thunderbolt? Was it not derived from the same source ? And if its origin was in heaven, must it not have been brought down some day on earth? If so, who was the powerful being. the beneficent being, God or man, who had conquered it? Such are the questions which the curiosity of the Aryans offered in the early days of their existence, and which found their answer in the myth of Prometheus.t
The Philosophy of Occult Science finds two weak points in the above reflections, and proceeds to point them out. The miserable state of Humanity described by j^Eschylus and Lucretius was no more wretched
A
then, in the early days of the Aryans, than it is now. That "state" was limited to the savage tribes; and the now-existing savages are not a whit more happy or unhappy than their forefathers were a million years ago.
It is an accepted fact in Science that "rude implements, exactly resembling those in use among existing savages** are found in river- gravels and caves, geologically "implying an enormous antiquity." So great is that resemblance that, as the author of The Modem Zoroastrian tells us:
If the collection in the Colonial Exhibition of stone celts and arrow-heads used by the Bushmen of South Africa were placed side by side with one from the British Museum of similar objects from Kent's Cavern or the Caves of Dordogne, no one but an expert could distinguish between them.|
ywrf., p. «S7-
f Ihid.^ p. 158.
X Op. cit., p. 145.
5SO
THK SBCRBT DOCTRINE.
And if there are Bushmen existing now, in our age of the highest civilization, who are no higher intellectually than the race of men which inhabited Devonshire and Southern France during the Palaso- lithic age, why could not the latter have lived simultaneously with, and have been the contemporary of, other races as highly civilized for their day as we are for ours? That the sum of knowledge increases daily ia, mankind, ''but that intellectual capacity does not increase with it, shown when the intellect, if not the physical knowledge, of the Euclids, Pythagorases, PSninis, Kapilas, Platos, and Socrates, is compared with that of the Newtons, Kants, and the modern Huxleys and Haeckels. On comparing the results obtained by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, the Cranio- logist.* with regard to the internal capacity of the skull — its volume being taken as the standard and test for judging of the intellectual capacities — Dr. Pfaff finds that this capacity among the French (cer- tainly in the highest rank of mankind) is 88-4 cubic inches, being thus '•perceptibly smaller than that of the Polynesians generally, which, even among many Papuans and Alfuras of the lowest grade, amounts to 89 and 897 cubic inches" : which shows that it is the quality and nol the quantity of the brain that is the cause of intellectual capacity. The average index of skulls among various races hanng been now recognized to be "one of the most characteristic marks of differen between different races," the following comparison is suggestive:
The index of breadth among the Scandinavians [isj at 75 ; among the English at 76; among Holsteiners at 77 ; in Bresgau at 80; Schiller's skull shows an index of breadth even of 82 . . . the Madurese also 82 !
Finally, the same comparison between the oldest skulls known and the European, brings to light the startling fact that:
Most of these old sfculfs^ belonging to the stone period^ are above rath^ than the average of the brain of the now living man in volume.
Calculating the measures for the height, breadth, and length itt' inches from the average measurements of several skulls, the following stuns are obtained:
1. Old Northern skulls of the stone age 18-877 >
2. Average of 48 skulls of the same period from England 1S858
3. Average of 7 skulls of the same period from Wales 18*649
4. Average of 36 skulls of the stone age from France .... 18*220 The average of the now living Europeans is i8'579 inches; of
Hottentots, 17795 inches!
^
THE BOON GIVHN BY PROMBTHKUS.
551
These figures show plainly that: The size of the brain o{ the oldest populations known to ns is not snch as to place them on a lower level than that of the now living inhabitant? of the Earth,*
Besides which, they show the "missing link" vanishing into thin air. Of these, however, more anon : we must return to our direct subject.
As the '* Prometheus Vinctus" of iEschylus tells us, the race which Jupiter so ardently desired "to quench, and plant a new one in its stead" (v. 241), suffered meniait not physical misery. The first boon Prometheus gave to mortals, as he tells the Chorus, was to hinder them ** irom foreseeing d^zih" (v. 256); he "saved the mortal race from sink- ing blasted down to Hades* gloom" (v. 244); and then only, "besides" that, he gave them fire (v. 260). This shows plainly the dnal character at any rate of the Promethean myth, if Orientalists will not accept the existence of the seven keys taught in Occultism. This relates to the first opening of man's spiritual perceptions, not to his first seeing or "discovering" fire. For fire was never discovered, but existed on Earth since its beginning. It existed in the seismic activity of the early ages, volcanic eruptions being as frequent and constant in those periods as fog is in England now. And if we are told that men appeared so late on Earth that all but a few volcanoes were already extinct, and that geological disturbances had made room for a more settled state of things, we answer: Let a new race of men — whether evolved from Angel or Gorilla — appear now on any uninhabited spot of the Globe, with the exception perhaps of the Sahara, and a thousand to one it would not be a year or two old before "discovering fire," through lightning setting the grass or something else in flames. This assump- tion, that primitive man li\-ed ages on Earth before he was made acquainted with fire, is one of the most painfully illogical of all. But old ^schylus was an Initiate, and knew well what he was giving out.f
No Occultist acquainted with symbology and the fact that Wisdom came to us from the East, will for a moment deny that the m>'th of Prometheus has reached Europe from Aryavarta. Nor is he likely to deny that in one sense Prometheus represents "fire by friction." Therefore, he admires the sagacit>' of M. F. Baudry, who shows in "Les Mythes du Feu et du Breuvage Celeste," J one of the aspects of
• Th* Age and Origin o/Mam.
T The m In the (Uy of the old Greek writrn* !( to explain the reol me«ning of the ideas of jRwhylus— whi :h . a« beinjf an igrnomnt ancient Greels. he coald not expreaa so well hlmaelf— is absuixlly ludicrotu !
J Rnttt Ggrmani^ue, i86i. pp. 35^, et teg^. See alao Mimoim dt ia SocifU df ia LingnisH^e, L pp. i2T,tt itqq.
k.
55»
THB SBCRBT DOCTRINB.
Prometheus and his origin from India. He shows the reader itie supposed pvimiiive process to obtain fire, still in use to-day in India t( light the sacrificial flame. This is what he says:
This process, such as it is xzuDutely described in the Vedic Sfitras, coaslats rapidly turning a slick in a socket made in the centre of a piece of wood, Tbe' friction develops intense heat and ends by setting on fire the particles of wood in contact. The motion of the stick is not a continuous rotation, but a series of motions in contrary senses, by means of a cord fixed to the stick in its middle; the operator holds one of the ends in each hand and pulls them alternately. . . . The full process is designated in Sanskrit by the verb manthdmi, mathndni^ which means "to rub, agitate, shake and obtain by rubbing," and is especially applied to rotatory friction, as is proved by its derivative mandala^ which signifies a circle. . . . The pieces of wood ser\'iug for the production of fire have each their name in Sanskrit. The stick which turns is called pramaniha: the discus which receives it is called arani and arani: "the two aranis" designating the ensembU of the instrument.*
It remains to be seen what the Brihmans will say to this. But even supposing that Prometheus, in one of the aspects of his myth, was conceived as the producer of iire by means of the Pramantha, or as an animate and divine Pramantha, would this imply that the symbolism had no other than the phallic meaning attributed to it by modem synt^H bologists? Decharrae. at any rate, seems to have a correct glimmering^ of the truth; for he unconsciously corroborates all that the Occult Sciences teach with regard to the Minasa Devas, who have endowed man with the consciousness of his immortal soul — that consciousness which hinders man "from foreseeing death." and makes him know is immortal. t "How did Prometheus come into possession of [divine] spark?" he asks.
Fire having its abode in heaven, it is there he must have gone to find it befia he could carry it down to men, and, to approach the gods, he must have been a god himself. J
*. Quoted by Dechmrme, op. at., pp. 85a, 859. There is Uie ufififr and nether piece of Umber used W produce thifl sacred fire by attrition at wicriflces, and it is the jVrant which contains the socket. This Is proven by an allcfrory in Uic i^'ajm and other PurAna^, which tcU us Uiat Nimi, tbe son of Tkah- vUcn. had left no successor, and that tbe Rishis, fearing^ to leave the Earth without a ruler, intro- duced the king's t>ody into the socket of an AranI — like an upper Anuii — and produced from it s prince named Janaka. " It was by reason of the peculiar way in which he was eageodered that he was called Janaka." Sec also Ooldstucker's SaniAni ZhcrKmory. fit^ i«c/. ( KijAhh Airiiui. Wilson's Trans., iii. 330.) Drvaki, Krishna's mother. In a prayer addressed to her, is called " the AranI wkoie attrition engenders fire."
f The Monad of the animal i» as immortal as that of man. yet the brute knows nothing of this; it lives an animal life of scnsatiou just as the first human would have lived, on attaining physical velopmeut in the Third Rmcc, bad it not been for the Agnishritta and tbe BUnosa Pitila.
J Op. ai., p. 159.
ess
he J
1
GREEK IDEAS MISUNBERSTOOD.
553
The Greeks held that he was of the Divine Race, Titan lapetos";* the Hindus, that he was a Deva.
the son of the
But celestial fire belonged in the beginning to the gods alone-, it was a treasure they reseo'ed for themselves . . . over which they jealously watched. . . » •'The'prudent son of lapetus," says Hesiod, ''deceived Jupiter by stealing and con- cealing in the cavity of a narthex, the indefatigable fire of the resplendent glow."t . . . Thus the gift made by Prometheus to men was a conquest made from heaven. Now according to Greek ideas [in this identical with those of the Occul- tists], this possession forced from Jupiter, this human trespassiug upon the property of the gods, had to be followed by an expiation. . . . Prometheus, moreover, belongs to that race of Titans who had rebelled J against the gods, and whom the master of Olympus had hurled down into Tartarus; like them, he is the genius of evil, doomed to cruel suffering. $
What is most revolting in the explanations that follow, is the one- sided view taken of this grandest of all myths. The most intuitional among modern writers cannot, or will not, rise in their conceptions above the level of the Earth and cosmic phenomena. It is not denied that the moral idea in the myth, as presented in the Theogmiy of Hesiod, plays a certain part iu the primitive Greek conception. The Titan is more than a thief of the celestial fire. He is the represen- tation of humanity — active, industrious, intelligent, but at the same time ambitious, which aims at equalling divine powers. Therefore it is humanity punished in the person of Prometheus, but it is only so with the Greeks. With them, Prometheus is not a criminal, save in the eyes of the Gods. In his relation with the Earth, he is, on the contrary, a God himself, a friend of mankind ( has raised to civilization and initiated into the knowledge of all the arts; a conception which found its most poetical expounder in ^s- chylus. But with all other nations Prometheus is — what? The Fallen Angel, Satan, as the Church would have it? Not at all. He is simply the image of the pei^icious and dreaded effects of lightning. He is the "evil fire" (mat faij\ and the symbol of the divine reproductive malt organ.
Reduced to its simple expression, the myth we are trying to explain is then simply a [cosmic] genius of fire.Y
♦ lavcTunr^i;?. Thmg,. p, 518.
* /»*(»., 565. t The Fallen Angels, therefore ; the Afiuru of the Indiao PoDlheon.
I Oechnrme, 0/. cii., pp. «39, ate.
II /^id., p. 26 J. ^ Ibid., p. 161.
554
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
It is the former idea (the phallic) which was prsaninently Aryan, i we believe Adalbert Kuhn* and F. Bawdry. For: ^
The fire used by man being the result of the action of prafnaniha in the arojii, ^* the Aryas mtist kave ascribeti [.'] the same origin to celestial fire, and Ihej* must havff imagined [?] that a god armed with the pramantha. or a divine pramantha. caused a yiolent friction in the bosom of the clouds, which gave birth to lightning ^ and thunderbolts, t fl
This idea is supported by the fact that, according to Plutarch's testimony, $ the ^^ Stoics thought that thunder was the result of the struggle of storm -clouds, and lightning a conflagration due to friction ; while Aristotle saw in the thunderbolt only the action of clouds which clashed with each other. What was this theory, if not the scientific translation of the production of fire by friction ? . . . E%*ery. thing leads us to think that, from the highest anliquit)', and before the dispersion of the Ar^'as, it was believed that the pramantha lighted the fire in the storm-cloud as well as in the aratiis.|| ^H
Thus, suppositions and idle hypotheses are made to stand for dis- ^ covered truths. Defenders of the biblical dead-letter could not help the writers of missionary tracts more effectually than do materialistic Symbologists in thus taking for granted that the ancient Aryans based their religious conceptions on no higher thought than the physiolo^cal.
