III. In the genealogy of the Kings and the geography of their dominions,

the Varshas (countries) and Dvîpas are all regarded as terrestrial regions. Now, the truth is that, without entering into too minute details, it is permissible and easy to show that: (_a_) The Seven Dvîpas apportioned to Priyavrata’s septenary progeny refer to several localities—first of all to our Planetary Chain. In this Jambu‐ dvîpa alone represents our Globe, while the six others are the (to us) invisible companion Globes of the Chain. This is shown by the very nature of the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu‐dvîpa “is _in the centre of all_ these”—the so‐called “Insular Continents”—and is surrounded by a _sea of salt water_ (Lavana), whereas Plaksha, Shâlmalia, Kusha, Krauncha, Shâka, and Pushkara, are surrounded severally “by great seas ... of sugar‐cane juice, of wine, of clarified butter, of curds, of milk,” etc., and such like metaphorical names.(718) (_b_) Bhâskara Âchârya, who uses expressions from the books of the Secret Doctrine, in his description of the sidereal position of all these Dvîpas, speaks of: “the sea of milk and the sea of curds,” etc., as meaning the Milky Way, and the various congeries of Nebulæ; the more so, since he calls “the country to the south of the equator” Bhûr Loka, that to the north Bhuva, Svar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya Lokas; and adds: “These lokas are gradually attained by increasing religious merits,” _i.e._, they are various “Paradises.”(719) (_c_) That this geographical distribution of seven allegorical continents, islands, mountains, seas and countries, does not belong only to _our_ Round, or even to _our_ Races—the name of Bhârata‐varsha (India) notwithstanding—is explained in the texts themselves by the narrator of _Vishnu Purâna_, who tells us that: Bharata [the son of Nâbhi, who gave his name to Bhârata‐varsha or India] ... consigned the kingdom to his son Sumati ... and abandoned his life at ... Shâlagrâma. He was afterwards born again, as a Brahman, in a distinguished family of ascetics.... Under these princes [Bharata’s descendants] Bhârata‐varsha was divided into nine portions; and their descendants successively held possession of the country for seventy‐one periods of the aggregate of the four ages (or for the reign of a Manu) [representing a Mahâyuga of 4,320,000 years].(720) But having said so much, Parâshara suddenly explains that: This was the creation of Svâyambhuva (Manu), by which the earth was peopled when he presided over the _first_ Manvantara, in the Kalpa of Varâha [_i.e._, the _Boar_ incarnation, or Avatâra]. Now every Brâhman knows that _our_ Humanity began on this Earth (or Round) _only with Vaivasvata Manu_. And if the Western reader turns to the sub‐ section on “The Primeval Manus of Humanity,”(721) he will see that Vaivasvata is the _seventh_ of the fourteen Manus who preside over our Planetary Chain during its Life Cycle; but as every Round has two Manus (a Root‐ and a Seed‐Manu), he is the Root‐Manu of the Fourth Round, hence the seventh. Wilson finds in this only incongruity, and speculates that: The patriarchial genealogies are older than the chronological system of Manvantaras and Kalpas, and [thus] have been rather clumsily distributed amongst the different periods. It is nothing of the kind; but as Orientalists know nothing of the Secret Teaching, they persist in taking everything _literally_, and then turn round and abuse the writers for that which they do not comprehend! These Genealogies embrace a period of _three and a half_ Rounds; they speak of _pre‐human_ periods, and explain the descent into generation of every Manu—the first manifested sparks of the One Unity—and, furthermore, show each of these human Sparks dividing into, and multiplying by, first, the Pitaras, the human Ancestors, then by the human Races. No Being can become God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human Cycles. Therefore the Shloka says: Happy are those who are born, even from the [latent] condition of gods, _as men_, in Bhârata‐varsha; as that is the way to ... final liberation.(722) In Jambu‐dvîpa Bhârata is considered _the best of its divisions_, because it is _the land of works_. In it alone it is that: The succession of four Yugas, or ages, the Krita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara, and Kali take place. When, therefore, Parâshara, on being asked by Maitreya “to give him the descriptions of the Earth,” returns again to the enumeration of the same Dvîpas with the same seas, etc., as those he had described in the Svâyambhuva Manvantara—it is simply a “blind”; yet, to him who reads between the lines, the Four great Races and the Fifth are there, ay, with their sub‐divisions, islands and continents, some of which were called by the names of celestial Lokas, and by those of other Globes. Hence the confusion. All these islands and lands are called by the Orientalists “mythical” and “fabulous.”(723) Very true, some are _not of this Earth_, but they still exist. The White Island and Atala, at all events, are no myths, since Atala was the name contemptuously applied by the earliest pioneers of the Fifth Race to the Land of Sin—Atlantis, in general, not to Plato’s island alone; and since the White Island was (_a_) the Shveta‐dvîpa of Theogony, and (_b_) Shâka‐dvîpa, or Atlantis (its earliest portions rather) in its beginnings. This was when it yet had its “seven holy rivers that washed away all sin,” and its “seven districts, wherein there was no dereliction of virtue, no contention, no deviation from virtue,” as it was then inhabited by the caste of the Magas—that caste which even the Brâhmans acknowledged as not inferior to their own, and which was the nursery of the first Zarathushtra. The Brâhmans are shown consulting with Gauramukha, on Nârada’s advice, who told them to invite the Magas as priests of the Sun to the temple built by Sâmba the _reputed_ son of Krishna, for in reality the latter had none. In this the _Purânas_ are _historical_, allegory notwithstanding, and Occultism is stating facts. The whole story is told in _Bhavishya Purâna_. It is stated that Sâmba having been cured of leprosy by Sûrya (the Sun), built a temple and dedicated it to the Deity. But when he was looking for pious Brâhmans to perform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to the God, Nârada—the virgin Ascetic who is found in every age in the _Purânas_—advised him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brâhmans to receive emoluments for the performance of religious rites. He therefore referred Sâmba to Gauramukha (White‐face), the Purohita, or family priest, of Ugrasena, King of Mathura, who would tell him whom he could best employ. The priest directed Sâmba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of Sûrya, to discharge the duty. But as he was ignorant of the place where they lived, Sûrya, the Sun himself, directs Sâmba to Shâka‐dvîpa _beyond the salt water_. Then Sâmba performs the journey, using Garuda, the Great Bird, the vehicle of Vishnu and Krishna, who transports him to the Magas, etc.(724) Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years ago, and Nârada, who is found reborn in every Cycle (or Race), in addition to Garuda—the symbol Esoterically of the Great Cycle—give the key to the allegory; nevertheless the Magas are the Magi of Chaldæa, and their caste and worship were born on the earlier Atlantis, in Shâka‐dvîpa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed that the Magas of Shâka‐dvîpa are the forefathers of the fire‐worshipping Parsîs. Our quarrel with them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing periods of hundreds of thousands of years this time into only a few centuries; in spite of Nârada and Sâmba, they carry the event only to the days of the flight of the Parsîs to Gujerat. This is simply absurd, as this took place only in the eighth century of our era. True, the Magas are credited in the _Bhavishya Purâna_ with still living in Shâka‐dvîpa in the day of Krishna’s “son,” nevertheless the last portion of that Continent—Plato’s “Atlantis”—had perished 6,000 years before. They were Magas “late of” Shâkadvîpa, and in those days lived in Chaldæa. This, again, is an intentional confusion. The earliest pioneers of the Fourth Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet were they the human Asuras and the Râkshasas which they became later. In those days large portions of the future Continent of Atlantis were yet part and parcel of the ocean floors. Lemuria, as we have called the Continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land.(725) It covered the whole area from the foot of the Himâlayas, which separated it from the inland sea rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the Great Desert of Shamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam [? Annam]. From thence, it stretched south across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as we go south, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; and from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it extended far into the Pacific Ocean, beyond Rapa‐nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) which now lies in latitude 26°S., and longitude 110°W.(726) This statement seems to be corroborated by Science—even if only partially. When discussing continental trends, and showing the infra‐Arctic masses trending generally with the meridian, several ancient continents are mentioned, though inferentially. Among such are mentioned the “Mascarene continent,” which included Madagascar, stretching north and south, and another ancient continent which “stretched from Spitzbergen to the Straits of Dover, while most of the other parts of Europe were sea bottom.”(727) This corroborates the Occult teaching which says that what are now the polar regions were formerly the earliest of the seven cradles of Humanity, and the tomb of the bulk of the Mankind of that region during the Third Race, when the gigantic Continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller continents. This is due, according to the explanation in the Commentary, to a decrease of velocity in the Earth’s rotation: _When the Wheel runs at the usual rate, its extremities [the poles] agree with its middle Circle [the equator], when it runs slower and tilts in every direction, there is a great disturbance on the face of the Earth. The waters flow toward the two ends, and new lands arise in the middle Belt [equatorial lands], while those at the ends are subject to Pralayas by submersion._ And again: _Thus the Wheel [the Earth] is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of the Moon, for the breath of its waters [tides]. Toward the close of the age [Kalpa] of a great [Root‐] Race, the Regents of the Moon [the Fathers, or Pitris] begin drawing harder, and thus flatten the Wheel about its Belt, when it goes down in some places and swells in others, and the swelling running toward the extremities [poles], new lands will arise and old ones be sucked in._ We have only to read astronomical and geological works, to see the meaning of the above very clearly. Scientists—_modern_ Specialists—have ascertained the influence of the tides on the geological distribution of land and water on the planet, and have noted the shifting of the oceans with a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new lands. Science knows, or thinks it knows, that this occurs periodically.(728) Professor Todd believes he can trace the series of oscillations backward to the periods of the Earth’s first incrustation.(729) Therefore it seems easy for Science to verify the Esoteric statement. We propose to treat of this at greater length in the Addenda. Some Theosophists who have understood from a few words in _Esoteric Buddhism_ that “old continents” which have been submerged will reäppear, have asked the question: “What will Atlantis be like when raised?” Here, again, there is a slight misconception. Were identically the _same_ lands of Atlantis that were submerged to be raised again, then they would, indeed, be _barren for ages_. But because the Atlantic sea‐bottom is covered with some 5,000 feet of chalk at present, and more is forming—a new “cretaceous formation” of strata, in fact—that is no reason why, when the time for a new Continent to appear arrives, a geological convulsion and upraising of the sea‐bottom should not dispose of these 5,000 feet of chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the surface. The Racial Cataclysms are not a Noah’s Deluge of forty days—a kind of Bombay monsoon. That the periodical sinking and reäppearance of the mighty Continents, now called Atlantis and Lemuria by modern writers, is no fiction, will be demonstrated in the Section in which all the evidence has been collated together. The most archaic Sanskrit and Tamil works teem with references to both Continents. The seven sacred Islands (Dvîpas) are mentioned in the _Sûrya Siddhânta_, the oldest astronomical work in the whole world, and in the works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean Astronomer whom Professor Weber has made out to be “reïncarnated” in Ptolemy. Yet, it is a mistake to call these “Sacred Islands” Atlantean—as is done by us; for, like everything else in the Hindû Sacred Books, they are made to refer to several things. The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son of Svâyambhuva Manu, to his seven sons—was not Atlantis, even though one or two of these Islands survived the subsidence of their fellows, and offered shelter, ages later, to Atlanteans, whose Continent had been submerged in its turn. When first mentioned by Parâshara in the _Vishnu Purâna_, the seven refer to an Esoteric Doctrine which is explained further on. In this connection, of all the seven Islands, Jambu‐dvîpa (our Globe) is the only one that is terrestrial. In the _Purânas_ every reference to the North of Meru is connected with that Primeval Eldorado, now the North Polar region, which, when the magnolia blossomed where now we see an unexplored endless desert of ice, was then a Continent. Science speaks of an “ancient continent” which stretched from Spitzbergen down to the Straits of Dover. The Secret Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological periods, these regions formed a horse‐shoe‐like continent, whose one end, the Eastern, far more northward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the other contained Behring’s Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended southward in its natural trend down to the British Isles, which in those days must have been right under the lower curve of the semi‐circle. This Continent was raised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains reäppeared again on the face of the oceans. Therefore, though it can be said, without departing from truth, that Atlantis is included in the seven great Insular Continents since the Fourth Race Atlanteans came into possession of some of the Lemurian relics, and settling on the islands, included them among _their_ lands and continents, yet a difference should be made and an explanation given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is attempted, as in the present work. Easter Island was also taken possession of in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, having escaped from the Cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on this remnant of Lemuria, but only to perish thereon, when it was destroyed in one day by volcanic fires and lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain Geographers and Geologists; to the Occultists, however, it is _history_. What does Science know to the contrary? Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, _the latter was believed to be part of India_.... Science also refuses to sanction the wild hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian peninsula at one end of the line, and South America at the other, connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the pre‐historic ages ... was doubly connected with the two Americas. The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus calls the “Brâhmans of Upper India,” stretched from Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Shamo. A pedestrian from the north might then have reached—hardly wetting his feet—the Alaskan Peninsula, through Manchooria, across the _future_ Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveller, furnished with a canoe, and starting from the south, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South America.(730) This was written from the words of a Master—a rather doubtful authority for the Materialists and Sceptics. But here we have one of their own flock, and a bird of the same feather, Ernst Hæckel, who, in _his_ distribution of races, corroborates the statement almost _verbatim_: It would seem that the region on the earth’s surface where the evolution of these primitive men from the _closely related catarrhine apes_ [!!] took place, must be sought either in Southern Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the bye, was not even in existence when the Third Race flourished], or in Lemuria. Lemuria is an ancient continent now sunk beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean which, lying to the South of the Asia of to‐day, stretched on the one hand eastwards to Upper India and Sunda Island, on the other westward as far as Madagascar and Africa.(731) In the epoch of which we are treating, the Continent of Lemuria had already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents. Nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe, existed in those days; all of them slumbering as yet on the ocean‐floors. Nor was there much of present Asia; for the Cis‐Himâlayan regions were covered with seas, and beyond them stretched the “lotus leaves” of Shveta‐dvîpa, the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc. The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Island, for instance, belongs to the earliest civilization of the Third Race. It was a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the ocean‐floor, which raised this small relic of the Archaic Ages—after it had been submerged with the rest—untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of north polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the Third Race. In this we are again corroborated to a degree by Materialistic Science. Hæckel, when speaking of Blumenbach’s brown or Malay race, and the Australians and Papuans, remarks: There is much likeness between these last and the Aborigines of Polynesia, that Australian island‐world, that _seems to have been once on a time a gigantic and continuous continent_.(732) It certainly was “a gigantic and continuous continent,” for, during the Third Race, it stretched east and west, as far as where the two Americas now lie. The present Australia was but a portion of it, and in addition to this there are a few surviving islands strewn hither and thither on the face of the Pacific, and a large strip of California, which belonged to it. Funnily enough, Hæckel, in his fantastic _Pedigree of Man_, considers: The Australians of to‐day as the lineal descendants, almost unchanged [?!], of that _second_ branch of the primitive human race ... that spread northwards, at first chiefly in Asia, from the home of man’s infancy, and seems to have been the parent of all the other straight‐haired races of men.... The one, woolly‐ haired, migrated in part westwards [_i.e._, to Africa and eastwards to New Guinea, which countries had then, as said, no existence as yet].... The other, straight‐haired, was evolved farther to the North, in Asia, and ... peopled Australia.(733) As writes a Master: Behold the relics of that once great nation [Lemuria of the Third Race] in _some_ of the flat‐headed aborigines of your Australia.(734) But they belong to the last remnants of the seventh sub‐race of the Third. Professor Hæckel must also have _dreamt_ a dream and seen for once a _true_ vision! It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the ancestors of those, whom we term the most ancient peoples of the world—now called respectively the Âryan Hindûs, the Egyptians, and the oldest Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees and Phœnicians on the other. These were governed by the Divine Dynasties, _i.e._, Kings and Rulers who had of mortal man only his physical appearance _as it was then_, but who were Beings from Spheres higher and more celestial than our own Sphere will be, long Manvantaras hence. It is, of course, useless to attempt to force the existence of such Beings on sceptics. _Their_ greatest pride consists in proving their patronymic denomination as Catarrhinides—a fact which they try to demonstrate on the alleged authority of the Coccyx appended to their Os Sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if it were only long enough, they would wag with joy and for ever, in honour of its eminent discoverer. These will remain as faithful to their Ape‐ancestors as Christians will to tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets Theosophists and students of the Occult Sciences right on this point. If we regard the second portion of the Third Race as the first representatives of the _really human race_ with solid bones, then Hæckel’s surmise that “the evolution of the primitive men took place ...in _either_ Southern Asia or ... Lemuria”—Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out of the question—is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate, however, just as the evolution of the First Race, from the bodies of the Pitris, took place on seven distinctly separated regions, at the Arctic Pole of the (then) only Earth—so did the ultimate transformation of the Third occur. It began in those northern regions, which have just been described as including Behring’s Straits, and what there then was of dry land in Central Asia, when the climate was semi‐tropical even in the Arctic regions and excellently adapted to the primitive wants of nascent physical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and tropical in turn since the appearance of man. The Commentary tells us that the Third Race was only about the middle point of its development when: _The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over __ the heads of that portion of the Sweat‐born; people knew snow, ice, and frost, and men, plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those that did not perish remained as half‐grown babes_(_735_)_ in size and intellect. This was the third Pralaya of the Races._(736) This means again, that our Globe is subject to seven periodical and _entire_ changes which go _pari passu_ with the Races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven terrestrial Pralayas, occasioned by the change in the inclination of the Earth’s axis. It is a Law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as Science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic Law. In Occultism this Inexorable Law is referred to as the “Great Adjuster.” Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic vicissitudes and also the changes in the axial direction, which are always followed by these vicissitudes. In fact, it does not seem at all sure of the axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared to deny the axial phenomena altogether, rather than admit the intelligent hand of the Karmic Law which alone can reasonably explain these sudden changes and their accompanying results. It has tried to account for them by various and more or less fantastic speculations; one of which, as de Boucheporn imagined, would be the sudden collision of our Earth with a Comet, thus causing all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding to our Esoteric explanation, since Fohat is as good as any Comet, and, in addition, has universal Intelligence to guide him. Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu’s Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have already been four such axial disturbances. The old Continents—save the first—were sucked in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge mountain chains arose where there had been none before. The face of the Globe was completely changed each time; the “survival of the fittest” nations and races was secured through timely help; and the unfit ones—the failures—were disposed of by being swept off the Earth. Such sorting and shifting does not happen between sunset and sunrise, as one may think, but requires several thousands of years before the new house is set in order. The sub‐races are also subject to the same cleansing process, and the side‐branchlets or family‐races as well. Let any one, well acquainted with astronomy and mathematics, throw a retrospective glance into the twilight and shadows of the Past. Let him observe and take notes of what he knows of the history of peoples and nations, and collate their respective rises and falls with what is known of astronomical cycles—especially with the Sidereal Year, which is equal to 25,868 of our solar years.(737) Then, if the observer is gifted with the faintest intuition, he will find how the weal and woe of nations are intimately connected with the beginning and close of this Sidereal Cycle. True, the non‐occultist has the disadvantage that he has no such far distant times to rely upon. He knows nothing, through exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he may find consolation in the knowledge of, or—if he so prefers—speculation about, the fate of every one of the modern nations he knows of—some 16,000 years hence. Our meaning is very clear. Every Sidereal Year the tropics recede from the pole _four degrees_ in each revolution from the equinoctial points, as the equator turns through the Zodiacal constellations. Now, as every Astronomer knows, at present the tropic is only twenty‐three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the equator. Hence it has still two and a half degrees to run before the end of the Sidereal Year. This gives humanity in general, and our civilized races in particular, a reprieve of about 16,000 years. After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) as Commentary Thirty‐three tells us: _Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives was diminished. Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal races, and intermarried among giants and pigmies [the dwarfed races of the Poles].... Many acquired divine, nay more—unlawful knowledge, and followed willingly the Left Path._ Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many geological periods it took to accomplish this _fourth_ destruction who can tell! But we are told that: 44. THEY(738) BUILT GREAT IMAGES NINE YATIS HIGH,(739) THE SIZE OF THEIR BODIES (_a_). INNER FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS.(740) WATER THREATENED THE FOURTH(741) (_b_). (_a_) It is well worth noticing that most of the gigantic statues discovered on Easter Island, a portion of an undeniably submerged continent, as also those found on the outskirts of Gobi, a region which had been submerged for untold ages, are all between twenty and thirty feet high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all twenty‐seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders.(742) The writer is well aware that the modern Archæologists have decided that “these statues are not very old,” as declared by one of the high officials of the British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of those arbitrary decisions of Modern Science which does not carry much weight. We are told that after the destruction of Lemuria by subterranean fires men went on steadily decreasing in stature—a process already commenced after their _physical_ Fall—and that finally, some millions of years later, they decreased to between six and seven feet, and are now, as in the older Asiatic races, dwindling down to nearer five than six feet. As Pickering shows, there is in the Malay race (a sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race) a singular diversity of stature; the members of the Polynesian family, such as the Tahitians, Samoans, and Tonga islanders, are of a _higher stature than the rest of mankind_; but the Indian tribes and the inhabitants of the Indo‐Chinese countries are decidedly below the general average. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the very earliest of the surviving sub‐races, the others to the very latest and most transitory stock. As the Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and the Australians rapidly dying out, so will the other old races soon follow. (_b_) How could those records have been preserved? we may be asked. Even the knowledge of the Zodiac by the Hindûs is denied by our kind and learned Orientalists, who conclude that the Âryan Hindûs knew nothing of it, before the Greeks brought it into the country. This uncalled‐for slander has been so sufficiently refuted by Bailly, and what is more, by the clear _evidence of facts_, as not to need very much additional refutation. While the Egyptian Zodiacs(743) preserve irrefutable proofs of records embracing more than three‐and‐a‐half Sidereal Years—or about 87,000 years—the Hindû calculations cover nearly thirty‐three such years, or 850,000 years. The Egyptian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of the Earth and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as remarked by the author of the _Sphinxiad_: These _poor benighted_ Hindoos have registered a knowledge of Astronomy for ten times 25,000 years since the [last local] Flood [in Asia], or Age of Horror. And they possess recorded observations from the date of the first Great Flood within the Âryan _historical_ memory—the Flood which submerged the last portions of Atlantis 850,000 years ago. The Floods which preceded are, of course, more traditional than historical. The sinking and transformation of Lemuria began nearly at the Arctic Circle (Norway), and the Third Race ended its career in Lankâ, or rather on that which became Lankâ with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lankâ, while the enormous Island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic Continent already described. As a Master says: _Why should not your geologists bear in mind that under the continents explored and fathomed by them ... there may be hidden, deep in the fathomless, or rather unfathomed ocean beds, other and far older continents whose strata have never been geologically explored; and that they may some day upset entirely their present theories? Why not admit that our present continents have, like Lemuria and Atlantis, been several times already submerged, and had the time to reäppear again, and bear their new groups of mankind and civilizations; and that at the first great geological upheaval at the next cataclysm, in the series of periodical cataclysms that occur from the beginning to the end of every Round, our already autopsized continents will go down, and the Lemurias and Atlantises come up again?