III. The 'formless square '.

And these three enclosed within the
o
are the sacred four.
It is this " sacred four " which, in its individual-
I ised aspect, is the third Logos ; and which in its
' turn becomes the creative power of the lower planes
of manifestation ; which contains within itself the
power and potency of the manifested Universe
I that is to be — which is Hself that manifested
Universe, the ' divine Son. '
The whole esotericism of the Bible, the whole secret of man's inherent divine nature, the whole key to the teaching of the Initiates of all ages, lies in the understanding of this ' divine Son ', who in his turn becomes the ' Father. ' Me is the Hea- I VENLV Man of the Kabala and the Hermetic ■ philosophy ; the Tetragrammaton of the Rabbis, and the Divine Tetractis ' of Pythagoras. He is
90 THE ESOTERIC BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY
the ' Adam-Kadmon \ the archetypal ' Man ', of the first chapter of Genesis, and the creative power — the * Lord God ' — Jehovah-Alhim, of the second chapter ; the ' Word ' of St. John's Gospel ; the ' Christ ' of St. Paul — ''the first- born of all creation " (Col. i. 15) ; and finally, the '* Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world, " of the Revelation* of St. John. He is the Divine Ego in man, and is thus " the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. "
Having thus outlined the fundamental prin- ciples, in the order of creation, or Emanation y up to the appearance of this archetypal man, so ifar as we are able to do so without entering too far into the region of metaphysics ; and having traced the correspondence between these principles and their symbolical representations, we are now in a better position to understand the following quota- tion from the Secret Doctrine : —
*' Every form on earth, and every speck (atom) in space strives in its efforts towards self-formation to follow the model placed for it in the HEA- VENLY Man .... Its (the atom's) involution and evolution, its external and internal growth and development, have all one and the same object — man ; man, as the highest physical and ulti-
* Revelation — from re and velo. Should it not rather mean to re-veil, or 10 hide the Esoteric doctrine under a new symbolism?
GENESIS 91
mate form on this earth ; the Mo NAD, in its absolute totality and awakened condition — as the culmination of the divine incarnations on earth. ** (S. D. I. 205.)
We must now turn our attention to this HEA- VENLY Man in his pilgrimage on * Earth. ' This commences properly with the fourth Round, to which we have already referred. The first three Rounds correspond to the emanation of the three Logoi, and the third Round therefore culminates in the formation of archetypal Man ; the model of the man that is to be. Physical man as we now know him — separated into two sexes — is only the product of this fourth Round, and of the fourth Race. Now * Man ', in order to reach his present form and consciousness has to evolve through all the forms of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. This he does in the first three Rounds. It is difficult to convey to those who are unaccus- tomed to such studies, or who have not examined closely the teachings of the Secret Doctrine , any conception of what is meant here, without a long explanation which cannot be attempted within the scope of this work. When we say that * Man ' has to pass through the lower kingdoms of nature, we mean that ray or spark, so to speak, of the divine, which after emanating and passing through the lower planes of consciousness in the universe, reaches in Man an awakened state of self-consciousness and becomes an individualised
92 THE ESOTERIC BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY
being. It is that which is spoken of as the MONAD, which strives to reach *' its absolute totality and awakened condition. "
Perhaps a purely physical analogy will help us here, and is also useful as showing once more the law of correspondences. Modern chemical research is beginning to demonstrate that the so- called chemical elements are all derived from some one elementary primordial substance ; to which the n is not any of the chemical elements with which we are acquainted, nor even any condition or state of matter with which we are familiar. It is homogeneous substance not yet differentiated into the forms of matter which come within the range of our physical faculties. It is, so to speak, the world'Stuffy which becomes in process of evolution the material world of our sense perceptions. But as such it contains the potency of all forms of matter, of all the chemical elements with their various individual characteristics and infinite pos- sibilities of combination. Now, what Prolyle is to the individual chemical elements, so is the monad to that which in MAN becomes an individual self- conscious being. It is only in the human king- dom that it breaks up, so to speak, into its constit- uent drops, or atoms. In the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, it is diffuse rather than individuated. Proiyle is the seventh Principle of the matter of our plane ; just as Atma is the
GENES/S
93