But it is not so, and the very spirit of Vedic Philosophy is against such an interpretation. For if, as Decharme himself confesses:
This idea of the creative power of fire is explained .... by the ancient ^ assimilation of the human soul to a celestial sparklF ^^
— as shown by the imagery often made use of in the Vedas when speaking of Arani, it would mean something higher than simply a gross sexual conception. A Hymn to Agni in the Veda is cited as an
example : ^|
Here is the pramantha; the generator is ready. Bring the mistress of thence {the female arani). I^et us pro
This means no worse than an abstract idea expressed in the tongtie of mortals. The female Arani, the "mistress of the race.'* is Aditi. M the Mother of the Gods, or Shekinah, Eternal Light — in the World of" Spirit, the "Great Deep** and Chaos; or Primordial Substance in its first remove from the Unknown, in the Manifested Kosraos. If, ages later, the same epithet is applied to Devaki, the Mother of Krishna, or
■ Die Htrnhkunfl dei Femrs und des GdtUrtronks {nrrUn show how aBsumptiotu
'»59)-
t The italics nvL ours:
raised to Urn ia our day.
t DcchHrme, o^. at., p. atin.
I Hiilotoph. ffacit., iU. 3.
I Baudry. Revue Germanique, 14 avrU, 1861. p. 368,
5 Op. cit., pp. »64, »65.
THE SIX BROTHERS OP KRISHNA.
555
the incarnated Logos; and if the symbol, owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread of exoteric religions, may now be regarded as having a sexual significance, this in no way mars the original purity of the image. The subjective had been transformed into the objec- tive; Spirit had fallen into Matter. The universal kosmic polarity of Spirit-Substance had become, in human thought, the mystic, but still sexual, union of Spirit and Matter, and had thus acquired an anthropo- morphic colouring which it had never had in the beginning. Between the Vedas and the Puranas there is an abyss of which they are the poles, like as are the seventh principle, the Atma, and the first or lowest principle, the Physical Body, in the septenary' constitution of Man. The primitive and purely spiritual language of the Vedas, con- ceived many decades of millenniums earlier than the PaurSnic accounts* found a purely human expression for the purpose of describing events which took place 5,000 years ago, the date of Krishna's death, from which day the Kali Yuga, or Black Age, began for mankind.
As Aditi is called SurSrani, the Matrix or '•Mother** of the Suras or Gods, so Kuntt, the mother of the PSndavas, is called in the Mahabka- rata PSndavarani* — and the term is now physiohgized. But Devaki, the antetype of the Roman Catholic Madonna, is a later anthropomor- phized form of Aditi. The latter is the Goddess -mother, or Deva- mStri, of seven Sons (the six and the seven Adityas of early Vedic times); the mother of Krishna, Devaki, has six embryos conveyed into her womb by Jagad-dhStri, the "Nurse of the World," the seventh, Krishna, the Logos, being transferred to that of Rohini. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the mother of seven children, of five sons and two daughters (a later transformation of sex), in Matthew's Gospel. f No one of the worshippers of the Roman Catholic Virgin would object to reciting in her honour the prayer addressed by the Gods to Devaki. Let the reader judge.
Thou art that Prakriti [essence], infinite and subtile, which formerly bore Brahmft in its womb. . . . Tliou, eternal being, comprising, in thy substance, the essence of all created things, wast identical with creation; thou wast the parent of the tri- form sacrifice, becoming the germ of all things. Thou art sacrifice, whence all fruit proceeds; tliou art the Arani, whose attrition engenders fire.J As Aditi, thou art tlie parent of the gods. . . . Thou art light [JyotsnA, the morning IwilightJ} whence day is begotten. Thou art humility [SamnaLi, a daughter of Daksha], the
* See yisknm Pmrina, Wll«on'a Trwu., ▼. 96, aote.
t xiU. S5. 56.
t "Womb of Ught," "Holy Vewel." mt the cpithcti of the Virfin.
1 The Virgin is often addressed u the "Momiog^ Star" and the "Star of Salvatioo.**
556
SKCRBT DOCTRIKB.
mother of wisdom: thou art Niti, the parent of harmony (Naya);* thou art modest^ the progenitrix of affection [Prashraya. explained by Vinaya]; thou art desire, of whom love is born. . . , Thou art . . . the mother of knowledge [Ava- bodha]; thou art patience [DhritiJ, the parent of fortitude [Dhairya].t
Thus Arani is shown here to be the same as the Roman Catholic ■'Vase of Election.'* As to its primitive meaning, it was purely meta- physical. No unclean thought traversed these conceptions in the ancient mind. Even in the Zohar — far less metaphysical in its sym- bology than any other symbolism — the idea is an abstraction and nothing more. Thus, when the Zohar %z.y%\
All that which exists, all that which has been formed by the ancient, whose name is holy, can only exist through a male and female principle-J
It means no more than that the divine Spirit of Life is ever coalescing with Matter. It is the Will of the Deity that acts; and the idea is purely Schopenhauerian.
When Atteekah Kaddosha, the ancient and the concealed of the concealed, desired to form all things, it formed all things like male and female. This wisdom comprises all when it gocth forth.
Hence Chokmah (male Wisdom) and Biuah (female Consciousness or Intellect) are said to create all between the two — the active and the passive principles. As the eve of the expert jeweller discerns under the rough and uncouth oyster shell the pure immaculate pearl, en- shrined within its bosom, his hand touching the shell but to get at its contents, so the eye of the true Philosopher reads between the lines of the Puranas the sublime Vedic truths, and corrects the form with the help of the Vedintic Wisdom. Our Orientalists, however, never perceive the pearl under the thick coating of the shell and — act accordingly.
From all that has been said in this Section, one sees clearly that, between the Serpent of Eden and the Devil of Christianity, there is an abyss. Alone the sledge hammer of Ancient Philosophy cau kill this dogma.
* Wllsou translates: "Thou art kingly policy, Uie parent of order." t Vishnn J*»irdtui, Wilson's Truu.. Iv. pp. 064, 165.
I
SECTION YII. EnoichioN'Henoch
Thb histor>' of the evolution of the Satanic Myth would not be com- plete if we omitted to notice the character of the mysterious and cos- mopolitan Enoch, variously called Enos. Hanoch. and finally Enoichion by the Greeks. It is from his book that the first notions of the Fallen Angels were taken by the early Christian writers.
The Book of Enoch is declared apocryphal. But what is an apocryphon ? The very etymology' of the term shows that it is simply a secret book, i.e., one that belonged to the catalogue of temple-libraries under the guardianship of the Hierophants and Initiated Priests, and was never meant for the profane. Apocryphon comes from the verb crypto (Kpwrrttt), "to hide." For ages the Enoichion, the Book of the Seer, was preserved in the "city of letters'* and secret works — the ancient Kiijath-sepher, later on. Debir.*
Some of the writers interested in the subject — especially Masons — have tried to identify Enoch with Thoth of Memphis, the Greek Hermes, and even with the Latin Mercur\'. As individuals, all of these are distinct one from the other; professionally — if one may use this word, now so limited in its sense — one and all belong to the same category of sacred writers, of Initiators and Recorders of Occult and ancient Wisdom. Those who in the ICordn] are generically termed the Edris, or the "Learned," the Initiated, bore in Egypt the name of **Thoth," the inventor of Arts. Sciences, of writing or letters, of Music and Astronomy. Among the Jews Edris became " Enoch," who, accord- ing to Bar-Hebrseus, "was the first inventor of writing,'* books, Arts, and Sciences, the first who reduced to a system the progress of the planets^ In Greece he was called Orpheus, and thus changed his
• SecyoiAud, IV. 15.
-r Sarlt xix.
i See MackennCa Royal Masonic Cycloptrdia, rub voct " Buoch."
558
THK SBCRET DOCTRINE.
name with every nation. The number seven being attached to, and connected with, each of those primitive Initiators,* as well as the num- ber 365, of the days in the year, astronomically, it identifies the mission, character, and the sacred oflBce of all these men, but certainly not their personalities. Enoch is the seventh Patriarch; Orpheus is the possessor of the Phorminx, the seven-stringed lyre, which is the seven-fold mys- tery of Initiation. Thoth, with the seven-rayed Solar Discus on his head, travels in the Solar Boat (the 365 degrees), jumping out ever>' fourth (leap) year for one day. Finally, Thoth-Lunus is the septenary God of the seven days, or the week. Esoterically and spiritually, Enoichion means the "Seer of the Open Eye."
The story about Enoch, told by Josephus, namely, that he had con- cealed his precious Rolls or Books under the pillars of Mercury or Seth, is the same as that told of Hermes, the "Father of Wisdom," who concealed his Books of Wisdom under a pillar, and then, discovering the two pillars of stone, found the Science written thereon. Yet Josephus, notwithstanding his constant efforts in the direction of Israel's unmerited glorification, and though he does attribute that Science (of Wisdom) to the fervisk Enoch — writes history. He shows these pillars as still existing during his own time.f He tells us that they were built by Seth; and so they may have been, only neither by the Patriarch of that name, the fabled son of Adam, nor by the EgJTitian God of Wisdom— Teth, Set, Thoth. Tat. Sat (the later Sat-an), or Hermes, who are all one — but by the "Sous of the Serpent- God," or "Sons of the Dragon," the name under which the Htero- phants of Egypt and Babylon were known before the Deluge, as were their forefathers, the Atlanteans.
"What Josephus tells us, therefore, with the exception of the applica- tion made of it, must be true alUgorically, According to his version the two famous pillars were entirely covered with hierogl>'phics, which, after their discovery, were copied and reproduced in the most secret comers of the inner temples of Eg>'pt, and thus became the source of its Wisdom and exceptional learning. These two "pillars," however, are the prototypes of the two "tables of stones" hewn by Moses at the command of the "Lord." Hence, in saying that all the great Adepts and Mystics of antiquity— such as Orpheus. Hesiod, Pytha- goras and Plato — got the elements of their Theology from those
* Etunocti, or Hanoch, or Enoch Ssoterically meani Uie "IniUalor" and "Teacher," as well aa Sno«. Uie "Son of Man." (Set Genetis, iv. >6.) t De Mirrille. pHtumatolofit, iii. 70.
THE ADEPT DIES BUT TO IJVK.
559
hieroglj'phics, he is right in one sense, and wrong in another. The Secret Doctrine teaches us that the Arts, Sciences, Theology, and especially the Philosophy of every nation which preceded the last vniversaliy known, but not universal, Deluge, had been recorded ideo- graphically from the primitive oral records of the Fourth Race, and that these were the inheritance of the latter from the early Third Root- Race before the allegorical Fall. Hence, also, the Eg>'ptian pillars, the tablets, and even the "white oriental porphyry stone" of the Masonic legend — which Enoch, fearing that the real and precious secrets would be lost, concealed before the Deluge in the bowels of the Earth — were simply the more or less symbolical and allegorical copies from the primitive Records. The Book of Enoch is one of such copies, and is, moreover, a Chaldxan, and now ver>' incomplete, compendium. As already said, Eno'ichiou means in Greek the '* Inner Eye," or the Seer; in Hebrew, with, the help of Masoretic points, it means the "Initiator" and "Instnictor" (T»3n). Enoch is a generic title; and, moreover, his legend is that of several other prophets, Jewish and Heathen, with changes of made-up details, the root-form being the same. Elijah is also taken up into Heaven "alive"; and the Astrologer, at the court of Isdubar. the Chaldaean Hea-bani, is likewise raised to Heaven by the God Hea, who was his patron, as Jehovah was of Elijah, whose name ^bneans in Hebrew "God -J ah." Jehovah (jvjpt^),^ and again of Elihu, ^■Vhich has the same meaning. This kind of easy death, or euthanasia, has an Esoteric meaning. It symbolizes the '^death" of any Adept who has reached the power and degree, and also the purification, which enable him to "die" in the Physical Body, and stitl live and lead a con- scious life in his Astral Body. The variations on this theme are endless, but the secret meaning is ever the same. The Pauline expression,! "that he should not see death" (jtl non videret mortan\ has thus an Esoteric meaning, but nothing supernatural in it. The mangled inter- pretation given of some biblical hints to the effect that Enoch, "whose years will equal those of the world" (of the solar year, 363 days), will share with Christ and the prophet Elijah the honours and bliss of the last Advent and of the destruction of Antichrist J — signify Esoterically, that some of the Great Adepts will return in the Seventh Race, when all Error will be made away with, and the advent of Truth will be iieralded by those Shishta, the holy "Sons of I/ight." The Latin Church is not always logical, nor prudent. She declares
* aCAC'iceocie, «>. di.» ihA mc
t MihrtMt, xl.
t Oi MlrviUe, ikid., p. ft.