_(744) Not identically the _same_ Continents, of course. But here an explanation is needed. No confusion need arise as regards the postulation of a Northern Lemuria. The prolongation of that great Continent into the North Atlantic Ocean is in no way subversive of the opinions so widely held as to the site of the lost Atlantis, and one corroborates the other. It must be noted that the Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root‐ Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape of a horse‐shoe past Madagascar, round “South Africa” (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh‐water deposit called the Wealden—which every Geologist regards as the mouth of a former great river—is the bed of _the main stream which drained Northern Lemuria in the Secondary age_. The former actual existence of this river is a fact of Science—its votaries acknowledge the necessity of accepting the Secondary‐ age Northern Lemuria, demanded by their data? Professor Berthold Seemann not only accepted the reality of such a mighty continent, but regarded Australia and Europe _as formerly portions of one continent_—thus corroborating the whole “horse‐shoe” doctrine already enunciated. No more striking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that the _elevated ridge_ in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then _shifts almost at right angles_ to proceed in a _south‐easterly_ line _toward the African coast_, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d’Acunha. This ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would establish the reality of a submarine horse‐shoe junction with a former continent in the Indian Ocean.(745) The _Atlantic portion of Lemuria_ was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis, but which must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth Root‐Race. Just as in the case of Race evolution, so in that of the shifting and re‐shifting of Continental masses, no hard and fast line can be drawn as to where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth‐Race Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third‐Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid‐Atlantic Ocean. Their Continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and peninsulas which were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and ultimately became the true home of the great Race known as the Atlanteans. After this consummation was once attained it follows, as stated on the highest Occult authority, that: _Lemuria should no more be confounded with the Atlantis Continent, than Europe with America._(746) The above, coming from quarters so discredited by orthodox Science, will, of course, be regarded as a more or less happy fiction. Even the clever work of Donnelly, already mentioned, is put aside, notwithstanding that its statements are all confined within a frame of strictly scientific proofs. But we write for the future. New discoveries in this direction will vindicate the claim of the Asiatic Philosophers, that sciences—Geology, Ethnology, and History included—were pursued by the Antediluvian nations who lived untold ages ago. Future “finds” will justify the correctness of the present observations of such acute minds as H. A. Taine and Renan. The former shows that the civilizations of such archaic nations as the Egyptians, Âryans of India, Chaldæans, Chinese, and Assyrians are the result of preceding civilizations lasting “_myriads_ of centuries”;(747) and the latter points to the fact that: Egypt at the beginning appears mature, old, and entirely without mythical and heroic ages, as if the country had never known youth. Its civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period. The civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy. It was already mature.(748) To this Professor R. Owen adds that: Egypt is recorded to have been a civilized and governed community _before_ the time of Menes. And Winchell states that: At the epoch of Menes the Egyptians were already a civilized and numerous people. Manetho tells us that Athotis, the son of this first king Menes, built the palace of Memphis; that he was a physician, and left _anatomical books_. This is quite natural if we are to believe the statement of Herodotus, who records in Euterpe (cxlii), that the written history of the Egyptian priests dated from about 12,000 years before his time. But what are 12,000 or even 120,000 years compared with the millions of years which have elapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been left without witnesses, notwithstanding its tremendous antiquity. The complete records of the growth, development, social and even political life of the Lemurians, have been preserved in the Secret Annals. Unfortunately, few are those who can read them; and those who could would still be unable to understand the language, unless acquainted with all the seven keys of its symbolism. For the comprehension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that of the Seven Sciences; and these Sciences find their expression in the seven different applications of the Secret Records to the exoteric texts. Thus we have to deal with modes of thought on seven entirely different planes of Ideality. Every text relates to, and has to be rendered from, one of the following standpoints: 1. The Realistic Plane of Thought. 2. The Idealistic. 3. The purely Divine or Spiritual. The other planes too far transcend the average consciousness, especially of the materialistic mind, to admit of their being even symbolized in terms of ordinary phraseology. There is no purely _mythical_ element in any of the ancient religious texts; but the mode of thought in which they were originally written has to be found out and closely adhered to during the process of interpretation. For it is symbolical, the archaic mode of thought; emblematical, a later though very ancient mode of thought; parabolical or allegorical; hieroglyphical; or again logogrammical, the most difficult method of all; every letter, as in the Chinese language, representing a whole word. Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the _Vedas_, the _Book of the Dead_, or, to a certain degree, in the _Bible_, is composed of such logograms. No one not initiated into the mystery of the Occult religious logography can presume to know what a name in any ancient fragment means, before he has mastered the meaning of every letter that composes it. How is it to be expected that the merely profane thinker, however great may be his erudition in orthodox symbolism, so to say—_i.e._, in that symbolism which can never get out of the old grooves of solar myth and sexual worship—how is it to be expected that the profane scholar should penetrate into the arcana behind the veil? One who deals with the husk or shell of the dead‐letter, and devotes himself to the kaleidoscopic transformation of barren word‐symbols, can never expect to get beyond the vagaries of modern Mythologists. Thus, Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Deucalion, Noah, etc.,—all the head‐figures of the World‐Deluges, universal and partial, astronomical or geological—all furnish in their very names the records of the causes and effects which led to the event, if one can but read them fully. All such Deluges are based on events that took place in Nature, and stand as _historical_ records, therefore—whether they were sidereal, geological, or even simply allegorical—of a moral event on other and higher planes of being. This we believe has now been sufficiently demonstrated during the long explanation necessitated by the allegorical Stanzas. To speak of a race nine “yatis,” or twenty‐seven feet, high, in a work claiming a more scientific character than, let us say, the story of “Jack the Giant‐Killer,” is a somewhat unusual proceeding. Where are your proofs?—the writer will be asked. In history and tradition, is the answer. Traditions about a race of giants in days of old are universal; they exist in oral and written lore. India had her Dânavas and Daityas; Ceylon had her Râkshasas; Greece, her Titans; Egypt, her colossal Heroes; Chaldæa, her Izdubars (Nimrod); and the Jews their Emims of the land of Moab, with the famous giants, Anakim.(749) Moses speaks of Og, a king whose “bedstead” was nine cubits long (15ft. 4in.) and four wide,(750) and Goliath was “six cubits and a span in height” (or 10ft. 7in.). The only difference found between “revealed scripture” and the evidence furnished to us by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, etc., is this: While the Pagans mention only the _skeletons of giants_, dead untold ages before, relics that some of them _had personally seen_, the _Bible_ interpreters unblushingly demand that Geology and Archæology should believe, that several countries were inhabited by such giants in the day of Moses; giants before whom the Jews were as grasshoppers, and who still existed in the days of Joshua and David. Unfortunately their own chronology is in the way. Either the latter or the giants has to be given up. Of yet standing witnesses to the submerged Continents, and the colossal men that inhabited them, there are still a few. Archæology claims several such on this Earth, though beyond wondering “what these may be”—it has never made any serious attempt to solve the mystery. Not to speak of the Easter Island statues already mentioned, to what epoch belong the colossal statues, still erect and intact near Bamian? Archæology, as usual, assigns them to the first centuries of Christianity, and errs in this as it does in many other speculations. A few words of description will show the readers what are the statues of both Easter Isle and Bamian. We will first examine what is known of them to orthodox Science. Teapi, Rapa‐nui, or Easter Island, is an isolated spot almost 2,000 miles from the South American coast.... In length it is about twelve miles, in breadth four ... and there is an extinct crater 1,050 feet high in its centre. The island abounds in craters, which have been extinct for so long that no tradition of their activity remains.(751) But who made the great stone images(752) which are now the chief attraction of the island to visitors? “_No one knows_,” says a reviewer. It is more than likely that they were here when the present inhabitants [a handful of Polynesian savages] arrived.... Their workmanship _is of a high order_, ... and it is believed that the race who formed them were the frequenters of the natives of Peru and other portions of South America.... Even at the date of Cook’s visit, some of the statues, measuring twenty‐seven feet in height and eight across the shoulders, were lying overthrown, while others still standing appeared much larger. One of the latter was so lofty that the shade was sufficient to shelter a party of thirty persons from the heat of the sun. The platforms on which these colossal images stood averaged from thirty to forty feet in length, twelve to sixteen broad ... all built of hewn stone in the Cyclopean style, very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac, _or the ruins of Tia‐Huanaco in Peru_.(753) “_There is no reason to believe that any of the statues have been built up, bit by bit, by scaffolding erected around them_,” adds the reviewer very suggestively—without explaining _how_ they could be built otherwise, unless made by giants of the same size as the statues themselves. Two of the best of these colossal images are now in the British Museum. The images at Ronororaka are four in number, three deeply sunk in the soil, and one resting on the back of its head like a man asleep. Their types, though all are long‐headed, are different; and they are evidently meant for portraits, as the noses, the mouths, and chins differ greatly in form; their head‐dress, moreover—a kind of flat cap with a piece attached to it to cover the back portion of the head—shows that the originals were no savages of the stone period. Verily the question may be asked, Who made them?—but it is not Archæology nor yet Geology that is likely to answer, even though the latter recognizes in the island a portion of a submerged continent. But who cut the Bamian, still more colossal, statues, the tallest and the most gigantic in the whole world?—for Bartholdi’s “Statue of Liberty,” now at New York, _is a dwarf_ when compared with the largest of the five images. Burnes, and several learned Jesuits who have visited the place, speak of a mountain “all honeycombed with gigantic cells,” with two immense giants cut in the same rock. They are referred to as the modern Miaotse (_vide supra_, quotation from _Shoo‐King_), the last surviving witnesses of the Miaotse who had “troubled the earth”; the Jesuits are right, and the Archæologists, who see Buddhas in the largest of these statues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins which are discovered one after the other in our day, all those immense avenues of colossal ruins that cross North America along and beyond the Rocky Mountains, are the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of old. “Masses of enormous human bones” were found “in America, near Munte [?]” a celebrated modern traveller tells us, precisely on the spot which local tradition points out as the landing spot of those giants who overran America when it had hardly arisen from the waters.