seventh Principle of man, and the First Logos is I the seventh Principle of the Universe. It contains -the forms and potentiality of all that is to be in the Mamfested Universe. And Just as the hetero- 1 geneoiis world of physical matter and form has emanated from this one primordial homogeneous substance, so have all those varied forms of life ' and consciousness with which we are familiar, emanated from the MONAD. What the various chemical elements, with all their varied results in combination, are to Protjyle : so arc the individual units of humanity, with all their possibilities of I combination in races, nations, communities, or I families, to that MONAD from which all has eman- I ated or differentiated during this great cycle of I manifestation or ' creation. ' Some chemical ele- ments in combination produce deadly poisons I and noxious gases ; others give life and health. : we term bad or good, according to their relative effects on our own organism. But where is that distinction in the Protyle, before it had differ- entiated into the chemical atoms, with their affinities and antipathies, their loves and hates ? And so is it with humanity. The distinction ot good and evil vanishes in that MONAD from whence all come, and to which all must return. ^L For the great sweep of cyclic law, which in ^H due course breaks up the homogeneous into the ^B heterogeneous, will again in due course cause ^P the heterogeneous to return to the homogeneous.
I
94 THE ESOTERIC BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY
As the chemical elements have come from Protyle, so must they return to Protyle. As man has come from * God ', so must he return to * God ', in the great day '' Be with Us. " The good and the evil both come from God ; for the Universe is not an eternal duality, but a Unity.
Following out this ideal of the passage of the Monad through the lower kingdoms, and bearing in mind what has been said of the first chapter of Genesis corresponding to the first three RoundSy we are prepared for the order of creation given in that chapter, and its culmination in the creation of
Man, whose symbol at this stage is
And we are further prepared for the complete reversal of this order in the second chapter, and for the change in the name of the ' creator * from Alhim to Jehovah-Alhim, whose symbol is also
For, once that the order of creation has culmin- ated in the HEAVENLY MAN, it is now that
Heavenly Man who becomes in his turn the container and creator of all things on this earth Hence the words of St. Paul already quoted : *'For in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible ... all things have been created through him, and unto him ; and he is before all things, and in him all things consist '* (Col. i. i6.
GENESIS 95
17). There is a perfect correspondence between this declaration of St. Paul, and the fourth and fifth verses of the second chapter of Genesis, when once we have understood that the *' Lord God ", or Jehovah- AUim, is the third Logos, the HEAVEN- LY Man. For we are told : ** These are the genera- tions of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earthy and every herb of the field before it grew, " It is once more, at the com- mencement of the fourth Round— hy correspon- dence and analogy as it was ** in the beginning " — the creation of the type of all that was to be, *' before it was in the earth ". And because MAN at this stage contains the ' seed ' of all forms of life, he is the first to appear on earth in this Round. Everything now is dependent 4ipon, and has to accomplish its evolution through him ; he is given *' dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth ". Bear in mind, this is not man as we know him, it is the MAN '* made in the image of the Elohim *' (Alhim) of the 26th and 27th verses of the first chapter, who is also the " Lord God " Jehovah- Alhim, of the fourth verse of the second chapter.
After the verses already quoted from the second chapter, we have in the seventh verse the creation
96 THE ESOTERIC BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY
by the Heavenly Man [ j of the Adamic
Man, who becomes the Humanity of our present Round — in short ourselves. It must be noted that in the second chapter the creation of the animals follows that of man. This is in harmony with what we have already said ; and it is one of the funda- mental teachings of the Secret Doctrine that in this Round Man made his appearance before the animals. Thus in the Secret Doctrine, Vol. I., p. 183, we have the following : — '* Arrived on our earth at the commencement of the Fourth in the present series of life-cycles and races, Man is the first form that appears thereon, being preceded only by the mineral and vegetable kingdoms — even the latter having to develop ajid continue its further evolution through man. During the three Rounds to come. Humanity, like the globe on which it lives, will be ever tending to reassume its primeval, form, that of a Dhyan Chohanic Host. Man tends to become a God, and then — God, like every other atom in the Universe. "
We must now leave the Rounds, and deal with the evolution of Man during his present cycle, turning our attention to the correspondences and analogies of the various Races, It will be necessary to outline the teaching of the Secret Doctrine re- specting the evolution of the Races before we can 4:ompare it with the account given us in Genesis.