56o
THE SECRET DOCTRFNE.
the Book of Enoch an apocryphon^ and has gone so far as to claiiu through Cardinal Cajetan and other luminaries of the Church, the rejection from the Canon of even the Book of Jude, who, otherwise, as an inspired apostle, wou!d quote from and thus sanctify the Book of Enoch, which is alleged to be an apocrj-phal work. Fortunately, some of the dogmatics perceived the peril in time. Had they accepted Cajetan's resolution, they would have been forced to reject likewise the Fourth Gospel; as St. John borrows literally from Enoch, and places a whole sentence from him. in the mouth of Jesus!*
Ludolph. the "father of Rthiopic literature,'* commissioned to investigate the various Enochiau MSS. presented by Pereisc, the traveller, to the Mazarine Library, declared that "no Book of Enodt could exist among the Abyssinians'*! Further researches and dis- coveries worsted this too dogmatic assertion, as all know. Bruce and Ruppel did find the Book of Enoch in Abyssinia, and what is more, brought it to Europe some years later, and Bishop Laurence translated it. But Bruce despised it, and scoffed at its contents; as did all the rest of the Scientists. He declared it a Gnostic work, concerning the Age of Giants who devour men — and bearing a strong resemblance to- X\\(i Apocalypse. \ Giants! another fair)'- ta/ef
Such, however, has not been the opinion of all the best critics. Dr. Hanneberg places the Book of Enoch along with the Third Book of the Maccabees — at the head of the list of thme whose authority stands the nearest to that of the canonical works.X
Verily, "where doctors disagree. . . .*'!
As usual, however, they are all right and all wrong. To accept Enoch as a biblical character, a single living person, is like accepting Adam as the first man. Enoch was a generic title, applied to, and borne by, scores of individuals, at all times and ages, and in every race and nation. This may be easily inferred from the fact that the ancient Talmudists and the teachers of Midrashim are not agreed generally in their views about Hanokh, the Son of Yered. Some say Enoch was a great Saint, beloved by God, and "taken alive to heaven," i.e., one who reached Mukti or Nirvana, on Earth, as Buddha did and others still do; and others maintain that he was a sorcerer, a wicked magician. This shows only that "Enoch," or its equivalent, was a term, even during the days of the later Talmudists, which meant
* Comparr the "thlevcB ftnd robbers" iaddent, p. 506. supra.
♦ De Mirrillc, ibid., p. 73- J Ibid., p. 76.
4
WHAT ENOCH IS, ESOTERIC AI.I,V.
56t
"Seer," "Adept in the Secret Wisdom," etc., without any specifica- tion as to the character of the title-bearer. Josephus, speaking of Elijah and Enoch * remarks that:
It is written in the sacred books they [Elijah and Enoch] disappeared, but so that nobody knew that they died.
It means simply that tkey had died in their personalities^ as Yogis- die to this day in India, or even some Christian monks — to the world. They disappear from the sight of men and die — on the terrestrial plane — even for themselves. A seemingly figurative way of speaking, yet literally true.
"Hanokh transmitted the science of (astronomical) calculation and of computing the seasons to Noah,** says the Midrash Pirkah;^ R. Eliezar referring to Enoch that which others did to Hermes Trismegistus, for the two are identical in their Esoteric meaning. "Hanokh" in this case, and his "Wisdom," belong to the cycle of the Fotuth Atlantean Race,t and Noah to that of the Fifth. § In this case both represent the Root-Races» the present one and the one that pre- ceded it. In another sense, Enoch disappeared, "he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him"; the allegory referring to the disappearance of the Sacred and Secret Knowledge from among men; for "God" (or Java Aleim — the high Hierophants. the Heads of the Colleges of Initiated Priests ||) took him; in other words, the Enochs or the Enoichions, the Seers and their Knowledge and Wisdom, became strictly confiued to the Secret Colleges of the Prophets with the Jews, and to the Temples with the Gentiles.
Interpreted with the help of merely the symbolical key, Enoch is the type of the dual nature of man — spiritual and physical. Hence he occupies the centre of the Astronomical Cross, as given by ^liphas L^vi from a secret work, which is a Six-pointed Star, the "Adonai." In the upper angle of the upper Triangle is the Eagle; in the left lower angle stands the Lion; in the right, the Bull; while between the Bull and the Lion, over them and under the Eagle, is the face of Enoch or Man.f Now the figures on the upper Triangle represent the Four Races, omitting the First, the Chhiy^ or Shadows, and the "Son
• Antiquititi.KiL. a. t Cap. Yiii.
: Says the ZoHat, "Umnokh had a book which mu one with the Book of Uic Genemtiocu of AdanSr Ifaic U the Mystenr of Wis I Noah IB heir to the Windnm of Rnoch; Id othei word*, Uie PtfUi iaheir to the Fourth Race. | ^ Sec the illiutration In /sis Vnveit4d, U. 4$a.
THB SBCR.ET DOCTRINE-
of Man," EnQS or Enoch, is in the centre, where he stands between the Fourth and the Fifth Races, for he represents the Secret Wisdom of both. These are the four Animals of Esekiel and of the Revelaium This Double Triangle which, in his Unveiled^ is faced by the Hindu Ardhauari, is by far the best. For in the latter, only the three (for us) historical Races are symbolized; the Third, the Androg:>*nous, by Ardha-n&ri; the Fourth, symbolized by the strong, powerful Lion; and the Fifih, the Arjan, by that which is its most sacred symbol to this day. the Bull (and the Cow).
A man of g:reat erudition, a French savant, M. de Sac>% finds several most singular statements in the Book of Enoch, "worthy of the most serious examination,'* he says. For instance:
Th« Author [Euocb] makes the solar year consist of 364 days, and seema to know periods of three, of five, and of eight years, followed hy Jour supplementary day^ vhich. in his smem, appear to be those of the eqaiaoxes and solstices.*
To which he adds, later on :
I see but one means to palliate them [these "absurdities'*]; it is to suppose that the author expounds some fanciful system which may have existed be/one tht of Naimrt kmd ban alUrtd at the period of the Universal Delugr.f
Precisely so; and the Secret Doctrine teaches that this "order of nature" has been thus altered, and the series of the Earth's homanities too. For, as the angel Uriel tells Enoch :
Behold. I have showed thee all things. O Enoch; and all things have I revealed to thee. Thon seest the sun, the moon, and those whiih conduct Itke stars of hcaTex. which canac all their operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. Ih the days df uaixv%tke years shalt be shortened. . . . The moon shall change its laws. . . .:
In those days also, years before the Great Deluge that carried awsy the AUanteans and changed the face of the whole Earth (because **tlK Earth [or its axis] becanu iru/ined'*). Nature, geologically, astronomi- cally, and cosmically in general, cotild not have been the Rflni^ jnst because the Earth had indimd. To quote from Enoch :
And Noah cried with a bitter voice. Hear me; hear me; hcAr me; three Hw***- And he said, . . . The earth labours and is violently shaken. Snrdy, I
'A
r
I 1
perish with it.|
This, by the way, looks like one of those many ••inconsistencies^" if the Bible is read literally. For, to say the least this is a very Strang
* S«« Dsaiefto's 1 'ijimiih
De Sacy, in tke AmmmSa
SECRET POWER OF THE SATANS.
565
fear in one who had "found grace in the eyes of the Lord" and been told to build an Ark! But here we find the venerable Patriarch ex- pressing as much fear as if. instead of a "friend" of God, he had been one of the Giants doomed by the wrathful Deity. The Earth had already inclined, and the deluge of waters had become simply a ques- tion of time, and yet Noah seems to know nothing of his intended salvation.
A decree had come indeed; the decree of Nature and the Law of Evolution, that the Earth should change its Race, and that the Fourth Race should be destroyed to make rgom for a better one. The Mau- vantara had reached its turning point of three and a half Rounds, and gigantic physical Humanity had reached the acme of gross materiality. Hence the apocalyptic verse that speaks of a commandment gone forth that they may be destroyed, "that their end may be'* — the end of the Race:
For they knew [truly] every secret of the angels, every oppressive and secret power of the Satans^ and every power of those who commit sorcery, as well as of those who make molten images in the whole earth.*
And now a natural question. Who could have informed the apocry- phal author of this powerful vision — no matter to what age he may be assigned before the day of Galileo — that the Earth could occasionally incline her axis? Whence did he derive such astronomical and geo- logical knowledge if the Secret Wisdom, of which the ancient Rishis and Pythagoras had drunk, is but a fancy, an invention of later ages? Has Enoch read prophetically perchance in Frederic Klee's work on the Deluge the lines:
The position of the terrestrial globe with reference to the sun has evidently been, in primitive times, di0ereut from what it is now; and this difference must have been caused by a displacement of the axis of rotation of the earth.
This reminds one of that unscieiilific statement made by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, namely, that the Sun has not always risen where it rises now, and that in former times the ecliptic had cut the equator at right angles.f
There are many such "dark sayings" scattered throughout the Puranast Bible and other Mythologies, and to the Occultist they divulge two facts; (a) that the Ancients knew as well as, and perhaps better than, the modems do, Astronomy, Geognosy and Cosmography in general; and {b) that the behaviour of the Globe has altered more
* Ibid.t he. eU.t r. 6w t BaUly, AOroHomu Xaantar, i 103, and ii. si6 ; De Mirvillc, i&id., p, 79,
5^4
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
than once since the primitive state of things. Thus, Xenophantes— OD the blind faith of his "ignorant" religion, which taught that Phaeton, in his desire to learn the hidden truth, made the Sun deviate from its usual course — asserts somewhere that, "the Sun turned toward another country"; which is a parallel^slightly more scientific, how- ever, if not as bold — of Joshua stopping the course of the Sun alto- gether. Yet it may explain the teaching of the Northern Mythology that before the actual order of tilings the Sun arose in the South, and its placing the Frigid Zone (Jeruskoven) in the East, whereas now it is in the North.*
The Book of Enoch, in short, is a risumi, a compound of the main features of the history of the Third. Fourth and Fifth Races; a very few prophecies from the present age of the world ; a long retrospective, introspective and prophetic summary of universal and quite kistcrUal events — geological, ethnological, astronomical, and psychic — with a touch of Theogony out of the antediluvian records. The Book of this mysterious personage is referred to and quoted copiously in the Pistk Sophia^ and also in the Z?Aar and its most ancient Midrashim. Origen and Clement of Alexandria held it in the highest esteem. To say^^H therefore, that it is a Post-Christian forgery is to utter an absurdity^' and to become guilty of an anachronism, for Origen, among others, who lived in the second century of the Christian era, mentions it as an ancient and venerable work. The secret and sacred Name and its potency are well and clearly though allegorically described in the old volume. From the eighteenth to the fiftieth chapter, the Visions of Enoch are all descriptive of the Mysteries of Initiation, one of which is the Burning Valley of the "Fallen Angels."
Perhaps St. Augustine was quite right in saying that the Church rejected the Book of Enoch out of her canon owing to its too great anti- quity {pb nzmiam aniiquitalcm.).\ There was no room for the events noticed in it within the limit of the 4004 years B.C. assigned to th world from its "creation"!
* DC MirviUe, aid,, p. Bo.
* City c/ God, XV. xzUL
SECTION YIIL
The Symbolism of the Mystery-Names iao
AisTD Jehovah, with their Relation to
THE Cross and Circle.
Whek the Abbe Louis Constant, better known as EHphas Levi, said in his Histoire dc la Magic that the Sepher Jetzirah, the Zohar, and the Apocalypse of St. John, are the masterpieces of the Occult Sciences, he ought, if he had wished to be correct and clear, to have added — in Europe. It is quite true that these works contain "more significance than words*'; and that their •'expression is poetical," while "in numbers" they are "exact." Unfortunately, however, before any one can appreciate the poetry of the expressions, or the exactness of the numbers, he will have to learn the real significance and meaning of the terms and symbols employed. But man will never learn this so long as he remains ignorant of the fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether in Oriental Esotericism, or in the kabalistical Symbologj* — the key^ or value, in all their aspects^ of the God-names, Angel-names, and Patriarch-names in the Bible^ their mathematical or geometrical value, and their relations to manifested Nature.
Therefore, if, on the one hand, the Zt7^ar" astonishes [the mystic] by the profundity of its views and the great simplicity of its images," on the other hand, that work misleads the student by such expressions as those used with respect to Ain Suph and Jehovah, notwithstanding the assurance that:
The book is careful to explain that the human form with which it clothes God is hut an image of the Word, and that God shouM not be expressed by any thought, or any form.
It is well known that Origen, Clemens, and the Rabbis confessed thai the Kabalak and the Bible were veiled and secret books ; but few know
«
566
THE SECRET DOCTRn
that the Esotericism of the kabalistic books in their present rttdt, form is simply another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the primitive symbolism of these secret volumes. 1
The idea of representing the hiddai Deity by the circumference of a circle, and the Creative Power — male and female, or the Androgynous Word — by the diameter across it, is one of the oldest symbols. It is upon this conception that every great Cosmogony has been built. With the old Ar>'ans. the Egyptians, and the Chaldaeaus, the symbol was complete, as it embraced the idea of the eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its absoluteness, separated entirely from the in- cipient stage of the so-called *' creation," and comprised psychological and even spiritual evolution, and its mechanical work, or cosmogonical construction. With the Hebrews, however, though the former concep- tion is to be distinctly found in the Zokar, and the Sepher JeUirah, or what remains of the latter — that which has been subsequently embodied in the Pentateuch proper, and especially in Genetis^ is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical law of creation, or rather of construction; while Theogony is hardly, if at all, outlined.