(754) Central Asian traditions say the same of the Bamian statues. What are they, and what is the place where they have stood for countless ages, defying the cataclysms around them, and even the hand of man, as in the instance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal‐warriors of Nadir Shah? Bamian is a small, miserable, half‐ruined town in Central Asia, half‐way between Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Koh‐i‐baba, a huge mountain of the Paropamisian, or Hindu‐Kush, Chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the sea. In days of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of Djooljool, ruined and destroyed to the last stone by Tchengis‐Khan in the thirteenth century. The whole valley is hemmed in by colossal rocks, which are full of partially natural and partially artificial caves and grottoes, once the dwellings of Buddhist monks who had established in them their Vihâras. Such Vihâras are to be met with in profusion, to this day, in the rock‐cut temples of India and the valleys of Jellalabad. In front of some of these caves five enormous statues—of what is regarded as Buddha—have been discovered or rather _rediscovered_ in our century, for the famous Chinese traveller Hiouen Thsang speaks of having seen them, when he visited Bamian in the seventh century. The contention that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, is easily proven on the evidence of all the travellers who have examined them and taken their measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high, or _seventy_ feet higher than the “Statue of Liberty” now at New York, as the latter is only 105 feet or 34 mètres high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself, between whose legs the largest vessels of those days passed with ease, measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second largest statue, which is also cut out in the rock like the first, is only 120 feet or fifteen feet taller than the said “Liberty.”(755) The third statue is only 60 feet high, the two others still smaller, the last being only a little larger than the average tall man of our present Race. The first and largest of the colossi represents a man draped in a kind of “toga”; M. de Nadeylac thinks that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head, the drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, are undeniable indications that Buddha was meant to be represented. But they really prove nothing. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the now existing figures of Buddha, represented in the posture of Samâdhi, have large drooping ears, this is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due to Esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience of wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who _knows and hears all_, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures nothing can escape. As a Shloka says: _The merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the smallest of the small, beyond vale and mountain, and hastens to its deliverance._ Gautama Buddha was an Âryan Hindû, and an approach to such ears is found only among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort their ears artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned the grottoes of the Miao‐tse into Vihâras and cells, came into Central Asia about or in the first century of the Christian era. Therefore, Hiouen Thsang, speaking of the colossal statue, says that “the shining of the gold ornamentation that overlaid the statue” in his day “dazzled one’s eyes,” but of such gilding there remains not a vestige in modern times. The drapery, in contrast to the figure itself, which is cut out of the standing rock, is made of plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made the most careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far later epoch. The statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far earlier period than Buddhism. In such case, it may be asked, Whom does it represent? Once more tradition, corroborated by written records, answers the query, and explains the mystery. The Buddhist Arhats and Ascetics found the five statues, and many more, now crumbled down to dust. Three of them standing in colossal niches at the entrance of their future abode, they covered with plaster, and, over the old, modelled new statues made to represent Lord Tathâgata. The interior walls of the niches are covered to this day with bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of Buddha is repeated in every group. These frescoes and ornaments—which remind one of the Byzantine style of painting—are all due to the piety of the monk‐ ascetics, as also are some other minor figures and rock‐cut ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the Initiates of the Fourth Race, who, after the submersion of their Continent, sought refuge in the fastnesses and on the summits of the Central Asian mountain chains. Thus, the five statues are an imperishable record of the Esoteric Teaching as to the gradual evolution of the Races. The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal body being commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of future generations, as its remembrance would otherwise never have survived the Atlantean Deluge. The second—120 feet high—represents the Sweat‐born; and the third—measuring 60 feet—immortalizes the Race that fell, and thereby inaugurated the first _physical_ Race, born of father and mother, the last descendants of which are represented in the statues found on Easter Isle. These were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison with our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the latter. These are, then, the “Giants” of antiquity, the ante‐ and post‐diluvian Gibborim of the _Bible_. They lived and flourished one million years ago rather than between three and four thousand only. The Anakim of Joshua, whose hosts were as “grasshoppers” in comparison with the Jews, are thus a piece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the Miocene age, and change the millenniums of their chronology into millions of years. In everything that pertains to prehistoric times the reader ought to bear in mind the wise words of Montaigne. Saith the great French Philosopher: It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who perswade themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort.... But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing for false and impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage to have the bounds and limits of God’s will, and the power of our common mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there is no greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of our capacitie and bounds of our sufficiencie.... If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason cannot attain, how many such doe daily present themselves unto our sight? Let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde‐folde, we are led to the knowledge of most things that passe our hands; verily we shall finde it is rather custome than science that receiveth the strangenesse of them from us: and that those things, were they newly presented unto us, wee should doubtless deeme them as much or more unlikely and incredible than any other.(756) A fair‐minded scholar, before denying the possibility of _our_ history and records, should search modern history, as well as the universal traditions scattered throughout ancient and modern literature, for traces left by these marvellous early races. Few among the unbelievers suspect the wealth of corroborative evidence which is to be found scattered about and buried, even in the British Museum alone. The reader is asked to throw one more glance at the subject‐matter treated of in the Section which follows. Cyclopean Ruins And Colossal Stones As Witnesses To Giants. De Mirville, in his enormous works, “Mémoires Adressées aux Académies,” carrying out the task of proving the reality of the Devil and showing his abode in every ancient and modern idol, has collected several hundred pages of “historical evidence” that, in the days of “miracle,” both pagan and biblical, stones walked, spoke, delivered oracles, and even sang. That finally, the “Christ‐stone,” or Christ‐rock, “the spiritual Rock” that followed Israel,(757) “became a Jupiter‐lapis,” swallowed by his father Saturn, “under the shape of a stone.”(758) We will not stop to discuss the evident misuse and materialization of biblical metaphors simply for the sake of proving the “Satanism” of idols, though a good deal might be said(759) on this subject. But without claiming any such peripateticism and innate psychic faculties for our stones, we may collect, in our turn, every available evidence to hand, to show that: (_a_) had there been no giants to move such colossal rocks, there could never have been a Stonehenge, a Carnac (Brittany), or other such Cyclopean structures; and (_b_) were there no such thing as Magic, there could never have been so many witnesses to “oracular” and “speaking” stones. In the _Achaica_ we find Pausanias confessing that, in beginning his work, he had regarded the Greeks as mighty _stupid_ “for worshipping stones.” But, having reached Arcadia, he adds: “I have changed my way of thinking.”(760) Therefore, without worshipping stones or stone idols and statues, which is the same thing—a crime with which Roman Catholics are unwise to reproach Pagans, as they do—one may be allowed to believe in what so many great Philosophers and holy men have believed in, without deserving to be called an “idiot” by modern Pausaniuses. The reader is referred to the _Académie des Inscriptions_, if he would study the various properties of flints and pebbles from the standpoint of magic and psychic powers. In a poem on “Stones” attributed to Orpheus, these stones are divided into Ophites and Sideritês, the “Serpent‐stone” and “Star‐stone.” The Ophitês is shaggy, hard, heavy, black, and has _the gift of speech_; when one prepares to cast it away, it produces a sound _similar to the cry of a child_. It is by means of this stone that Helenus foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland.(761) Sanchuniathon and Philo Byblus, in referring to these “bétyles,” call them “_animated_ stones.” Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus and the physician Eusebius had asserted before him. Eusebius especially never parted with his Ophitês, which he carried in his bosom, and received oracles from it, delivered _in a small voice resembling a low whistling_.(762) Arnobius, a holy man, who “from a Pagan had become one of the _lights of the Church_,” as Christians tell their readers, confesses he could never meet with one of such stones without putting it a question, “which it answered occasionally in a _clear and sharp small voice_.” Where, then, is the difference between the Christian and the Pagan Ophitês, we ask? The famous stone at Westminster was called _liafail_, “the speaking stone,” and raised its voice only to name the king that had to be chosen. Cambry, in his _Monuments Celtiques_, says he saw it when it still bore the inscription:(763) _Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum_ _Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem_. Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain Heræscus, who could distinguish at a glance the inanimate stones from those which were endowed with motion; and Pliny mentions stones which “ran away when a hand approached them.”(764) De Mirville—who seeks to justify the _Bible_—enquires very pertinently, why the monstrous stones of Stonehenge were called in days of old _chior‐ gaur_ or the “dance of giants” (from _côr_, “dance,” whence _chorea_, and _gaur_, “giant”)? And then he sends the reader to receive his reply from the Bishop St. Gildas. But the authors of such works as _Voyage dans le Comté de Cornouailles, sur les Traces des Géants_, and of various learned works on the ruins of Stonehenge,(765) Carnac, and West Hoadley, give far fuller and more reliable information upon this particular subject. In those regions—true forests of rocks—immense monoliths are found, “some weighing over 500,000 kilograms.” These “hanging stones” of Salisbury Plain are believed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. But the Druids were historical men and not Cyclopes, or giants. Who then, _if not giants_, could ever raise such masses—especially those at Carnac and West Hoadley—range them in such symmetrical order that they should represent the planisphere, and place them in such wonderful equipoise that they seem to hardly touch the ground, and though set in motion at the slightest touch of the finger, would nevertheless resist the efforts of twenty men should they attempt to displace them. Now if we say that most of these stones are relics of the last Atlanteans, we shall be answered that all the Geologists claim them to be of a natural origin; that, a rock when “weathering”—_i.e._, losing flake after flake of its substance under the influence of the weather—assumes this form; that, the “tors” in West England exhibit curious forms, also produced by this cause. And thus since all Scientists consider the “rocking stones to be of purely natural origin, wind, rain, etc., causing disintegration of rocks in layers”—our statement will be justly denied, especially as “we see this process of rock‐modification in progress around us to‐day.” Let us then examine the case. First read what Geology has to say, and you will then learn that often these gigantic masses are entire strangers in the countries wherein they are now fixed; that their geological congeners often pertain to strata unknown in those countries and which are only to be found far beyond the seas. Mr. William Tooke, in speculating upon the enormous blocks of granite which are strewn over Southern Russia and Siberia, tells the reader that where they now rest, there are neither rocks nor mountains; and that they must have been brought over “from immense distances and with prodigious efforts.”(766) Charton speaks of a specimen of such rock from Ireland, which had been submitted to the analysis of an eminent English Geologist, who assigned to it a foreign origin “_perhaps even African_.”(767) This is a strange _coincidence_, for Irish tradition attributes the origin of her circular stones to a _Sorcerer who brought them from Africa_. De Mirville sees in this Sorcerer “an accursed Hamite.”(768) We see in him a dark Atlantean, or perhaps even some earlier Lemurian, who had survived till the birth of the British Islands—a giant in any and every case.(769) Says Cambry, naively: Men have nothing to do with it ... for never could _human_ power and industry undertake anything of this kind. Nature alone has accomplished it all [!!] and Science will demonstrate it some day [!!].(770) Nevertheless, it was _human_, though gigantic power, which accomplished it, and no more “Nature” alone than God or Devil. “Science,” having undertaken to demonstrate that even the Mind and Spirit of man are simply the production of “blind forces,” is quite capable of accepting the task, and it may be that she will come out some fine morning, and seek to prove that Nature alone has marshalled the gigantic rocks of Stonehenge, traced their position with mathematical precision, given them the form of the Dendera planisphere and of the signs of the Zodiac, and brought stones weighing over one million of pounds from Africa and Asia to England and Ireland! It is true that Cambry recanted later on, when saying: I believed for a long time in _Nature_, but I _recant_, ... for chance _is unable to create_ such marvellous combinations, ... and those who placed the said rocks in equipoise, are the same who have raised the moving masses of the pond of Huelgoat, near Concarneau. Dr. John Watson, quoted by the same author, when speaking of the _moving_ rocks, or “rocking stones” situated on the slope of Golcar (the “Enchanter”) says: The astonishing movement of those masses poised in equilibrium made the Celts compare them to Gods.