I
GENESIS 97
It will not be difficult to follow the main idea, if it be remembered that everything evolves from spirit- uality to materiality, and involves back again from materiality to spirituality ; using these two terms, spirit and matter, as we have used them before, as representing; the two poles or aspects of the One Reality. Thus MAN is a spiritual being before he becomes physical Man, • before he ' falls into matter ', Man of the first Race was an ethereal being, a ' spirit ', a ' shadow ', thrown off by the Heavenly Man, as the model of the Man that ; to be. Round this model the ' forces of nature ' work, and gradually moidd Man into the being ■we now know. This process gradually results the concealment of the real spiritual man, and the dominance of the material and physical, " The inner, now concealed, man, was then (in the beginning) the external man. "
We would remark here how beautifully this follows the laws of correspondence and analogy which we have already traced, and which we have insisted upon as the dominant principle in every- thing that enters the world oi form. Each one of us in every incarnation follows this same law — we ' fall into matter ', truly.
We cannot refrain from quoting here the beau- tiful lines by Wordsworth, the " Ode to Immor-
* We use the term ' Man ' as synonymous with
Humanity. It is SO used In Genesis, where Adam is not ingle man, but the Race.
98 THE ESOTERIC BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY
tality, " in which this principle is set forth with all the clearness and strength of the poet's intui- tional nature.
'* Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; The Soul that rises with us, our life's star.
Hath had elsewhere its setting, And Cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness.
And not in utter nakedness. But trailing clouds of glory do we come.
From God who is our home. Heaven lies about us in our infancy ; Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy ; But he beholds the light, and whence it flows.
He sees it in his joy. The youth who daily further from the East Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended. At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. "
This is the epitomised history, not merely of one human life, but by the law of correspondence and analogy is that of the whole of humanity up to the present day. The spiritual fades in the material. To-day humanity has lost sight of its origin and inherent divine nature ; the ** vision splendid *' has become only a hope, a * faith ' ; man scarcely dares hope for immortality hereafter ; birth and death — these shut in the boundaries of his vision. Science — gives him no soul at all. Religion — a jumble of superstition, scarcely conceding ' sal- vation ' to a favoured few.- It is Theosophy alone which restores Man to his due place in the eternal
GENESIS 99
order of things, which reinvests him with his natural dignity, which gives the certainty of his immortal nature, and the true hope of the ' resur- rection ' through the divine power which is the Christ within him.
In the first Race then, Man comes from 'God', he is made in the image and likeness of the Heavenly Man ; he is that Heavenly Man in his pilgrimage through the Universe. Heaven lies about him, in the infancy of the first Race ; but soon," shades of the prison-house begin to close", and during the second and third Races they grow denser and stronger, though even then
" The youih whodnilj' further from the Easi Musi travel, still is Nature's priest. And by the vision splendid Is on nis way aiiended. "
Hence the nature worship and symbology of the early Aryan races, before the vision, in our present
;, had quite " faded in the light of common day".
Piiri passu with this decline of spirituality and corresponding evolution of the material form, we must notice one of the most important factors in Man's history, viz., the evolution of sex. Man of the first Race was a-sexual,neither male nor female, but containing the potency of both. If we turn again to the first chapter of Genesis, we find no mention of the woman or Eve, as separate from
n. The 27th verse reads ; " So God ci'eated
lOO THE ESOTERIC BASIS OF CHRISTIANITY
man in his own image, in the image of God created he him ; male and female created he them. *' There is an evident confusion here between the singular and the plural. The verse should read : " Male-female created He him " (or themy because it was not one man, but Humanity). There is no difficulty about this when we remember that this
' man ' is the Prototypal Man h— M , who
becomes in his turn, in the second chapter, the creative deity. This gives us the key also to the bi-sexual nature of the creative deities of all the ancient pantheons. Jehovah also is Jah-Hevah, or Jehovah-Eve (male-female), as is well understood by students of the Kabala.