It is only in the first six chapters of Genesis, in the rejected Bcok of Enoch, and the misunderstood and mistranslated poem oi Job, that true echoes of the Archaic Doctrine may now be found. The key to it is lost now, even among the most learned Rabbis, whose predecessors in the early period of the Middle Ages, in their national exclusiveness and pride, and especially in their profound hatred of Christianity, preferred to cast it into the deep sea of oblivion, rather than to share their know- ledge with their relentless and fierce persecutors. Jehovah was their own tribal property, inseparable from, and unfit to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn out of his original frame, which he fitted and which fitted him, the *' Lord God of Abraham and Jacob" could hardly be crammed without damage and breakage into the new Christian Canon. Being the weaker, the Jndeaus could not help the desecration. They kept, however, the secret of the origin of their Adam Kadmon, or male-female Jehovah, and the new tabernacle proved a complete misfit for tlie old God. They were, indeed, avenged! The statement that Jehovah was the tribal God of the Jews and no higher, will be denied like many other things. Yet the Theologians are not in a position to tell us, in that case, the meaning of the verses in Deuteronomy, which say quite plainly:
When the Most High [not the "I/wd," or "Jehovah'* either] divided to the
I
THE JEWS ALONB THE HEIRLOOM OF JEHOVAH.
567
nations their inheritance, when he sep&rated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds . . . according to the number of the children of Israel . . . Tht Lories [Jehovah's] portion is his peopU; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.*
This settles the question. So impudent have been the naodcrn trans- lators of Bibles and Scriptures, and so damaging are these verses, that, following in the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers. each translator has rendered these lines in his own way. While the above-cited quotation is taken verbatim from the English Authorized Version, in the French Bible.f we find the '*Most High" translated by "Souverain" (Sovereign! !), the "sons of Adam" rendered by "the children of men," and the "Lord" changed into the "Eternal." For impudent sleight-of-hand, the French Protestant Church seems thus to have surpassed even English ecclesiasticism.
Nevertheless, one thing is patent: the "Lord's [Jehovah's] portion" is his "chosen people" and none else, iox, Jacob alone is the iot 0/ his inheritance. What, then, have other nations, who call themselves Ar>'ans, to do with this Semitic Deity, the tribal God of Israel? Astronomically, the "Most High" is the Sun, and the "Lord" is one of his seven planets, whether it be lao, the Genius of the Moon, or Ildabaoth-Jehovah, the Genius of Saturn, according to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.^ Let the "Angel Gabriel," the "Lord" of Iran, watch over his people, and Michael-Jehovah, over his Hebrews. These are not the Gods of other nations, nor were they ever those of Jesus. As each Persian Dcv is chained to his planet, § so each Hindfi Deva (a "Lord") has its allotted portion, a world, a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of worlds implies plurality of Gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize, but will never worship the latter.fl
It has been repeatedly stated in this work that every religious and philosophical symbol had seven meanings attached to it, each pertain- ing to its legitimate plane of thought, i.e.^ either purely metaphysical or astronomical; psychic or physiological, etc. These seven meanings and their applications are difficult enough to learn when taken by themselves; but the interpretation and the right comprehension of
• 0>k. cii., jExxii. S, 9.
* Of the Protestaat BibUcal Society of Pftris, according to the version rrmcd in t^u ^7 J- H- OtlervaU!.
2 With the BgyptUn Gnoetics it waa Tholh fHcnaMt. who wu chief of the Seven (tee Book of Uu Dead]. Their tuunes are given by Orifren, as Adonid (of the Sunt, lao lof ihe Moon). Eloi (Jupiter). Sahao (Mnrn), Ond (Venus), Astaphiu (Mercury), utd, finally, lldabaoth (Sutom). See King's Gnostics and thftr fftmatns, p. ^4^^ .
1 See Origen's Copy of the Chart or Diogramma. of the Ophitea. In hia Contra Ctlsnm.
I See Part HI of this Volume, Section W, B. "On Chains of Planets and their Plurality."
568
THE SECRST DOCTRINE.
them become tenfold more puzzling, when, instead of being correlated, or made to flow consecutively out of, and to follow, each other, each, or any one of these meanings, is accepted as the one and sole explanation of the whole symbolical idea. An instance may be given, as it ad- mirably illustrates the statement. Here are two interpretations, given by two learned Kabalists and scholars, of one and the same verse in Exodus. Moses beseeches the Lord to show him his "glory." H dently it is not the crude dead-letter phraseology as found in the BsHf that is to be accepted. There are seven meanings in the Kabaiah, of which we may give two as interpreted by the said two scholars. One of them translates while explaining:
"Thou canst not see My face; ... I will put thee in a cleft of the rock I will cover thee with My hand while I pass by. And then I will take away 1 hand, and thou shalt see My a'A^wr," uc^ My back.*
And then the translator adds in a gloss:
That is, I will show you "My back," f.f., My visible universe. My lower xnasi- festations, but. as a man still in the flesh, thou canst not see My invisible xutnic So proceeds the Qabbalah.t
This is correct, and is the cosmo- metaphysical explanation. And now speaks the other Kabalist, giving the numerical meaning. As it involves a good many suggestive ideas, and is far more fully g^ven, we may allow it more space. This synopsis is from an unpublished MS., and explains more fiilly what was given in Section III, on the "Holy
of Holies." t
The numbers of the name "Moses" are those of "I am that I am,*^ so that the names Moses and Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony The word Moses is nfflo (5 + 300 + 40), and the sura of the values of its letters is 345 ; Jehovah — the assumes the value of 543, or the reverse of 345.
In the third chapter of Exodus, in the 13th and 14th verses, it Is said : And Moses said, . . . Behold I come unto the childrea of Israel, and shall say unti them. The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you : and they shall say un me, What is his name ? What shall I say uuto them ? And God said unto Moms.
I Am That I Am.
The Hebrew words for this expression are dhiyi asher dhiyf^ and in the valne of the sums of their letters stand thus:
31 501 21
. . . This being his [God's] name, the sum of the values composing it, 31, 5or/
* Exodms. xxxHi. tfi, 19: aec Mycr'H (JaMaJak, p. 3a6. * /bid., toe. cit. % Smpra, p. 461.
A GROTESQUE VERSE EXPLAINED.
569
^r IS 543, or simply a use of the simple digit nambers in the nAme of Moses, . . . but uow 80 ordered that the name of 345 is reversed, and reads 543.
So that when Moses asks, "Let me see Thy face or glor^'," the other rightly and truly replies, "Thou canst not see my face . , . but thou shalt see me behind*" — the true sense, though not the precise words ; for the comer and the behind of 543 is they^;:^ of 345. This is
For check and to keep a strict use of a set of nnmbers to develop certain grand results, for the object of which they are specifically employed.
As the learned Kabalist adds:
In other uses of the numbers, they saw each other face to face. It is strange that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the Gnostic Cabbalistic value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or Joshua. And so also the di\'isiou of the 24 hours of the day gives three eights as quotieuL . . . The chief end of all this system of Number Checks was to preserve in perpetuity the exact value of the Lunar Year in the Natural measure of Days.
These are the astronomical and numerical meanings in the secret Theogonyof sidereo-cosmical Gods invented by the Chaldseo-Hebrews. — two meanings out of seven. The other five would astonish the Christians still more.
The series of CEdipuses who have endeavoured to interpret the riddle of the Sphinx, is long indeed. For many ages she has been devouring the brightest and the noblest intellects of Christendom ; but now the Sphinx is conquered. In the great intellectual struggle which has ended in the complete victor)^ of the CEdipuses of Symbolism, it is, however, not the Sphinx, who. burning with the shame of defeat, has had to bury herself in the sea, but verily the many-sided symbol, named Jehovah, whom Christians — the civilized n^Xions — have accepted for their God. The Jehovah symbol has collapsed under the too close analysis, and is — drowned. Symbologists have discovered with dismay that their adopted Deity was only a mask for many other Gods, a euhe- merized extinct planet, at best, the Genius of the Moon and Saturn with the Jews, of the Sun and Jupiter with early Christians; that the Trinity — unless they accepted the more abstract and metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles — was, in truth, only an astro- nomical triad, composed of the Sun (the Father), and the two planets Mercury (the Son) and Venus (the Holy Ghost), Sophia, the Spirit of "Wisdom, Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the "bright and morning star."* For, if the Father is the Sun (the "Elder Brother."
570
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
in the Eastern Inner Philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercuty (Hermes, Budha, Thoth), the name of whose Mother on Earth was Maia. Now this planet receives seven times more light than any other; a fact which led the Gnostics to call their Christos» and the Kabalists their Hermes (in the astronomical meaning), the "Seven-fold Light.** Finally. Ms God was Bel — the Sun being Bel with the Gauls; Helios^ with the Greeks; Baal, with the Phoenicians; El. in Chaldaean, hence El-ohim, Enianu-el, and El, "God," in Hebrew. But even the kaba- listic God has vanished in the rabbinical workmanship, and one has now to turn to the innermost metaphysical sense of the Zohar to find in it anything like Ain Suph. the Nameless Deity and the Absolute, so authoritatively and loudly claimed by the Christians. But it is cer- tainly not to be found in the Mosaic books, at any rate by those who try to read without a key to them. Ever since this key was lost, Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two conceptions, but in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the Uni- versal Deity of Its majestic character and primitive meaning. As was said in his Unveiled:
It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difieFcnce between the mystery- god law, adopted from the highest antiquity by all who participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests, and his phonetic counterpuuls, whom we find treated with so little reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics.*
In the Ophite gems of King.t we find the nnme of lao repeated, and often con- founded with that of Icvo, while the latter simply represents one of the Geaii antagonistic to Abraxas. . . . But the name lao neither originated with, nor was it the sole property of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelary "Spirit,*' the alleged protector and national deity of the "chosen people of Israel," there is yet no possible reason why other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One-living God. But we deny the assump- tion altogether. Besides, there is the fact that laho or lao was a "mystery name" from the beginning, for TTTV and TV never came into use before the time of king David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were compounded with lab or Jah. It looks rather as though David, being a sojourner among the Tyrians and Miilistines,J brought thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high priest, from whom came the Zadokitcs or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at Hebron celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law of Mo«efl. They aspired to build a temple to mrp, like the structures erected by Hiraxn to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.
Says Fiirst: "The very ancient name of God, YAho, written in the Greek looi. appears, apart /fi>w» lU derivation^ to have been an old mystic name of the Sapreme
*
* Gmniia and Ihtir Rtmttimu
tllSummtL
"Deity of the Shemite«. Hence it was told to Moses -when he waii initUted at Hor-eb — the Cjt-^— under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite (or Caiiiite) priest of Midian. In an old religion of the Chaldseana. whose remains are to be foiuvl among the Neo-Platonisls, the highest Divinity, enthroned above the seven Heavens, representing the Spiritual Light-Principle, . . . and also conceived of as Demiurgus,* was called laut On^). who was, like the Hebrew YAho, mys- terious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the Initiated. The Phoenicians had a Supreme God, whose name was triUteral and j^rrW, and he was Ittoi."t
The cross, say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occtiltists. is one of the most ancient — nay, perhaps, the mosi ancient of symbols. This has been demonstrated at the very beginning of the Proem in Volume I. The Eastern Initiates show it coeval with the circle of Dcific Infinitude and the first differentiation of the Essence, the union of Spirit and Matter. This interpretation has been rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone has been accepted and made to fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial events.
Let us demonstrate this statement. In Astronomy, as said, Mercury is the son of Coelus and Lux— of the Sky and Light, or the Sun; in Mythology he is the progeny of Jupiter and Mala. He is the "Mes- senger" of his Father Jupiter, the Messiah of the Sun; in Greek, his name Hermes means, among other things, the "Interpreter" — the Word, the Logos, or Verbum. Now Mercury is bom on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, and is the patron of the latter. As a psychopompic Genius, he conducted the Souls of the Dead to Hades and brought them back again, an office attributed to Jesus after bis Death and Resurrection. The symbols of Hermes-Mercury (Dii Ter- mini) were placed along, and at the turning points of. highways, as I crosses are now placed in Italy, and they were cruci/orm.X Every I seventh day the priests anointed these Termini with oil, and once a year hung them with garlands, hence they were the anointfd. Mer- cur>', when speaking through his oracles, says:
I am he whom yon call the Son of the Father [Jupiter] and Maia. Leaving the King of Heaven [the Sun] I come to help you, mortals.
I Mercur\' heals the blind and restores sight, mental and physical. §
I He was often represented as three-headed and called Tricephalus,
I * By Tcry ftw tbougb, for the crentoni of the materia) nirivene were ^w«ya considered an soh-
ordinate Godn to the Mont Ht^h Deity.
t Op. cii., II. aq/b, 397. Piirst rives citations from Lydos and Cedrenus in support of his statemeats.
t See plate 77 in vol. i of Montfaucon's AntiqMttiti. The dladples of Henues, after their death, fifo I to his planet. Mercury— their Rfngdora of Heavm.