(771) In _Stonehenge_, by Flinders Petrie, it is said that: Stonehenge is built of the stone of the district, a red sandstone, or “sarsen” stone, locally called “grey wethers.” But some of the stones, especially those which are said to have been devoted to astronomical purposes, have been brought from a distance, probably the North of Ireland. To close, the reflections of a man of Science, in an article upon the subject published in 1850 in the _Revue Archéologique_, are worthy of being quoted: Every stone is a block whose weight would try the most powerful machines. There are, in a word, scattered throughout the globe, masses, before which the word _materials_ seems to remain inexplicable, at the sight of which imagination is confounded, and that had to be endowed with a name as colossal as the things themselves. Besides which, these _immense rocking_ stones, called sometimes _routers_, placed upright on one of their sides as on a point, their equipoise being so perfect that the slightest touch is sufficient to set them in motion ... betray a most positive knowledge of statics. Reciprocal counter‐motion, surfaces, plane, convex and concave, in turn ... all this allies them to Cyclopean monuments, of which it can be said with good reason, repeating De la Vega, that “the demons seem to have worked on them more than men.”(772) For once we agree with our friends and foes, the Roman Catholics, and ask whether such prodigies of statics and equilibrium, with masses weighing millions of pounds, can be the work of Palæolithic _savages_, of cave‐men, taller than the average man in our century, yet ordinary mortals as we are? It is not our purpose to refer to the various traditions attached to the rocking stones. Still, it may be as well to remind the English reader of Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of such a stone on the Isle of Mona, which returned to its place, notwithstanding every effort to keep it elsewhere. At the time of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II, a Count Hugo Cestrensis, desiring to convince himself of the reality of the fact, tied the Mona stone to a far larger one and had them thrown into the sea. On the following morning it was found in its accustomed place. The learned William of Salisbury warrants the fact by testifying to its presence in the wall of a church where he had seen it in 1554. And this reminds one of what Pliny said of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which the Cyzicans had placed in the Prytaneum, “whence it _ran away several times_, and so they were forced to weight it with lead.”(773) Here we have immense stones stated by all antiquity to be “living, moving, speaking, and self‐ perambulating.” They were also capable, it seems, of making people run away, since they were called _routers_, from the word to “rout,” or “put to flight”; and Des Mousseaux shows them all to be prophetic stones, and sometimes called “_mad_ stones.”(774) The rocking stone is accepted by Science. But why did it rock? One must be blind not to see that this motion was one more means of divination, and that they were called for this very reason the “stones of truth.”(775) _This is history_, the past of prehistoric times warranting the same in later ages. The Dracontia, sacred to the Moon and the Serpent, were the more ancient “rocks of destiny” of older nations; and their motion, or _rocking_, was a code perfectly clear to the initiated priests, who alone had the key to this ancient _reading_. Vormius and Olaus Magnus show that it was according to the orders of the oracle, whose voice spoke through “these immense rocks raised by the colossal powers of [ancient] giants,” that the kings of Scandinavia were elected. Says Pliny: In India and Persia it is she (the Persian Otizoë) whom the Magi had to consult for the election of their sovereigns;(776) and he further describes a rock overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and placed in such a manner that “a single finger can move it, while the weight of the whole body makes it resist.”(777) Why then should not the rocking stones of Ireland, or those of Brimham, in Yorkshire, have served for the same mode of _divination_ or oracular communications? The hugest of them are evidently the relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller, such as Brimham Rocks, with revolving stones on their summit, are copies from the more ancient lithoi. Had not the Bishops of the Middle Ages destroyed all the plans of the Dracontia they could lay their hands on, Science would know more of these.(778) As it is, we know that they were universally used during long prehistoric ages, and all for the same purposes of prophecy and _magic_. É. Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published in the _Antiquités de France_ (vol. ix), an article showing the Chatampéramba (the “Field of Death,” or ancient burial ground in Malabar), to be identical in situation with the old tombs at Carnac; that is to say, “a prominence and a central tomb.” Bones are found in the tombs, and Mr. Halliwell tells us that some of these are enormous, the natives calling the tombs the “dwellings of the Râkshasas” or giants. Several stone circles, “considered the work of the Panch Pândava (five Pândus), as all such monuments are in India, where they are to be found in such great numbers,” when opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi, “were found to contain _human bones of a very large size_.”(779) Again, De Mirville is right in his _generalization_, if not in his conclusions. As the long cherished theory that the Dracontia are mostly witnesses to “great natural geological commotions” (Charton), and “the work of Nature” (Cambry), is now exploded, his remarks are very just: We advise Science to reflect .... and, above all, no longer to class Titans and Giants among primitive legends; for their works are there, under our eyes, and those rocking masses will oscillate on their basis to the end of the world to help them to realize once for all, that one is not altogether a candidate for Charenton for believing in wonders certified to by the whole of Antiquity.(780) This is just what we can never repeat too often, though it may be that the voices of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised in the desert. Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as inconsistent, to say the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and mediæval Theology in _its_ interpretations of the so‐called _Revelation_. Science would have men descend from the pithecoid ape—a transformation requiring millions of years—and yet fears to make Mankind older than 100,000 years! Science teaches the gradual transformation of species, natural selection and evolution from the lowest form to the highest, from mollusc to fish, from reptile to bird and mammalian—yet it refuses to man, who is physiologically only a higher mammal and animal, such a transformation of his external form. But if the monstrous Iguanodon of the Wealden may have been the ancestor of the diminutive Iguana of to‐day, why could not the monstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become the modern man—the link between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more unscientific in this “theory” than in that of refusing to man a spiritual immortal Ego, making of him an automaton, and ranking him, at the same time, _as a distinct genus_ in the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific than the present Exact Sciences, they are nevertheless more logical and consistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and the natural affinities of atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal; but it requires more than the mere interplay between certain material aggregates and their environment, to call to life a _fully conscious man_, even though he were no more indeed than a ramification between two “poor cousins” of the quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Hæckel that (objective) Life on our Globe “is a logical postulate of scientific natural history,” but add that the rejection of a like _spiritual_ involution, from _within without_, of invisible subjective Spirit‐ Life—Eternal and a Principle in Nature—is more illogical, if possible, than to say that the Universe and all in it has been gradually built by “blind forces” inherent in Matter, without any _external_ help. Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a cathedral had come originally into being as follows: first, there was a progressive and gradual elaboration in space of an organizable material, which resulted in the production of a state of matter named _organic protein_; then, under the influence of incident forces, these states having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and majestically evolved into new combinations of carved and polished wood, of brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind‐pipes and bellows; after which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart’s “Requiem”; this was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc., _ad infinitum_, its keys playing of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own inherent force and fancy. What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it is precisely in such wise that the materialistic _savants_ tell us that the Universe was formed, with its millions of beings, and man, its spiritual crown. Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when writing on the subject of the gradual transformation of species, his words apply to our doctrine. Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations _on a preëxisting kind of being_.(781) Then why, in this case, should not historical man be the product of a modification on a preëxistent and prehistorical kind of man, even supposing for argument’s sake that there is _nothing_ within him to last longer than, or live independently of, his physical structure? But this is not so! For, when we are told that “organic matters are produced in the laboratory by what we may literally call _artificial evolution_”(782)—we answer the distinguished English philosopher, that Alchemists and great Adepts did as much, and, indeed, far more, before the Chemists ever attempted to “build out of dissociated elements complex combinations.” The Homunculi of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one in Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster will have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no Chemist, or Alchemist either, will ever endow such a monster with more than animal instinct, unless indeed he does that with which the “Progenitors” are credited, namely, leave his own Physical Body, and incarnate in the “Empty Form.” But even this would be an _artificial_, not a natural man, for our “Progenitors” had, in the course of eternal evolution, to become _Gods_ before they became Men. The above digression—if indeed it is one—is an attempt at justification before the few thinking men of the coming century who may read this. It also gives the reason why the best and most spiritual men of our present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science or Theology, and why they prefer any “psychic craze” to the dogmatic assertions of the pair, since neither of them, in its infallibility, has anything better to offer than _blind_ faith. _Universal_ tradition is by far the safer guide in life. And universal tradition shows Primitive Man living for ages together with his Creators and first Instructors—the Elohim—in the World’s “Garden of Eden,” or “Delight.”(783) 45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY SWALLOWED THE SEVEN GREAT ISLANDS (_A_). 46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY DESTROYED. WITH THEM MOST OF THE HUGE ANIMALS, PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE EARTH (_B_). (_a_) As this subject—the fourth great Deluge on our Globe in this Round—is fully treated in the Sections that follow the last Stanza, to say anything more at present would be a mere anticipation. The seven Great Islands (Dvîpas) belonged to the Continent of Atlantis. The Secret Teachings show that the Deluge overtook the Fourth, Giant Race, not on account of its depravity, or because it had become “black with sin,” but simply because such is the fate of every Continent, which—like everything else under our Sun—is born, lives, becomes decrepit, and dies. This was when the Fifth Race was in its infancy. (_b_) Thus the Giants perished—the Magicians and the Sorcerers, adds the fancy of popular tradition. But “all holy saved,” and alone the “unholy” were “destroyed.” This was due, however, as much to the _prevision_ of the “holy” ones, who had not lost the use of their Third Eye, as to Karma and Natural Law. Speaking of the subsequent Race, our Fifth Humanity, the Commentary says: _Alone the handful of those Elect, whose Divine Instructors had gone to __ inhabit that Sacred Island—__“__from whence the last Saviour will come__”__—now kept mankind from becoming one‐half the exterminator of the other [as mankind is now_—H. P. B.]. _It [mankind] became divided. Two‐ thirds of it were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material Spirits of the Earth, who took possession of the easily accessible bodies; one‐third remained faithful, and joined with the nascent Fifth Race—the Divine Incarnates. When the Poles moved [for the fourth time] this did not affect those who were protected, and who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like the Lemurians—alone the ungodly Atlanteans perished, and __“__were seen no more__”__...!_ Stanza XII. The Fifth Race And Its Divine Instructors. 47. The remnants of the first two Races disappear for ever. Groups of the various Atlantean races saved from the Deluge along with the Forefathers of the Fifth. 48. The origins of our present Race, the Fifth. The first Divine Dynasties. 49. The earliest glimmerings in history, now pinned to the allegorical chronology of the _Bible_, and “universal” history slavishly following it. The nature of the first Instructors and Civilizers of mankind. 47. FEW(784) REMAINED. SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED REMAINED. THE MOON‐COLOURED(785) WERE GONE FOR EVER (_A_). 48. THE FIFTH(786) PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK REMAINED; IT WAS RULED OVER BY THE FIRST DIVINE KINGS. 