First Race Man then, being the image or shadow of the HEAVENLY Man, partakes of his nature in this respect ; not as an actual double- sexcd being, but as containing the potency of both. But this potency becomes an actuality at later stages of evolution ; and when Man in the third and fourth Races becomes physical Man, he is first of all double-sexed or Hermaphrodite (Hermes- Aphrodite), and then of two sexes, as at the present day. On his return journey, or involution, Man will once more rebecome that which he was (and is — spiritually), and all distinc- tions of sex will vanish. Sex is therefore, like all else in this phenomenal world, only a temporary
GENESIS 101
affair, a mere passing phase of human evolution. We need indeed these deeper philosophical teach- ings, and a correct understanding of Mun's inner nature, to rectifiy the degradation of modern sexual relations.
The separation into two sexes took place to- wards the end of the third Race. There is no very clear indication of this in Genesis ; the second, third, and fourth chapters being variations and permutations of the same allegories concerning the three ear!y Races, with the names and events altered. Jah-Hevah, Adam-Eve, Cain-Abel,* Seth- Enos, are all permutations of the same double- sexcd type, representing the first three Races of humanity. We are not wanting in confirmation of this, even in the authorised version. Chapter five begins with an enumeration of the generations of Adam. " In the day that God (Alhim) created man, in the likeness of God (Alhim) made He him ; male and female created He them and blessed them, and called their name Adam. " Now in the previous verse, the last verse of the fourth chapter, I curious sentence, rendered in the authorised version, " Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord " {Jehovah). A marginal note, however,
I gives it " to call themselves by the name of the Lord " (Jehovah) ; or more simply, to call them-
I selves Jehovah, or Jah-Hevah, mate and female.
* Abel is Hetel, feminine. The narraiive of his murder by Cuin is a blind, concealing other matters.
I02 THE ESOTERIC BASIS OF CHRfSr/AN/TY
This is an allusion to the separation of the sexes, and Seth is the progenitor of the fourth Race, which was the first complete physical Race of Man as we know him now, while Enosh is that Race. It is to be noticed that in the opening of the fifth chapter, already quoted, no mention is made of Cain and Abel, but Seth is made to be the first offspring from Adam. Moreover, there is no men- tion of Eve, but it is Adam only who begets a son, "in his own likeness after his image ", just as Alhim has done for Adam in the previous verse. Thus both Jehovah and Enosh represent humanity after the separation of the sexes, for we have just been told that after the birth of Enosh, men began to call themselves Jehovah. The first verse of the fourth chapter also bears out our statement that Jehovah, Adam, Cain, Enosh, are permuta- tions; for the sentence translated, ** I have gotten a man from the Lord ", should read : *' I have gotten a man even Jehovah " (Cain.)
With the history of the Patriarchs after Seth and Enosh we have the history of the fourth and fifth Races. We cannot follow these out here, except so far as to hint that the history of the fifth, our present Race, properly commences after the deluge, which, so far as it is historic, refers to the submersion of the continent of Atlantis, and the destruction thereby of the great portion of the fourth Race, the Atlanteans. Our present fifth Race commenced about one million years ago.
CESEStS
The deluge, however, has many more meanings than this. Every allegory has seven keys.
It should be noticed further, however, in confir- mation of the bi-sexual interpretation here given of the various names in the first five chapters of Genesis, that it is only in the fifth chapter that we begin to have mention of the birth of both male and female offspring. It is only after the birth of Seth (the fourth Race) that Adam (the generic name for Humanity) begets ' 'sons and daughters". Eve, the first " woman ", is no woman at all, but i simply the personified female principle of the bi-sexual Adam ; Adam-Eve, or jehovah-Eve (Jha-Hevah). She is the " mother of all living", viz., the female principle.
There is still another confirmation of the inter- pretation we are now offering, based upon ancient symbology and the evolution of sex. We have that the Hebrew word translated God in