I Comutua.
572
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Triplex, as one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cor- nutus* shows, was sometimes figured under a cubic form, without arms, because **the power of speech and eloquence can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet." It is this cubic form which connects the Termini directly with the cross, and it is the eloquence or the power of speech of Mercury which made the crafty Eusebius say, "Hermes is the emblem of the Word which creates and interprets all, ' for it is the Creative Word; and he shows Porphyr>' teaching that the Speech of Hermes — now interpreted "Word of God" (I) in Pymander —a Creative Speech (Verbum), is the Seminal Principle scattered throughout the Universe.! In Alchemy "Mercury" is the radical "Moyst" Principle, Primitive or Elementary Water, containing the Seed of the Universe, fecundated by the Solar Fires. To express this fecundating principle, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or the vertical and the horizontal united) by the Eg>"ptian5. The cniciform Termini also represented this dual idea, which was found in Egypt in the cubic Hermes. The author of Source of Measures tells us why. J
As shown by him, the cube tinfolded becomes in display a cross of the Tau, or the Egyptian, form; or again, "the circle attached to the Tan gives the ansated cross'* of the old Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests and their "King-Initiates" for ages, and also what was meant by "the attachment of a man to the cross," which idea "was made to coordinate with that of the origin of human life» and hence the phallic fortny Only the latter came into action seons and ages after the idea of the Carpenter and Artificer of the Gods, Vishva- karma, crucifying the "Sun-Initiate" on the cruciform lathe. As the same author writes :
The attachment of a man to the cross . . . was made use of in thia form of display by the BindQs.^
But, it was made "to coordinate" with the idea of the new rebirth of man by spiritual, not physical regeneration. The Candidate for Initia- tion was attached to the Tau or astronomical cross with a far grander and nobler idea than that of the origin of mere terrestrial life.
On the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Thus, geometri-
* Ly^us, De Memibmt, Iv.
t Pttparat. Evang,, I. Ul. i.
i But >ce p. 4B0. lupra, ctmcemioff the Gocwtic Priapiu.
\ Op. cil., p. 5».
A PERSONA^ IS A FINITB GOD.
575
cally, and according to the reading of the BibU by means of th& numerical method, the author of The Source of Measures is quite correct.
The entire [Jewish] system seems to have been anciently regarded as one resting in nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or God, as the basis or law of the exertion practically of creative power — i.^., it was the crtaHve design of which creation was practically the application. This seems to be established by the fact that, nndcr the system set forth, measures of planetary times serve coordinately as measures of the size of planets, and of the peculiarity of their shapes — i.e., in the^ extension of their equatorial and polar diameters. . . . This system [thai of creative design] seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure, as a foundation for its rilitalism and for its display of the works of the Deity in the way of archiieclHrc^ by use of the sacred unit of measure in the G-ardeu of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon.*
Thus, on the ver>' showing of the defenders of this system, the Jewish Deit)' is proved to be, at best, only the manifested Duad. never the One Absolute All. Geometrically demonstrated, he is a number: symbolically, a euhemerized Priapus; and this can hardly satisfy a man- kind thirsting after the demonstration of real spiritual truths, and the^ possession of a God with a divine, not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the most learned of modern Kabaltsts can see in the .cross and circle nothing but a symbol of the manifested creative and androgyne Deity in its relation to, and interference with, this pheno- menal world. t One author believes that:
However man [read, the Jew and Rabbi] obtained knowledge of the practical measure, . . . by which nature was thought to adjust the planets in size to harmonize with the notation of their movements, it seems he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the means of his realization of the Deity — that is, he approached w nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his aum, only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize a law of creation established by that Being, which must have existed prior to any creation (kabalistically called the
This may have satisfied the practical Semite mind, but the Eastern Occultist has to decline the offer of such a God; indeed, a Deity, a Being, "having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful," is no God that has any room beyond the cycle of creation. He has. nought to do with the ideal conception of the Eternal Universe. He is, at best, one of the subordinate creative powers, the Totality* of which
• /Krf., pp. 3, 4.
* I^t the reader refer to the Zohar and the two Qabbatahi of Isaac Myer aii4 &• !#• MacOxegCB' -lathers, with iaterprttaliooi, if he «vould Mti
«y»«.,p.5.
574
THK SECRBT DOCTRINB.
is called the Sephiroth, the Heavenly Man, and Adam Kadmon. the Second Logos of the Plalonists.
This ver>' same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the abl definitions of the Kabalah and its mysteries, e.g.^ by John A. Parker. as quoted in the same work:
The key of the Kabala is thought to be the geometrical relation of tht area of ikt circle inscribed in the square, or of the cube to the sphere, giviug rise to the relation of diftnicterto circumference of a circle, with the numerical value of this relatioa expressed in integrals. The relation of diameter to circxim fere nee, being a supreme one connected with the god-names Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are eipre*- sions numericRlIy of these relations, respectively — the first being of circumference, the latter of diameter), embraces all other subordiuations under it. Two expre^ sions of circumference to diameter in integrals are used in the Bible: (i) The per- feet, and {3) The imperfect. One of the relations between these is such that (ii subtracted from {i) will leave a unit of a diameter value in terms, or in the denomi- nation of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or a unit straight line bavi a perfect circular value, or a factor of circular value.*
Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries of the third stage of Evolution, or the ** Third Creation Brahmi." The initiated Hindus know how to "square the circle" far better than any European. But of this more auon. The fact is that the Western Mystics commence their speculation only at that stage when the Universe "falls into matter," as the Occultists say. Through- out the whole series of kabalistic books we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the remotest way at the psychological and spiritual, as well as at the mechanical and physiological secrets "creation." Shall we, then, regard the evolution of the Universe simply a prototype, on a gigantic scale, of the act of procreation; "divine" phallicisfn, and rhapsodize on it as the evilly-inspired anth of a late work of this name has done? The writer does not think w. And she feels justified in saying so, since the most careful reading of the Old Teslamaii—^soienczWy , as well as exoterically — seems to have carried the most enthusiastic enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds that from the first to the last chapter of the Pmlatcuch ever^' scene, every character or event are shown connected, directly or indirectly, with the origin of birlk in its crudest and most brutal form. Thus, however interesting and ingenious the rabbinical methods, the writer, in common with other Eastern Occidtists, must prefer those of the Pagans.
m- of
* Ihid*^ p. ti.
A PLAGIARISM BY PASCAL.
575
It is not, then, in the Bible that we have to search for the origin of
ithe cross and circle, but beyond the Flood, Therefore, returning ta
lliphas Levi and the Zohar^ we answer for the Eastern Occultists and
say that, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely with Pascal,
vWho says that:
God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Whereas the Kabalists say the reverse, and maintain it, solely out of
their desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of Deity
by the circle is not Pascal's at all, as ^liphas Levi thought. Tt was
ynvwed by the French Philosopher from either Mercury Trismegistus
Cardinal Cusa's Latin work. De Docta Igfiorantia, in which he makes
ise of it. It is, moreover, disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words
Cosmic Circle," which stand symbolically in the original inscription,
>y the word Theos. With the Ancients both words were synonymous-
CROSS AND CIRCLE. In the minds of the ancient Philosophers something of the divine and the mysterious has ever been ascribed to the shape of the circle. The old world, consistent in its symbolism and with its Pantheistic intui- tion.s, uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes into one, repre- sented Deity and its outward Veil alike — by a circle. This merging of the two into a unity, and the name Theos being given indifferently to both, is explained, and becomes thereby still more sciaitific and philo- sophical. Plato's etymological definition of the word theos (Oto^) has been given elsewhere. In his Craiylus, he derives it from the verb ihe-ein {BUw\ "to move," as suggested by the motion of the heavenly . bodies which he connects with Deity. According to the Esoteric Philo- sophy, this Deity, during its "Nights" and its "Days," or Cycles of Rest and Activity, is the "Eternal Perpetual Motion," the "Ever-Becoming, as well as the ever universally Present, and the Ever- Existing." The latter is the root-abstraction ; the former is the only possible conception in the human mind, if it disconnects this Deity from any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never-ceasing evolution, circling back in its incessant I progress through aeons of duration into its original status — Absolute Unity. It was only the minor Gods who were made to carry the symbolical
tates of the higher ones. Thus, the God Shoo, the personification
576
THE SBCRBT DOCTRIKE.
of Ra, who appears as the "Great Cat of the Basin of Perssea in An was often represented in the Eg^'ptian monuments seated and holding a cross, symbol of the four Quarters, or the Elements, attache circle.
In that very learned work, The Natural Genesis, by Gerald Massey, under the heading, "Typology of the Cross," there is more information to be had on the cross and circle than in any other work we know of. He who would fain have proofs of the antiquity of the cross is referred to these two volumes. The author says:
The circle and cross axe inseparable. . . . The Crux Ansata unites the circle and cross of the four comers. From this origin the circle and the cross came to be interchangeable at times. For example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The zuuue denotes the circling, wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like manner, Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four-footed cross [SvastikaJ and a type of the four quarters. Thus the cross is equivalent to the circle of the year. The wheel emblem unites the cross and circle ia one, as does the hieroglyphic cake and Ankh-tie C*^.t
Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with tb Initiates. For Raoul Rochette shows thatij
The sign Q occurs as the reverse of a Phcenician coin, with a Ram as the ob . . . The same sign, sometimes called Venus' Look Lug* Glass, because it typiS reproduction, was employed to mark the hind-quarters of valuable brood mares o Corinthian and other beautiful breeds of horses.
This proves that so far back as those early days the cross had already become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion ol divine origin of cross and circle had begun.
Another form of the cross is given from the Journal of the Ri Asiatic Society :%
At each of the four comers is placed a quarter arc of an o^Hform curve, and when the four are put together they form an oval; thus the figure combines the cros^ with the circle round it in four parts, corresponding to the four comers of the cross. The four segments answer to the four feet of the Swastica croes and the Fylfot of Thor. The four-leaved lotus flower of Buddha, is likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being an Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter arcs, if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse is also
n
• Sec Book of the Dead, xvll. 4S-47 f C^. at., i. 4>Ji 4»-
t De la Croix Atufe, Mhm. tir fAcad/mie des Sciences, pi. jNaturat Getuiis, p. 483. 4 VoL xriii. p. 393, pi. 4 i Inmao, Og. jS; Gerald MaMey, op. cit
X, Nos. B, 9, aUo t6, 1, p. 320; quoted ift^ idiirf., p. 4M.
VARIATIONS OF THE CROSS-SYMBOUSM.
577
figured on each ann of the cro»s. This ellipse therefore denotes the path of the earth. . . . Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the following specimen, i^i which is here presented, as the cross of the two equinoxes and the two solstices V^ placed within the figure of the earth's path. The same ovoid or )K>at>shaped figure appears at times in the Hindu drawings with seven steps at each end as a form or a mode of Mem.
This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There arc six more aspects, however, and an attempt may be made to interpret a few of these. The subject is so vast that it would require in itself alone many volumes.
But the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of cross and circle, spoken of in the above cited work, is one which receives its full ex- planation and final colour from Arj'an symbols of the same nature. Says the author:
The four-armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but the rross-sigtt is not always simple.* This is a type that was developed from an identifiable be- ginning, which was adapted to the expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred cross of Egypt that was carrieil in the hands of the Gods, the Pharaohs, and the mummied dead, is the Ankh Q the sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant. . , . The top of this is the* hieroglyphic Ru ^^> set upright on tlie Taa-cross. The Ru is the door, gate, moutlt. the place of outlet. This denotes the birthplace in the northern quarter of the heavens, from which the Sun is reborn. Hence the Ru of the Ankh-sis^t is the fentinin: type of (he birihpCace^ representing the north. It was in the northern quarter that the Goddess of the Seven Stars, called the "Mother of the Revolutions," gave birth to- time in the earlieM cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh-cross C?C, a mere loop which contains both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop or noose is carried in front of the oldest genitrix, Typhon of the Great Bear^ as her Arky the ideograph of a period^ an ending, a time, shown to mean one revolution. This, then, represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great Bear which constituted the earliest year of time, from which fact we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents that quarter, the birthplace of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh symbol. Indeed this can be proved. The noobe is an Ark or Rek type of reckon- ing. The Ru of the Ankh-cross was continued in the C>'priote R, Q, and the Coptic Ro, P.t The Ro was carrietl into the Greek cross j? , which is formed of the Ro and Chi or A*-*. . . . The Rek, or Ark, was the sign of all beginning {Arche) on this account, and the Ark-tie is the cross of the North, the bind part of heaven.t
Now this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Pauranic version in India gives the whole matter another colour. Without
* Certainly not ; for very oflen there are fljrmtMls made to aymboUwe oihtr lymbols. and theae are In turn usrd in fdcof:Ttiphi(. t The R of the Slavonian and Russian alpb beU ^the Kyrilrtxa alphabet) la alao the Latin F. S Ibid., p. 413.