49. ... THE SERPENTS WHO RE‐DESCENDED, WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH,(787) WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT (_b_).... (_a_) This Shloka relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with it, but living and ever‐recurring tradition does. History—or what is called history—does not go back further than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub‐race, a “few thousands” of years. It is the sub‐divisions of the first sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race which are referred to in the sentence, “Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red remained.” The “moon‐coloured”—_i.e._, the First and the Second Races—were gone for ever; ay, without leaving any traces whatever—and that, so far back as the third “Deluge” of the Third Lemurian Race, that “Great Dragon,” whose tail sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this is the true meaning of the verse in the Commentary which says: _The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom, the Serpents whose holes are now under the Triangular Stones._ Or in other words, “the pyramids, at the four corners of the world.” (_b_) This puts clearly what is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the Commentaries; namely, that the Adepts or “Wise” men of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Races dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind of pyramidal structure, if not actually under a pyramid. For such “pyramids” existed in the “four corners of the world” and were never the monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though indeed until they were found scattered all over the two Americas, under and above ground, beneath and amidst virgin forests, and also in plain and vale, they were generally supposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If true geometrically correct pyramids are no longer found in European regions, nevertheless many of the supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triangular pyramidal and conical “menhirs” in Morbihan, and Brittany generally, many of the Danish “tumuli” and even of the “giant tombs” of Sardinia with their inseparable companions, the “nuraghi,” are so many more or less clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first settlers on the newly‐born continent and isles of Europe, the “some yellow, some brown and black, and some red” races that remained after the submersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands, 850,000 years ago—Plato’s Island excepted—and before the arrival of the great Âryan races; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the East. Those who can hardly accept the placing of the antiquity of the human race so far back as the 57,000 years, the age assigned by Dr. Dowler to the skeleton found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi, will, of course, reject these facts. But they may find themselves mistaken some day. We may disparage the foolish self‐glorification of the Arcadians who styled themselves “older than the Moon” (προσέληνοι), and of the people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the Sun appeared in Heaven—but not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at the universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones of the Mammoth and Mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic Salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make away with the difficulty that, of all the Mammalians, man is the only one whom Science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal frames, from the giant Homo Diluvii to the creature between five and six feet that he is now. But the “Serpents of Wisdom” have preserved their records well, and the history of human evolution _is_ traced in Heaven as it is traced on underground walls. Humanity and the _Stars_ are bound together indissolubly, because of the _Intelligences_ that rule the latter. Modern Symbologists may scoff at this and call it “fancy,” but as Mr. Staniland Wake writes: It is unquestionable that the Deluge has [ever] been associated in the legends of some Eastern peoples not only with the Pyramids, but also with the constellations.(788) The “Old Dragon” is identical with the “Great Flood,” says Mr. Proctor: We know that in the past the constellation of the Dragon was at the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples, ... the Dragon would be the uppermost or ruling constellation.... It is singular how closely these constellations ... correspond in sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded respecting the [Biblical] Flood.(789) The reasons for this _singularity_, however, have been made abundantly clear in this work. It only shows that there were _several_ Deluges confused in the memories and traditions of the sub‐races of the Fifth Race. The first great Flood was astronomical and cosmical, while several others were terrestrial. And yet our very learned friend Mr. Gerald Massey—an initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still only a self‐initiate—declared and insisted that the Atlantean Submersion and Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people, and that Atlantis was no better than an “astronomical allegory.” But the great zodiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and allegory can hardly interfere with history; moreover, every student of Occultism knows what that astronomical and zodiacal allegory means. Dr. Smith shows in the Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of the allegory. [Its twelve cantos] refer to the annual course of the Sun through the twelve months of the year. Each tablet answers to a special month, and contains a distinct reference to the animal forms in the signs of the Zodiac; ... [the eleventh canto being] consecrated to Rimmon, the God of storms and rain, and harmonizes with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac—Aquarius, or the Waterman.(790) But even this is preceded in the old Records by the _pre_‐astronomical Cosmic Flood, which became allegorized and symbolized in the above Zodiacal or Noah’s Flood. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. The Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the constellation of the Great Dragon, the “Dragons of Wisdom,” or the great Initiates of the Third and Fourth Races, and the floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine reminder of the great Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of Universal History, however, are said to have had their beginnings with the third sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race or the Atlanteans. When was it? Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of the zodiacal calculations in Egypt, _the poles have been thrice inverted_. We will presently return again to this statement. Such symbols as are represented by the Signs of the Zodiac—a fact which offers a handle to Materialists upon which to hang their one‐sided theories and opinions—have too profound a signification, and their bearing upon our Humanity is too important, to suffer dismissal in a few words. Meanwhile, we have to consider the meaning of the statement, in Shloka 48, concerning the “first Divine Kings,” who are said to have “redescended,” guided and _instructed_ our Fifth Race after the last Deluge! We shall consider this last claim historically in the Sections that follow, but must end with a few more details on the subject of “Serpents.” The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further elucidation requires proofs obtained from ancient, mediæval, and modern works which have treated of these subjects. All such evidence has now to be gathered in, collated and brought together in better order, so as to compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical proofs. And as the manifold meaning of the weird and suggestive symbol (so often referred to) of the “tempter of man”—in the orthodox light of the Church—can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to exhaust the subject by every available proof, at this juncture, even at the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made out by our Theologians and some pious Symbologists to be indissolubly connected with the grotesque personage called the “Devil,” and every proof which goes against their theory has been hitherto as invariably rejected and ignored. The Occultist must, therefore, neglect nothing which may tend to defeat this conspiracy of slander. And so we propose to divide the subjects involved in these last three Verses into several groups, and to examine them as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more details may thus be added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the most disputed tenets of Occultism and the Esoteric Doctrine—the bulk of which, however, will be found in Part II, on Symbology. Serpents And Dragons Under Different Symbolisms. The name of the Dragon in Chaldæa was not written phonetically, but was represented by two monograms, meaning _probably_, according to the Orientalists, the “scaly one.” “This description,” very pertinently remarks G. Smith, “of course might apply either to a fabulous dragon, a serpent, or a fish.” To this we may add that, in one aspect, it applies to Makara, the tenth Zodiacal Sign, the Sanskrit term for a nondescript amphibious animal, generally called Crocodile, but really signifying something else. This, then, is a virtual admission that the Assyriologists, at all events, know nothing certain as to the status of the Dragon in ancient Chaldæa. It was from Chaldæa that the Hebrews got _their_ symbolism, only to be afterwards robbed of it by the Christians, who made of the “scaly one” a living entity and a maleficent power. A specimen of Dragons, “winged and scaled,” may be seen in the British Museum. In this representation of the events of the Fall, according to the same authority, there are also two figures sitting on each side of a “tree,” and holding out their hands to the “apple,” while at the back of the “tree” is the Dragon‐Serpent. Esoterically, the two figures are two “Chaldees” ready for Initiation, the Serpent symbolizing the Initiator; while the jealous Gods, who curse the three, are the exoteric profane clergy. Not much of the literal “biblical event” there, as any Occultist can see! “The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom,” says the Stanza; thus proving the correctness of our explanation of the two figures and the “Serpent.” “The Serpents who redescended, .... who taught and instructed” the Fifth Race. What sane man, in our day, is capable of believing that _real_ serpents are hereby meant? Hence the rough guess—now become almost an axiom with men of Science—that those who in antiquity wrote upon various sacred Dragons and Serpents were either superstitious and credulous people, or were bent upon deceiving those more ignorant than themselves. Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from the Profane. “Terrible are the Gods when they manifest themselves”—those _Gods_ whom men call _Dragons_. And Ælianus, treating in his _De Naturâ Animalium_ of these ophidian symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he well understood the nature of these most ancient of symbols. Thus with reference to the above Homeric verse he most pertinently explains: For the Dragon, while sacred and to be worshipped, _has within himself something still more of the divine nature_ of which it is better [for others?] to remain in ignorance.(791) The “Dragon” symbol has a septenary meaning, and of these seven meanings, the highest and the lowest may be given. The highest is identical with the “Self‐born,” the Logos, the Hindû Aja. With the Christian Gnostics called the Naasenians, or Serpent‐worshippers, he was the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.(792) Its seven “Stars” are the seven stars held in the hand of the “Alpha and Omega” in _Revelation_. In its most terrestrial meaning, the term “Dragon” was applied to the “Wise” men. This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and mysterious, and may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern day it so jars on the Christian ear that, in spite of our boasted civilization, it can hardly escape being regarded as a direct denunciation of the most cherished of Christian dogmas. Such a subject required, to do it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma. Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in Heaven originate with St. John, in his _Revelation_? Emphatically we answer—No. St. John’s “Dragon” is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean Magic. In order that we may demonstrate this negation, the reader is asked to examine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its several aspects. The Sidereal And Cosmic Glyphs. Every Astronomer—not to speak of Occultists and Astrologers—knows that, figuratively speaking, the Astral Light, the Milky Way, and also the Path of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, as well as the Circles of the Sidereal or Tropical Year, were always called “Serpents” in the allegorical and mystic phraseology of the Adepts. This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a “Dragon”—the Dragon “Chozzar, called by the profane Neptune” according to the Peratæ Gnostics, the “Good and Perfect Serpent,” the Messiah of the Naaseni, whose symbol in Heaven is Draco. But we ought to discriminate between the various characters of this symbol. Now Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret Doctrine, and when an Occultist reads in the _Vendîdâd_ complaints uttered against the “Serpent,” whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal spring of Airyana Vaêjô, changing it into winter, generating disease and death, and at the same time mental and psychic consumption—he knows that the Serpent alluded to is the North Pole, and also the Pole of the Heavens.(793) These two axes produce the seasons according to their angle of inclination to each other. The two axes were _no more parallel_; hence the eternal spring of Airyana Vaêjô “by the good river Dâitya” had disappeared, and “the Âryan Magi had to emigrate to Sogdiana”—say the exoteric accounts. But the Esoteric Teaching states that the pole had passed from the equator, and that the “Land of Bliss” of the Fourth Race, its inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo‐Âryans of the post‐ diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognize the mountains, on the summits of which their forefathers had met _before_ the Flood, and conversed with the pure “Yazatas” or celestial Spirits of the Elements, whose life and _food_ they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein: The _Vendîdâd_ seems to point out a great change in the atmosphere of central Asia; strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a whole range of mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kara‐Korum chain.(794) The Egyptians, according to Eusebius, who, for a wonder, once wrote the truth, symbolized Kosmos by a large fiery circle, with a serpent with a hawk’s head lying across its diameter. Here we see the pole of the earth within the plane of the ecliptic, attended with all the fiery consequences that must arise from such a state of the heavens: when the whole Zodiac, in 25,000 [odd] years, must have “redden’d with the solar blaze”; and _each sign must have been vertical_ to the polar region.