578
THE SKCRKT DOCTRIKB.
destroying the above interpretation, it is made to reveal a portion Its mysteries with the help of the astronomical key. and thus offers 3 more metaphysical rendering. The Ankh-tie C?^ doe not belong to Egypt alone. It exists under the name of Pasha, a cord which the four-armed Shiva holds in the hand of his right back arm.* The Mahideva is repre- sented in the posture of an ascetic, as Mahdyogi, with his third eye Qi, which is "the Ku Tau-cross" in another form. The Pasha is held in the hand in such away that the first finger and hand neir the thumb make the cross, or loop and crossing. Our Orientalists would have it to represent a cord to bind refracton- offenders with, because, forsooth, Kiili, Shiva's consort, has the same as au attribute!
The Pdsha has here a double siguificauce, as also has Shiva's Trisula and every other divine attribute. This dual significance lies in Shiva, for Rudra has certainly the same meaning as the Egyptian Ansaled Cross in its cosmic and mystic meaning. In the hand of Shiva, the Pisha becomes lingyonic. Shiva, as said before, is a name unknown to the yedas. It is in the IV/ti/e Vajur Veda that Rudra appears for the first time as the Great God. Mahddeva, whose symbol is the Lingani. In the Eig V^da he is called Rudra. the "howler," the beneficent and Uie maleficent Deity at the same time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the Vishnu Purdna, he is the God who springs from the forehead of BrahmS, who separates into male and female, and he is the parent of the Rudras or Maruts, half of whom are brilliant and gentle, others. black and ferocious. Irj the Vcdas, he is the Divine Ego aspiring to return to its pure, deific state, and at the same time that Divine Hgo imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce passions make of him the "roarer,** the "terrible." This is well shown in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, wherein the Rudras. the progeny of Rudra, God of Fire, are called the "ten \4tal breaths {prdna, life), with tlie heart {maruks), as eleventh,"! whereas as Shiva, he is the drsiroyrroi that life. Brahma calls him Rudra. and gives him, besides, seven other names, signifying seven forms of manifestation, and also the seven powers of nature which destroy but to recreate or regenerate.
Hence the cruciform noose, or Pdsha, in the hand of Shiva, when he
• 8c« Moor*! Hindk ftm/Mfon, pUte kUI.
T Sec Dou-»oa'k HindA Ooatcal Dictionary, lub mk. "ftudrm.**
1PHE HEAVENLY "PORPOISE/
579
is represented as an ascetic, the MahSyogin, has no phallic significa- tion, and, indeed, it requires an imagination strongly bent in this direction to find such a signification even in an astronomical symbol. As an emblem of "door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet" it signifies the "strait gate" that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven, far more than the "birthplace" in a physiological sense.
It is a cross in a circle and Crux Ansata, truly; but it is a cross on which all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogi passes through the '*strait gate," the narrow circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the Inner Man has passed the threshold.
As to the mysterious seven Rishis in the constellation of the Great Bear; if Eg>pt made them sacred to "the oldest genitrix, Typhou," India has connected these symbols ages ago with Time or Yuga- revolutions, and the Saptarshis are intimately connected with our present age — the dark Kali Yuga * The great Circle of Time, on the face of which. Indian fancy has represented the Porpoise, or Shishu- mara, has the cross placed on it by nature in its division and localiza- tion of stars, planets and constellations. In Bhagavaia Purdna,\ it is said :
At the extremity of the tail of that auifnal, whose head is directed toward the south, and whose body is in the shape of a ring [circle], Dhruva [the ex-pole star] is placed ; aJcng its tail are PrajApati, Agui, Indra, Dharraa, etc.; across its loins the seven Rishis.;
This is then the first and earliest cross and circle, formed by the Deity, symbolized by Vishnu, the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time. K51a, on whose plane lie crossways all the Gods, creatures, and crea- tions bom in Space and Time — who, as the Philosophy has it. all die at the Mahipralaya.
Meanwhile it is the seven Rishis who mark the time and the duration of events in our septenary Life-cycle. They are as mysterious as their supposed wives, the Pleiades, of whom only one — she who hides — has proven virtuous. The Pleiades, or Krittikas, are the nurses of Kartti- keya, the God of War (the Mars of the Western Pagans), who is called the Commander of the Celestial Armies, or rather of the Siddhas — Siddha-sena (translated Yogis in Heaven, and holy Sages on the Earth) — which would make Karttikeya identical with Michael, the "Leader of
* Described In th« Missiom tUs Jut/s. by the Marquis St. Yvei d'Alveydn, the bferopfaant and lender of a lorsc party of French Kabaliats, as the Golden Agef
• V. «iii.
! Tnuialatcd from Bomoaf's French TraiulttUon. quoted by Pitxedward HaU, in Wilaon'fl yuhnu
Purdna, U. 307-
58o
SECRET DOCTRINE.
the Celestial Hosts" and, like himself, a virgin Kumara * Verily he is the Guha, the "Mysterious One/' as much so as are the Saptarshis and the Krittikas. the seven Rishis and the Pleiades, for the interpretation of all these combined reveal to the Adept the greatest mysteries oi Occult Nature. One point is worth mention in this question of cross and circle, as it bears strongly upon the elements of Fire and Water, which play such an important part in the circle and cross symbolism. Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to have been born of his mother Juno alone, without the participation of a father, or like the Avatiras (Krishna, for instance) — in the West as in the East — KSrttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner, begotten by neither father nor mother, but out of a seed of Rudra-Shiva, which was cast into the Fire (Agni) and then received by the Water (Ganges). Thus he is born from Fire and Water — a "boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the Moon." Hence be is called Agnibhu (son of Agni) and Gangi- putra (son of Ganges). Add to this the fact that the KrittikS, his nurses, as the Mahya Purdna shows, are presided over by Agni. or, in the authentic words, "the seven Rishis are on a line with the brilliant Agni," and hence "Krittika has Agneya as a synonym"! — and the connection is easy to follow.
It is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali Yuga, the age of sin and sorrow. As the Bhdgavata Purdna tells us:
When the splendour of VLshou, named Krishna, departed for heaven, then did the Kali age. during which men delight in sin. invade the world. . . .
When the seven Rishis were in Maghd, the Kali age, comprising i.aoo [divine] years [432,000 common years] began; and, when, from Magli^, they shall reach Pflr- vd^h&dh^ then wilf this Kali age attain its growth, under Nauda and bis successors.^
This is the revolution of the Rishis —
When the two first stars of the seven Rishis (the Great Bear) rise in the heaveoi. and some lunar asterism is seen at night, at an equal distance between them, thea the seven Rishis continue stationar>' in that conjunction for u hundred years,
— as a hater of Nanda makes Par^shara say. According to Beutley, it was in order to show the quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this notion originated among the Astronomers.
* The more ao mince he In the reputed tlayer of TVipurlBora and tbe TiUn Tlrakfl. Micbiel U Uk couqueror of the dragon, and Indra and lUrttikcya are often made identical.
♦ Ibid., iv. a_i5.
I op. cU.. Xlf. it. nb-ii; quoted in f^ishnu Purdna, WUsoa's Traoa,, iv. ijo. Nanda is Use Col Buddhist aoverei^, ChandrsKuptu. ag-ainat whom all tbe Brihmana wetv «o arrayed, be of Kite MOO* Dynasty, and the gTandfather of Aahoka. This is one of tJiow paiAagu that do not ^dsl In the earlier Paurinlc MSS. They were added by the Vaiahoavas, who, oui of •eclariaa aptte, were almost «a great inlcrpolalors aa the Chhatian I'athcra.
This was by assntntng an imaginary line, or great circle, passing through the poles of the ecliptic and the beginning of the fixed Magh&, which circle was supposed to cut some of the stars in the Great Bear. . . . The seven stars in the Great Bear being called the Rishis, the circle so assumed was called the line of the Rishis; and. being invariably &xcd to the beginning of the lunar astcrism Maghi^, the precession would be noted by stating the degree, etc., of any movable lunar maasioa cut by that line or circle, as an index.*
There has been, and there still exists, a seemingly endless controversy about the chronology of the Hindus. Here is, however, a point that could help to determine — approximately at least — the age when the symbolism of the seven Rishis and their connection with the Pleiades began. When Karttikeya was delivered to the Krittika by the Gods to be nursed, they were only six, whence K3rttikeya is represented with six heads; but when the poetical fancy of the early Aryan Symbologists made of them the consorts of the seven Rishis, they were sevtn. Their names are given, and these are Amba, DulS, Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghayauli, Varshayauti. and Chupuuika. There are other sets of names which differ, however. Anyhow, the seven Rishis were made to marry the seven Krittika before the disappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could the Hindu astronomers speak of a star which no one can see without the help of the strongest telescopes? This is why, perhaps, lu every such case the majority of the events described in the Hindu allegories is fixed upon as ''a very recent invention, certainly wifhift the Christian era."
The oldest Sanskrit MSS. on Astronomy begin their series of Nakshatras, the tweuty-seven lunar asterisms, with the sign of Krittika, and this can hardly make them earlier than 2,780 B.C. This is accord- ing to the •' Vedic Calendar," which is accepted even by the Orientalists, though they get out of the diflBcuUy by saying that the said Calendar does xioX prove that the Hindus knew anything of Astronomy at that date, and assure their readers that. Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian Pandits may have acquired their knowledge of the lunar mansions headed by Krittika from the Phoenicians, etc. However that may be, the Pleiades are the central group of the system of sidereal symbology. They are situated in the neck of the constellation Taurus, regarded by Madler and others, in Astronomy, as the central group of the system of the Milky Way, and in the Kabalah and Eastern Esotericism, as the sidereal septenatehoTii from the first manifested side of the upper triangle, the concealed /\. This mauifested side is Taurus, the symbol of One
* Historical View of ike fitndk Astronomy, p. 65, as quoted hj Wilioa, op. cit,, p. 133.
5S2
THS SBCSET DOCTKINB.
(the figrure i). or of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (k) "bull" or ''ox," whose synthesis is Ten (lo), or Yod C), the perfect letter and number. The Pleiades (Alcyone, especially), are thos con- sidered, even in Astronomy, as the central point around which ottruni- verse of fixed stars revolves^ the focus from which, and into which, the Divine Breath. Motion, works incessantly during the Manvantaia. Hence, in the sidereal symbols of the Occult Philosophy, it is this circle with the starrj* cross on its face which plays tlie most promin part.
The Secret Doctrine leaches us that ever>*thing in the Unirersc, well as the Universe itself, is formed ("created") during its period! manifestations — by accelerated Motion set into activity by the Breath of the Ever-to-be-unknown Power — unknown to present mankind, at any rate — within the phenomenal world. The Spirit of Life and Im- mortality was ever>*where symbolized by a circle; hence the serpent biting its tail, represents the Circle of Wisdom in Infinity; as does the astronomical cross — the cross within a circle — and the globe, with two wngs added lo it, which then became the sacred Scarabseus of the Eg>'ptians, its very name being suggestive of the secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabaeus is called in the Egyptian papyri, KhopLxroa and Khopri from the verb kkefpron, *'to become," and has thus been made a symbol and an emblem of human life and of the successive "becomings" of man. through the various peregrinations and metem- psychoses, or reincarnations, of the liberated soul. This mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians beliex'ed in reincarnation and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal Entity. As th however, was an Esoteric Doctrine, revealed only during the Mysteries! by the Priest-hierophants and the King-initiates to the Candidates, it was kept secret. The Incorporeal Intelligences (the Planetar>' Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always represented under the form of circles. In the primitive Philosophy of the Hierophants these invisible circles were the prototypic causes and builders of all the heavenly orbs, which were their visible bodies or coverings, and of which they were souls. It was certainly a universal teaching in antiquity.* Proclus says :
Bcforv the mathematical numbers, there are the self-moving onmbers; before the figures Mpporcnt — the vil&l figures, and before produciag the material worlds wkick move in a cinle^ tlic Creative Power produced the inznsibU circles.+
LUIS
1
8ct£McAiW.i.
t /« Qmmt, Uh. £iuiid.
THS.VS BNTM KT CISCtTLlTS HST.
583
"iJeus enim el circulus est*' says Pherecydes, in his Hymn to Jupiter. This was a Hermetic axiom, and Pythagoras prescribed such a circular prostration and posture during the hours of contemplation. "The devotee must approach as much as possible the form of a perfect circle," prescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried to spread the same custom among the people, Pierius tells his readers; and Pliny says:
Daring our worship, we roll up, so to say, our body in a ring— /c^/mim corpus circu tnagi mur. •
The Vision of the prophet Ezekiel reminds one forcibly of this mysticism of the circle, when he beheld a "whirlwind" from which came out "one wfuei upon the earth" whose work *'was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel"— "for the spirit of the living creature mas in the wheels." f
"[S/iVjV] whirleth about continually, and . . . returneth again according to his circuits" — says Solomon, J who is made in the English translation to speak of the "wind," and in the original text to refer both to the spirit and the sun. But the Zohar, the only true gloss of the Kabalistic Preacher — in explanation of this verse, which is, perhaps, rather hazy and difficult to comprehend — says:
It seems to say that the buu moves in circuits, whereas it refers to the Spirit under the sun, called the Holy Spirit, that moves circularly, toward both sides, that they [It and the sun] should be united in thi same Esuftce.i^
The Brahmanical "Golden Egg," from within which emerges Brahma, the Creative Deity, is the "Circle with the Central Point" of Pythagoras, and its fitting symbol. In the Secret Doctrine the concealed Unity — whether representing Parabrahraan; or the "Great Extreme" of Confucius, or the Deity concealed by Phtah, the Eternal Light, or again the Jewish Ain Suph, is always found to be symbolized by a circle or the "nought" (absolute No-Thing and Nothing, because
* The Goddess B«5ht. or Pubt, wu represented with Uie head of a cat. This anim&I was held sacred lu Rgypl for several reasons. It was a symbol of the Moon, the "Rye of Osiris" or the "Sua," durinf night. The cat was also sacred to Sokhit. One of the mystic reasons was because of its kwdy being^ rolled up in a circle when asleep. The posture is prescribed for occult and rnaniictlc pur- poses, in urdcT to rrgulule, iu a certain way, the circulation of the vital fiuici, with which the cat is prrSminently endowed. " The nine li\-es of a cat" is a popular saying based on ^ood physiolo^cal «nd occult reasons. Mr. Gerald Masoey give* also an astronomical reason for it which may be found in vol. i. pp. 332, 393, of the present work. " The cat saw the suu, had it lii its eye by night [was the eye of night], when it was otherwise unseen by men [for as the Moon reflects the light of the Suu, so the cat was supposed to reflect It on account of its phospborcscent eyes}. M-V might say the moou mitrortd the solar light, hrcansc wc have tooJktmg glasses. With them the cat's eye uku the mirror." {iMnwIatry AHCtent and Modern, p. a.)
* Etfkiel, \. A, 15, >6, K. X EolUs., 1 6.
\ FoL 87, col. 346.
THH SECRET DOCTRmK,
it is Infinite and the All); while the God-manifested (by its works) is referred to as the Diameter of that Circle. The symbolism of the under- lying idea is thus made evident; the right line passing through the centre of a circle has, in the geometrical sense, length, but neither breadth nor thickness; it is an imaginary and feminine symbol, crossing eternity, and made to rest on the plane of existence of the p/ufiam^nat world. It is dimensional^ whereas its circle is dimensionless, or, to use an algebraical term, it is the dimension of an equation. Another way of symbolizing the idea is found in the Pythagorean sacred Decad which synthesizes, in the dual numeral Ten (the one and a circle or cipher), the Absolute All manifesting itself in the Word or Generative Power of Creation.
%
period I [ally it|fl|
B.
THE FALL OF THE CROSS INTO MATTER.
Those who would feel inclined to argue upon this Pythago symbol by objecting that it is not yet ascertained, so far, at what of antiquity the nought or cipher occurs for the first time — especially i India — are referred to his Unveiled.^
Admitting for argument's sake that the ancient world was not acquainted with our modes of calculation or Arabic figures — though in reality we know it was — yet the circle and diameter idea is there to show that it was the first symbol in Cosmogony. Before the Trig^raras of Fo-hi, Yang, the unity, and Yin, the binary,
I I
VANG. rm.
explained cunningly enough by Eliphas Levi.t China had her fucius, and her Tao-ists. The former circumscribes the "Great treme" within a circle with a horizontal line across; the latter pla three concentric circles beneath the great circle, while the Sung Sages showed the "Great Extreme" in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth in two lower and smaller circles. The Yangs and the Vins are a far later invention. Plato and his school never understood the Deit>' otherwise, notwithstanding the many epithets applied by him to the "God over all'* (6 cVl irao-i d believe in a personal God — a gigantic shadow of man. His epithets
* Vot. U. pp. 399, 300'
f Dogmt ei Rtiuet dt U HauU Magit, i. zm-
AIM in T'sang't'ung'ky, by Wei-Pft'Yuic.
THE SUPREME GOOD OP PTATO.
585
Monarcli" and '*Law-giverof the Universe" bear an abstract tneaninjf ■well understood by every Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law that governs the Universe, and recognizes it at the same time as immutable. As Plato says:
Beyond all finiU existences and secondary caases, all laws, ideas and principles, there is an Intelligence or Mind (vou?), the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded, . . . the ultimate ^\x\>- stance ffoni which all things derive their being and essence, the First and eflficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty and excellency, and goodness, which pervade the Universe.
This Mind is called, by way of preeminence and excellence, the Supreme Good.* "The God" (6 tfcos), and the "God over all." These words apply, as Plato himself shows, neither to the "Creator" nor te the "Father" of our modern Monotheist, but to the Ideal aud Abstract Cause. For, as he says: "This tfco?, the Ck>d over all, is ttoi (he truth or the inleUigence, but the Father of it," and its Primal Cause. Is it Plato, the greatest pupil of the archaic Sages, a Sage himself, for whom there was but a single object of attainment in this life — Real Knowledge — who would have ever believed in a Deity that curses and damns men for ever, on the slightest provocation?! Surely not he who considered only those to be genuine Philosophers and students of truth who possessed the knowledge of the really -existing iu opposition to mere seeming; of the always-existing in opposition to the transitory: and of that which exists /^i?rwaM^^//y in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately.J Speusippus and Xeno- crates followed in his footsteps. The One, the original, had no exist- ence, in the sense applied to it by mortal men. The Ttfuov (the honoured) dwells in the centre as in the circunifer^fuce, but it is only the reflection of the Deity — the World Soul§ — the plane of the surface of the circle. The cross and circle are a universal conception — as old as the human mind itself They stand foremost on the list of the long series of, so
* Cocker'B CkrutiaHtty And Grtik i^iiosophy, xi. p. 377,
t The cry of despair uttered by Count de Montlosier, in hU Mystirts de ta Vie Hummine {p. 117). ia a warrant that the Catise of "excellence and gxmdneu," auppownl by Plato to pervade the Univervc is neither hii Deity, nor our World. " Au spectacle de tant de grandeur oppose 1 celui de tant de mis^re, resprit qui s« met il observer ce vofite ensemble, se representc je ne said quelle grandc divinite, ^N* um diviHiU, pltti grands et ptns firessaite encore, auroit comme brisfe et mlse eu pifrces en du- penant lea dfbris dans tout rUnivcr»." The"dtiU greater and still more exacting divinity" than the God of this world, supposed to be bo " good "—is Konna. And this true Divinity shows well that Uic lesser one, our inner God (personal for the time being), has no power to arresl the mighty hand of this greater Deity— the Cause awakened by our actions gcncratiug smaller causes— which is called the lAff of Retribution.
t Sec Isis UnveiUd, \. mix and xviU.
1Stobflcua,£c/.J.86i.
L
586
THB SECRET DOCTRINE.
to say, international symbols, which expressed very often great scien- tific truths, besides their direct bearing upon psychological, and even physiological mysteries.
It is no explanation to say. as does Eliphas Levi, that God. the universal Love, having caused the male Unit to dig an abyss in the female Binary, or Chaos, thereby produced the world. In addition to the grossness of the conception, it does not remove the difficulty of conceiving it without losing one's veneration for the rather too human- like ways of the Deity. It is to avoid such anthropomorphic concep- tions that the Initiates never used the epithet "God" to designate the One and Secondless Principle in the Universe; and that — faithful in this to the oldest traditions of the Secret Doctrine the world over — they deny that such imperfect and often not very clean work could ever be produced by Absolute Perfection. There is no need to mention here other still greater metaphysical difficulties. Between speculative Atheism and idiotic Anthropomorphism there must be a philosophical mean, and a reconciliation. The Presence of the Unseen Principle throughout all Nature, and the highest manifestation of it on Earth- Man, can alone help to solve the problem, which is that of the mathe- matician whose X must ever elude the grasp of our terrestrial algebra. The Hindus have tried to solve it by their Avatiras. the Christians lAink they have done so — by their one divine Incarnation. Exoteri- cally — both are wrong; Esoterically both of them are ver^' near the truth. Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion, Paul seems to have fathomed — if not actually revealed — the archaic myster>' of the cross. As for the rest of those who, by unifying and indivi- dualizing the Universal Presence, have synthesized it into one symbol — the central point in the crucifix — they show thereby that they have never seized the true spirit of the teaching of Christ, but rather thai they have degraded it in more than one way by their erroneous inter- pretations. They have forgotten the spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it — as though the Boundless and the Infinite could ever be limited and conditioned to one manifestation individualized in one man, or even in a nation!
The four arms of the Xi or decussated cross, and of the Hermetic cross, pointing to the four cardinal points — were well understood by the mystical minds of the Hindus. Brdhmans and Buddhists, hundreds of years before it was heard of in Europe, for that symbol was and is found all over the world. They bent the ends of the cross and made
^^^^^^V THE RIDDI.E O^ THE CROSS. 5S7
of it their Svastika, IJrj, now the Wan of the Mongolian Buddhist.* It .implies that the **centrftl point" is not limited to one individual, how- ever perfect; that The Principle (God) is in Humanity, and Humanity, as all the rest, is in It, like drops of water are in the ocean, the four ends being toward the four cardinal points, hence losing themselves in infinity.
Isarim, an Initiate, is said to have found at Hebron, on the dead body lOf Hermes, the well known Smaragdine Tablet, which, it is said, con- tained the essence of Hermetic Wisdom. Upon it were traced, among others, the sentences:
Separate the earth from the fire, the sublile from the gross. . . . Ascend . . . from the earth to heaven and then descend again to earth.
The riddle of the cross is contained in these words, and its double mystery is solved — to the Occultist.
The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions, the hori- zontal and the perpendicular, the height and breadth, which the geomctiizing Deify divides at the intersecting point, and which forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary, when it is inscribetl within the perfect square, is the basis of the Occultist. Within its mystical precinct lies the master-key which opens the door of every science, physical as well as spiritual. It symbolizes our human existence, for the circle of life circumscribes the four points of the cross, which represent in succession, birth, life, death, and immoriality,f
"Attach thyself," says the Alchemist, "to the four letters of the tetragrani dis- posed in the following manner. The letters of the ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at first. The incommunicable axiom is kabahstically contained therein, and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the ma5ters."t
Again :
The Tau, j , and the astronomical cross of Egypt, Qh are conspicuous in several apertures of the remains of Palenque. In one of the basso-relievos of the Palace of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured as a hicrogl3rphic right under the seated figure, is a Tau. The standing ^gure, which leans over the first one, is in the act of covering its head with the left hand with the veil of initiation; while it extends its right with the index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The posi- tion is precisely that of a Christian bishop giving his blessing, or the one in which Jesus is often represented while at the Last Supper.^
* "rhe Svaslika ut ccrtulnly one of the oLdot symbols of the Ancient Races. In our centory, says Kenneth R. ir. Mackenzie [Royal .\fawnic Cytltyfi^rdi a), the Svastika "has survived in the form of the maUet" in the Masonic Fraternity. Atnoiiff the many "meanings," given by the author, we do not find the most important, Masons erldenlly being Ignorant of it,
t /sis UnveiUd, I. 50A.
t /Mtf., p. S06.
I Ibid., p. 573.
THB SKCRKT DOCTRINK.
The Egyptian Hierophaiit had a square head-dress which he had to wear always during his functions. These square hats are worn unto this day by the Armenian priests. The perfect Tau — formed of the perpendicular (descending male ray) and the horizontal line (Matter, female principle) — and Uie mundane circle were attributes of Isis, and it was only at death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of the mummy. The claim that the cross is purely a Christian symbol intro- duced afler our era, is strange indeed, when we find Ezekiel stamping the foreheads of the men of Judah who feared the Lord,* with the sig7iu/n Thau, as it is translated in the Vulgate. In the ancient Hebrew ■ this sign was formed thus ^, but in the original Egyptian bien>^| gl>'phics as a perfect Christian cross *|* (Tat, the emblem of stabilitj').^^ In the Ra^'ciatmi, also, the "Alpha and Omega" — Spirit and Matter — the first and the last, stamps the name of his Father on the foreheads of the tied. Moses f orders his people to mark their door-posts and lintcU ' with blocKl, lest the " Lord God** should make a mistake and smite some ' of hi« chosien people, instead of the doomed Egyptians. And this mark in ft Tau! -the identical E^ptian handled cross, with the half of which toliiiman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruia cit Philst.
Enough has been said in the text about the Svastika and the Tax Verily may the cross be traced back into the ver>' depths of the un- fathomable archaic ages! Its mystery deepens rather than clears, as wc find it on the statues of Easter Island, in old Egypt, in Central Af^iii. eiigrnvcd on rocks as the Tau and Svastika. in Pre-Christian Hcuuitiimvia, every whcrel The author of the Source of Measures stands |i«r|)li'xcd before the endless shadow it throws back into antiquity^ and li tinuble to trace it to any particular nation or man. He shows the TurKHtiiH handed down by the Hebrews, obscured by translation. In JoiMna \ rcmi in Arabic, and in the Targum of Jonathan^ it is said: "The kiiiK of Al he crucified upon a tree."
'I'hif HrptiiMKiiit rotldcring ii of suspension from a double word or cross. (Wotds- worlh (III jimliuii.) . . . The strangest expression of ibis kind is in Numbtn (■»v, \) wlirrr, Iiy Onkclon (?) it is read: '•'Crucify them before tht Lord f Jehovah) t/gaim/ the sun." Ttic woM here is :op^, to nail to, rendered properly (Fuer^t) by the Vnlgat«t to crucify. The very consiruction of this sentence is mysticf
So It ii«, hut the !*pirit of it has been ever misunderstood. "To crucify before (not against) the Sun'* is a phrase used of Initiation. It
I
• KnkM, U. 4.
t SrodMi, xil. aa.
trtiLv^
I Qp ea., p. •04.
%B StEBP OP SrtOAM.
589
comes from Egr>'pt, and primarily from India. The enig:ma can be unriddled only by searching for its key in the Mysteries of Initiation. The Initiated Adept, who had successfully passed through all the trials, was aitachid, not nailed, but simply tied on a couch in the form of a Tau, "T, in Egypt, of a Svastika without the four additional pro- longations (-4- not ^) in India, plunged in a deep sleep — the "Sleep of Siloam," as it is called to this day among the Initiates in Asia Minor, in Syria, and even higher Egypt. He was allowed to remain in this I state for three days and three nights, during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to •* confabulate" with the "Gods," descend into Hades, [Amenti, or Patala — according to the country — and do works of charity to the invisible Beings, whether Souls of men or Elemental Spirits; his body remaining all the time in a temple crypt or subterranean cave. In Egypt it was placed in the Sarcophagus in the King's Chamber of the Pyramid of Cheops, and carried during the night of the approaching third day to the entrance of a gallery, where at a certain hour the beams of the rising Sun struck full on the face of the entranced Candidate, who awoke to be initiated by Osiris and Thoth, the God of Wisdom,
Let the reader who doubts the statement consult the Hebrew originals before he denies. Let him turn to some most suggestive Eg>'ptian bas reliefs. One especially from the temple of Philse, represents a scene of initiation. Two God-Hierophants, one with the head of a hawk (the Sun), the other ibis-headed (Mercur>', Thoth, the God of Wisdom and Secret Learning, the assessor of Osiris-Sun), are standing over the body of a Candidate just initiated. They are in the act of pouring on his head a double stream of "water" (the Water of Life and of New- birth), the streams being interlaced in the shape of a cross and full of small ansated crosses. This is allegorical of the awakening of the Candidate who is now an Initiate, when the beams of the morning Sun, Osiris, strike the crown of his head; his entranced body being placed on its wooden Tau so as to receive the rays. Then appeared the Hierophant-Initiators. and the sacramental words were pronounced, ostensibly to the Sun-Osiris, in reality to the Spirit-Sun within, en- lightening the newly-born man.
Let the reader meditate on the connection of the Sun with the cross from the highest antiquity, in both its generative and spiritually re- generative capacities. Let him examine the tomb of Bait-Oxly, in the reign of Ramses II, where he will 6nd the crosses in every shape and position; as also on the throne of that sovereign, and finally on a frag-
590
THB SECRET IXXTTRrNE-
ment representing the adoration of Bakhan-Aleare, from the Hall of the ancestors of Totmes III, now preserved in the National Library of Paris. In this extraordinary sculpture and painting one sees the disk of the Sun beaming upon an ansated cross placed upon a cross of which those of the Calvary are perfect copies. The ancient MSS. mention these as the "hard couches of those who were in [spiritual] travaiK the art of giving birth to themsdvesy A quantity of such cruci- form "couches.** on which the Candidate, thrown into a dead trance at the end of his supreme Initiation, was placed and secured, were found^^ in the underground halls of the Egyptian Temples afler their destruo^H lion. The worthy and holy Fathers of the Cyril and Theophilus t>'pes used them freely, believing they had been brought and concealed there by some new converts. Alone Origen, and after him Clemens Alexaa- dnnus and other ex-initiates» knew better. But they preferred to keep silent.
Again, let the reader read the Hindu "fables," as the Orientalists call them, and remember the allegory of Vishvakarmi, the Creative Poi the Great Architect of the World, called in the Rig Veda the seeing God," who "sacrifices himself to himself.*' The Spiritual Egos' of mortals are his own essence, one with him, tlierefore. Remember that he is called Deva-vardhika, the "Builder of the Gods." and that it is he who lies the Sun, Surj^a. his son-in-law, on liis lathe — in the exo- teric allegory, but on the Svastika, in Esoteric tradition, for on Earth he is the Hierophant-Initiator — and cuts away a portion of his brightness. Vishvakarmi, remember again, is the son of Yoga-siddhS. /.r., the holy power of Yoga, and the fabricator of the "fiery weapon," the magic Agneyastra.* The narrative is g^ven more fully elsewhere.
The author of the kabalistic work so often quoted from, asks:
» call , >wei^H *AU9
Bgosfl
c
4
The theoretical twc of crucifixion then, must have been somehow connected witll the personification of this symbol [the structure of the Garden of Paradise aym- bolized by a crucified man]. Bui how? And as showing what' The symtxM was of the origin of measures* shadowing forth atativ^ law or d£Ugn. What, practi- cally, as regarda humanity, could actual crucifixion betoken ? Yet. that it was held aa the effigy of some mysterious working of the same system, is shown from the very fact of the use. There seems to be deep below deep as to the mysterioos workings of these number values — [the symbolizatioa of the connection of 113: 355. with ao6i2 : 6561. by a cruHfied fHan\ Not only are they shown to work in the cosmos but, ... by sympathy, they seem to work out conditions relating to an unseeu and spiritual world, and the prophets seem to have held knowledge of the
* See DowMD't Min4A Ciassuml DiUiomary,
THE MEANING OF THE CRCCrFIXION.
59X
connecting lints. Reflection becomes more involved when it is considered that the power of expression of the law, exactly^ by numbers clearly defining a system, was not the accident of the language, bat was its very essence, and of its primary organic const rvciion ; therefore, neither the language, nor the mathematical system attaching to it, could be of maai's invention, unless both w^rt founded upon a prior language which ajlenvards became obsolete.*
The author proves these points by further elucidation, and reveals the secret meaning of more than one dead-letter narrative, by showing that probably, DTM, ma?i, was Xhe frimordiai word;
The very 5rst word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were, to carry the idea, by sound, of a man. The essential of this word was 113 [the numerical value of that word] from the beginning, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system displayed.t
This is demonstrated by the Hindu Vittoba, a form of Vishnu, as has already been stated. The figure of Vittoba, even to the nail-marks on the feet.J is that of Jesus crucified, in all its details save the cross. That vian was meant is proved to us further by the fact of the Initiate being reborn after his crucifixion on the Tree of Life. This "Tree" has now become cxoterically — through its use by the Romans as an instrument of torture and the ignorance of the early Christian schemers — the tree of death, f
Thus, one of the seven Esoteric meanings intended by this mystery of crucifixion by the mystic inventors of the system — the original elaboration and adoption of which dates back to the very establish- ment of the Mysteries — is discovered iu the geometrical symbols con- taining the history of the evolution of man. The Hebrews — whose prophet Moses was so learned in the Esoteric Wisdom of Eg>*pt, and who adopted their nimjerical system from the Phoenicians, and later from the Gentiles, from whom also they borrowed most of their Kaba- listic Mysticism — most ingeniously adapted the cosmic and anthro- pological symbols of the "Heathen" nations to their peculiar secret records. If Christian sacerdotalism has lost the key of this to-day, the early compilers of the Christian Mysteries were well versed in Esoteric Philosophy and the Hebrew Occult Metrology, and used it dexterously. Thus they took the word Aish, one of the Hebrew word-forms for man^ and used it in conjunction with that of ShanSh or lunar year, so mysti- cally connected with the name of Jehovah, the supposed "Father" of
* The Source of MtAturti, p. M4.
* !hid., p. 305.
% See Moor's HindU Pantktom, where VlUoba'* kft foot, in Uie figure of hU Idol, bear* Uie mark of the nails.
592
THE SKCRBT DOCTRINE.
Jesus, and embosomed the mystic idea in an astronomical value ana 'onnula.
The original idea of the "man crucified" in space certainly belongs to the ancient Hindus. Moor shows this in his Hindu Pantheon in the engraving that represents Vittoba. Plato adopted it in his decos- »alcd cross iu space, the Xi the "second God who impressed himself on the universe in the form of the cross"; Krishna is likewise shown 11 "crucified."* Again it is repeated in the Old Testament in the queer injunction to crucify men before the I/)rd, the Sun — which is no prophecy at all. but has a direct phallic significance. In that same most suggestive work on the kabalistic meanings, we read again: ^1
Iu aymhol, Ihf naila of the cross have for the shape of the heads thereof a solid ^^ pyran:i Tttkinf( the position of the ihrte nails in the man's extremities and on the cross, they fnrin or mark a tfianfiU in shape, one nail I>eing at each comer of the triangle. Th« wonncU, or stigmata, iu the extremities are necessarily 7&«r. designative of the iquarf. . . . The three nails with the three wounds are in number 6, which flfitrvtra the 6 facen of the cube unfolded [which make the cross or man-form, or 7, vootitint^threc Uorixontal and four vertical squares], on which the man is placed: •nd till* In turn point* to the circular measure transferred on to the edges of the Cllbli« The one wound of the feet separates into two when the feet are separated, maktnfi three together _^>r ait, and four ivhen separated, or 7 in all— another and tHo\t titiiy f with the Jews] fcuiiiiine base numbcr.t
TliUH, while the phallic or sexual meaning of the "crucifixion nails" Im proven by the geometrical and numerical reading, its mystical mean- ing is indicated by the short remarks upon it. as given above, in its connection with, and bearing upon, Prometheus. He is another victim, for he Ih crucified on the Cross of Love, on the rock of human passions, u HUcrificQ t»» bis deviation to the cause of the spiritual element in Humanity.
Now, the primordial system, the double glyph that underlies the idea of the cronn, is not of "human invention," for Cosmic Ideation and the spiritual representation of the Divine Ego-man are at its basiif. Later, it expanded into the beautiful idea adopted by, and represented in, the Mysteries, that of regenerated man. the mortal, who, by crucifying the man of flesh and his passions on the Procrus- tean bed of torture, became reborn as an Immortal. Leaving the body, the animal-man, behind him, tied on the Cross of Initiation like an 'jmpty chrysalis, the Ego-Soul became as free as a butterfly. S»ri
* ace }3t. Lundy'B Monumtntai Christianiiy, fiff. 7**
* Somrte cf Measuru, p. s».
THE REAL PATERNOSTER.
593
later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the cross became in Cosmogony and Anthropology no higher than a phallic symbol
With the Esotericists from the remotest times, the Universal Soul or Anima Mundi, the material reflection of the Immaterial Ideal, was the Source of Life of all beings and of the Life- Principle of the three kingdoms. This was septenary with the Hermetic Philosophers, as with all Ancients. For it is represented as a sevenfold cross, whose branches are respectively, light, heat, electricity, terrestrial magnetism, astral radiation, motion, and intelligence^ or what some call self-consciousness.
As we have said elsewhere, long before the cross or its sign were adopted as sj'mbols of Christianit>', the sign of the cross was used as a mark of recognition among Adepts and Neophytes, the latter being called Chrests — from Chrestos. the man of tribulation and sorrow. Says Eliphas Le%n :
The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong to them exclit- sively. It is also kabalistic. and represents the opposition and quaternary equili- brium of the elements. We see by the occnlt verse of the Paternoster . . . that there were originally two ways of doing it, or, at least two very different 'ibnnulas to express its meaning: one reserved for the priests and initiates; the lather given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate, carxy- ing his hand to his forehead, said. To thee: then he added, belong: and continued, carrying his hand to the breast, the kingdom: then to the left shonXAsT, justice; to the right shonlder. and mercy. Then he joined the two handsi, adding, throughout the generating cycles — Tibt sunt MaUhut ct Geburah et Chesed per ^onas — an abso- lutely aud magnificently kabalistic sign of the cross, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and ofEcial Church completely lose.*
The "militant and official Church" did more: having helped herself to what had never belonged to her, she took only that which the "Pro- fane" had — the kabalistic meaning of the male a.ad Jhnale Sephiroth, She never lost the inner and higher meaning since she never had it — Eliphas Levi's pandcritig to Rome notwithstanding. The sign of the Cross adopted by the Latin Church was phallic from the beginning, while that of the Greeks was the cross of the Neophytes, the Chrestoi.
• Dogtiu et Rituel Oe ia HauU M&gia, U. S8.