(795) Meru, the Abode of the Gods, as explained before, was placed in the North Pole, while Pâtâla, the Nether Region, was supposed to lie towards the South. As each symbol in Esoteric Philosophy has _seven_ keys, Meru and Pâtâla have, geographically, one significance and represent localities, while, astronomically, they have another, and mean the “two poles”; the latter meaning led to their being often rendered in _exoteric_ sectarianism as the “Mountain” and the “Pit,” or Heaven and Hell. If we for the present hold only to the astronomical and geographical significance, it may be found that the Ancients knew the topography and nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern Astronomers. They had reasons, and good ones, for naming one the “Mountain” and the other the “Pit.” As the author just quoted half explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same. “Heli‐on is the Sun in his highest,” Heli‐os or Eli‐os meaning the “most high,” and Acheron is 32 degrees above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded the southern pole, the first astronomers called the Pit, while observing, toward the northern pole, that a certain circuit in the heavens always appeared above the horizon—they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the high abode of the Gods, these were said to _ascend_ and _descend_ periodically; by which (astronomically) the _Zodiacal_ Gods were meant, the passing of the original north pole of the Earth to the south pole of the Heaven. In that age at noon, the ecliptic would be parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from the north pole to the north horizon; crossing the _eight coils of the serpent_ [eight sidereal years, or over 200,000 solar years], which would seem like an imaginary _ladder_ with _eight staves_ reaching from the earth up to the pole, _i.e._, the throne of Jove. Up this ladder, then, the Gods, _i.e._, the Signs of the Zodiac, ascended and descended. [Jacob’s ladder and the Angels] .... It is more than 400,000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this ladder.(796) This is an ingenious explanation, even if it is not altogether free from Occult heresy. Yet it is nearer the truth than many of a more scientific and especially theological character. As said, the Christian Trinity was purely astronomical from its beginning. This it was which made Rutilius say of those who euhemerized it: “_Judæa gens, radix stultorum_.” But the profane, and especially Christian fanatics who are ever in search of scientific corroboration for their dead‐letter texts, persist in seeing in the Celestial Pole the true Serpent of _Genesis_, Satan, the enemy of mankind; whereas it is really—a cosmic metaphor. When the Gods are said to forsake the Earth, it means not only the Gods, the Protectors and Instructors, but also the _minor_ Gods—the Regents of the Zodiacal Signs. The former, as actual and existing Entities which gave birth to, nursed, and instructed Mankind in its early youth, appear in every Scripture, in that of the Zoroastrians as well as in the Hindû Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura Mazda, the “Lord of Wisdom,” is the synthesis of the Amshaspands, or Amesha Spentas, the “Immortal Benefactors,”(797) the “Word,” or the Logos, and its six highest aspects in Mazdeanism. These “Immortal Benefactors” are described in _Zamyad Yasht_ as: The Amesha Spentas, the shining, having efficacious eyes, great, helpful ... imperishable and pure ... which are all seven of like mind, like speech, all seven doing alike ... which are _the creators and destroyers of the creatures_ of Ahura Mazda, their creators and overseers, their protectors and rulers. These few lines are sufficient to indicate the dual and even the triple character of the Amshaspands, our Dhyân Chohans or the “Serpents of Wisdom.” They are identical with, and yet separate from Ormazd (Ahura Mazda). They are also the Angels of the Stars of the Christians—the Star‐ Yazatas of the Zoroastrians—or again the seven Planets (including the Sun) of every religion.(798) The epithet, “the shining, having efficacious eyes,” proves it. This on the physical and sidereal planes. On the spiritual, they are the Divine Powers of Ahura Mazda; but on the astral or psychic plane again, they are the “Builders,” the “Watchers,” the Pitris, or Fathers, and the first Preceptors of Mankind. When mortals have become sufficiently spiritualized, there will be no more need of _forcing_ them into a correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men will _know_ then, that there never yet was a great World‐reformer whose name has passed into our generation, who (_a_) was not a direct emanation of the Logos (under whatever name known to us) _i.e._, an _essential_ incarnation of one of the “Seven,” of the “Divine Spirit who is sevenfold”; and (_b_) who had not appeared before, in past Cycles. They will recognize, then, the cause which produces certain riddles of the ages, in both history and chronology; the reason, for instance, why it is impossible _for them_ to assign any reliable date to Zoroaster, who is found multiplied by twelve and fourteen in the _Dabistan_; why the numbers and individualities of the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up; why Krishna and Buddha speak of themselves as reïncarnations, Krishna identifying himself with the Rishi Nârâyana, and Gautama giving a series of his previous births; and why the former, especially, being “the _very supreme_ Brahmâ,” is yet called Anshânshâvatâra—“a part of a part” only of the Supreme on Earth; finally, why Osiris is a Great God, and at the same time a “Prince on Earth,” who reäppears in Thoth Hermes; and why Jesus (in Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognized, kabalistically, in Joshua, the son of Nun, as well as in other personages. The Esoteric Doctrine explains all this by saying that each of these, as also many others, had first appeared on Earth as one of the Seven Powers of the Logos, individualized as a God or Angel (Messenger); then, mixed with Matter, they had reäppeared in turn as great Sages and Instructors who “taught” the Fifth Race, after having instructed the two preceding Races, had ruled during the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn under various circumstances for the good of Mankind, and for its salvation at certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had become truly only the “parts of a part” on Earth, though _de facto_ the One Supreme in Nature. This is the metaphysics of Theogony. Now every “Power” among the Seven, once he is individualized, has in his charge one of the elements of creation, and rules over it;(799) hence the many meanings in every symbol. These, unless interpreted according to the Esoteric methods, generally lead to inextricable confusion. Does the Western Kabalist, who is generally an opponent of the Eastern Occultist, require a proof? Let him open Éliphas Lévi’s _Histoire de la Magie_,(800) and carefully examine his “Grand Symbole Kabbalistique” from the _Zohar_. He will find there, in the engraving, a development of the “interlaced triangles,” a _white_ man above and a _black_ woman below reversed, the legs passing under the extended arms of the male figure, and protruding behind the shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on each side. Éliphas Lévi makes of this symbol, God and Nature; or God, “Light,” mirrored inversely in Nature and Matter, “Darkness.” Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as emblematical cosmogony goes. Neither has he invented the symbol, nor have the Kabalists. The two figures in white and black stone have existed in the temples of Egypt from time immemorial, agreeably to tradition, and historically‐ever since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them. Therefore the symbol must have been in existence for nearly 2,500 years. This, at the very least, for Cambyses, who was a son of Cyrus the Great, succeeded his father in the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two Kabiri personifying the _opposite poles_. Herodotus(801) tells posterity that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he burst into an inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought to be a man erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate “the passing of the original north pole of the earth to the south pole of the heaven,” as perceived by Mackey.(802) But they also represented the poles _inverted_, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, which each time resulted in the displacement of the oceans, the submersion of the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial regions, and _vice versâ_. These Kabirim were the “Deluge” Gods. This may help us to get at the key of the seemingly hopeless confusion among the numbers of names and titles given to one and the same Gods, and classes of Gods. Faber, at the beginning of this century, showed the identity of the Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscuri, Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei, Dactyli, Lares, Penates, Manes,(803) Titans, and Aletæ with the Kabiri. And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the Rishis, and our Dhyân Chohans who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri‐Titans were seven Great Gods, cosmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because, perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected with _at‐al‐as_, the “divine sun,” and with _tit_, the “deluge.” But this, if true, is only the exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on the appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe‐inspiring Great Gods—the Dioscuri,(804) the deities surrounded with the darkness of Occult Nature—become the Idei Dactyli, or Ideic “Fingers,” with the Adept‐healers by metals. The true etymology of the name Lares, now signifying “Ghosts,” must be sought in the Etruscan word _lars_, “conductor,” “leader.” Sanchuniathon translates the word Aletæ as “fire worshippers,” and Faber believes it to be derived from _al‐orit_, the “God of fire.” Both are right, for in both cases it is a reference to the Sun, the “highest” God, toward whom the Planetary Gods “gravitate” (astronomically and allegorically), and whom they worship. As Lares, they are truly the Solar Deities, though Faber’s etymology, that “Lar is a contraction of El‐Ar, the solar deity,”(805) is not very correct. They are the Lares, the Conductors and Leaders of men. As Aletæ, they were the seven Planets—astronomically; and as Lares, the Regents of these Planets, our Protectors and Rulers—mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic worship, and also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, whose attributes and dual capacities were denoted by the names of the temples to which they respectively belonged, and also by those of their priests. They all belonged, however, to the septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyân Chohans. The Sabæans, who worshipped the “Regents of the Seven Planets” just as the Hindûs worship their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes (Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the Planetary Gods. Seth and Enos were borrowed from the Sabæans and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but the truth about them can still be discovered even in _Genesis_.(806) Seth is the “Progenitor” of those early men of the Third Race in whom the Planetary Angels had incarnated; he was himself a Dhyân Chohan and belonged to the _informing_ Gods, and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch), or Hermes, was said to be his _son_—Enos being a generic name for all the early “Seers” (Enoïchion). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of Sabaism, and that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idrus (Hermes or Enoch);(807) that thither Sabæans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers _seven times_ a day, _turning to the North_ (Mount Meru, Kaph, Olympus, etc.).(808) Abd Allatif also tells us some curious things about the Sabæans and their books. So also does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 200 years later. While the latter maintains “that each pyramid was consecrated to a _star_” (a Star _Regent_ rather), Abd Allatif assures us that he had read in ancient Sabæan books that “one pyramid was the tomb of Agathodæmon and the other of Hermes”:(809) Agathodæmon was none other than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hermes was his son, adds Mr. Staniland Wake in _The Great Pyramid_.(810) Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples the Kabiri were the Great Cosmic Gods—the Seven and the _Forty‐nine_ Sacred Fires—in the Grecian fanes their rites became mostly phallic, and therefore, to the profane, obscene. In the latter case they were three and four, or seven—the male and female principles—the _crux ansata_. This division shows why some classical writers held that they were only three, while others named four. And these were Axieros (in his female aspect Demeter); Axiokersa (Persephone);(811) Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or Kasmilos (Hermes—not the ithyphallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus,(812) but “he of the sacred legend,” which was explained only during the Samothracian Mysteries). This identification, which is due, according to the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius,(813) to an indiscretion of Mnaseas, is really no identification at all, as names alone do not reveal much.(814) Others again have maintained, being equally right in their way, that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. These two personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial pole, and the pole of the heavens, astronomically; and also the physical and the spiritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus, Bimater, with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read esoterically for the understanding of the allegory. The parts played in the event by the Fire, Water, Earth, etc., in the many versions, will show how the “Father of the Gods” and the “merry God of Wine” were also made to personify the two terrestrial poles. The telluric, metalline, magnetic, electric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions and references to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In Astronomy, the poles are indeed the “heavenly measure”; and so are the Kabiri‐Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the Kabiri‐Titans, to whom Diodorus ascribes the “invention of Fire”(815) and the art of manufacturing iron. Moreover, Pausanias(816) shows that the original Kabiric deity was Prometheus. But the fact that, astronomically, the Titan‐Kabirim were also the Generators and Regulators of the Seasons, and, cosmically, the great Volcanic Energies—the Gods presiding over all the metals and terrestrial works—does not prevent them from being, in their original divine characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, brought light to the world, and endowed Humanity with intellect and reason. They are preëminently in every Theogony—especially in the Hindû—the Sacred Divine Fires, Three, Seven, or Forty‐nine, according as the allegory demands it. Their very names prove it, for they are the Agni‐putra, or Sons of the Fire, in India, and the Genii of the Fire under numerous names in Greece and elsewhere. Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name _kabeiros_ meaning “the powerful through fire,” from the Greek καίω “to burn.” The Semitic word _kabirim_ contains the idea of “the powerful, the mighty, and the great,” answering to the Greek μεγάλοι, δυνατοί, but these are later epithets. These Gods were universally worshipped, and their origin is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia, Phœnicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was always connected with Fire, their temples ever built in the most volcanic localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to the Chthonian Divinities, and therefore has Christianity made of them _Infernal_ Gods. They are truly “the great, beneficent and powerful Gods,” as Cassius Hermone calls them.(817) At Thebes, Core and Demeter, the Kabirim, had a sanctuary,(818) and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter its holy precincts.(819) But we must not, at the same time, lose sight of the fact that the title of Kabiri was generic; that the Kabiri, the mighty Gods as well as mortals, were of both sexes, and also terrestrial, celestial and cosmic; that while, in their later capacity of rulers of sidereal and terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon—as it is now regarded—was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in the beginning of times, the Rulers of Mankind, when, incarnated as Kings of the “Divine Dynasties,” they gave the first impulse to civilization, and directed the mind with which they had endued men, to the invention and perfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the memory of nations. To these Kabiri or Titans is ascribed the invention of letters (the Deva‐nâgari, or alphabet and language of the Gods), of laws and legislature, of architecture, as also of the various modes of magic, so‐called, and of the medical use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus, Asclepius, all those Demi‐gods and Heroes, to whom is ascribed the revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers—too zealous for plain truth—would force posterity to see only Pagan copies of one sole prototype, named Noah—all are generic names. It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed the great boon of agriculture, by _producing_ corn or wheat. What Isis‐Osiris, the once living Kabiria, did in Egypt, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; they all belong to one class. That serpents were ever emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by the Caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the God of Wisdom, with Hermes, and so on. The two serpents, entwined round the rod, are phallic symbols of Jupiter and other Gods who transformed themselves into snakes for purposes of seducing Goddesses—only in the unclean fancies of profane Symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the Adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury, in his psychopompic character, conducting and guiding the souls of the dead to Hades with his Caduceus and even raising them to life with it, is a simple and very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret Wisdom: black and white Magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding the Soul after death, and displaying the power of calling to life that which is dead—a very deep metaphor if one but thinks over its meaning. All the peoples of antiquity, with one exception, reverenced this symbol; the exception being the Christians, who chose to forget the “brazen serpent” of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and prudence of the “serpent” by Jesus himself, “Be ye _wise_ as serpents and harmless as doves.” The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate successors of the “Serpents” or Initiates, who ruled the early races of the Fifth Humanity. The Emperor’s throne is the “Dragon’s Seat,” and his dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the Dragon. The aphorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the Dragon is a human, albeit _divine_, Being. Speaking of the “Yellow Dragon,” the chief of the others, the _Twan‐ying‐t’u_ says: His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable ... he does not go in company and does not live in herds [he is an ascetic].... He wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes, fulfilling the decree [Karma]; at the proper seasons if there is perfection he comes forth, if not he remains [invisible]. And Lü‐lan asserts that Confucius said: The Dragon feeds in the pure (water) [of Wisdom] and disports in the clear (water) [of Life].(820) Our Divine Instructors. Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma‐li‐ga‐si‐ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell “Maurigasima,” for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their own. Kæmpfer, in his _Japan_,(821) gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation. At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered. Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim‐nang and Tchan‐gy—their “Divine Man” and Demi‐gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul‐lil—the Creative God and the “Gods of the Ghost‐world”; with the Egyptian Isis‐Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco‐Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either the _seven_ and _ten_ Rishi‐ Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki‐y; or _ten_ and _seven_ Amshaspands(822) (six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the “Builders” of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot‐Hermes, Oannes‐Dagon, and Edris‐Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode(823) and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as “Divine Kings and Rulers.” But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis‐Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods, “though they had become princes in human form.” And he adds of the Divine Androgyne: It is said that this prince [Isis‐Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry. When Abul Feda, in his _Historia Anteïslamitica_,(824) says that the “Sabæan language” was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In the _Melelwa Nahil_,(825) Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,(826) Agathodæmon is mentioned as a “King of Egypt.” The _Celepas Geraldinus_ gives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the “Divine Giant.” In his _Book of the Various Names of the Nile_, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in the _Bible_; then he became a mortal and Adam’s son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris), “the author of thirty books,” was “Sabæan by origin”—_i.e._, belonged to the Saba, “a Host”: Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.(827) Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In the _Burham i Kati_, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.(828) The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.(829) But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences from _latent to active potency_, _i.e._, with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes. Not only does Herodotus, the “father of history,” tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi‐gods, Heroes, and finally men, but the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given. As Creuzer shows: It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.(830) It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260 B.C.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them “a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.” As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks: All those historians and priests, so _veracious_ when repeating stories of _human_ kings and men, suddenly become _extremely suspicious_ no sooner do they go back _to their gods_. But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé: Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or the _Reigns of the Gods and Heroes_.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth‐Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.(831) These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes. Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north‐east. When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (_a_) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (_b_) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic. Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at the _sameness_ of all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims: What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien‐hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti‐hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin‐hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi‐gods and Mortals.(832) As says Panodorus: Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that the _Reign of the Seven Gods_ who rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanity _descended_ on Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.(833) Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs‐Piromis—the Arch‐prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples, _born one from the other_, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their first _human_ King. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty‐five in number, _each of which had its name, history and annals_. They also assured Herodotus—unless the most truthful of historians, the “father of history,” is now to be accused of fibbing, _just in this instance_—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of the _three_ Dynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi‐gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.(834) These “three” Dynasties are the three Races. Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans. “Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata‐varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root‐Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu‐dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) works _par excellence_; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.(835) Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing: We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, _the natural good sense and the upright judgment_ of the ancient peoples, quite foreign to our _entirely material_ ideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in them _living_ bodies, _animated_ by spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature.... _This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature_, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.(836) It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only. Occultists believe in “spirits,” because they _feel_—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.(837) Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.(838) Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in his _Œdipus Ægyptiacus_, writes: I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (_meras nugas_) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.(839) As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his _Meropis_, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting, warrior race, and a pious, meditative race(840)—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.(841) The pious “city” was _continually visited by the Gods_: the belligerent “city” was inhabited by various beings _invulnerable_ by iron, who could be _mortally wounded_ only by stone and wood.(842) De Rougemont treats this as a pure _fiction_ of Theopompus and even sees a fraud (_supercherie_) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville: A _supercherie_ which was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; a _supposition_ which yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, _the great transoceanic land_ situated beyond that Atlantis and which “is reached,” it said, “by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,” εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but a _universal chimera_!(843) It is certain that, whether “chimera” or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,(844) a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a “fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of a _Holy_ Island beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands of _Immortal_ Men?(845) Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits? As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes: If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi‐gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, which _we accept no longer because we no longer understand them_, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of his _Laws_, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth a _certain_ form of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce this _fable_ into a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, _in heaven and on earth_, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn’s reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; but _one never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them_. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.(846) That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd, _i.e._, _a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature_. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.” It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.(847) When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.(848) And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man. As say the Commentaries: _Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the __“__Lords of Wisdom,__”__ for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres]._ Now: The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... The _first use of fire_, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all, _the processes by which the various cereals were first developed_ out of some wild grasses [?]—these are all _discoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare_. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of an _effulgent dawn_.(849) This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruits _unknown to earth_, then we may remind the reader _that wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth_. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheat _seven cubits high_.(850) Says the Egyptian Isis: I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.(851) Sirius was called the Dog‐star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind. The Chinese _Y‐King_ attributes the discovery of agriculture to “the instruction given to men by celestial genii.” Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,(852) since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.(853) The “Sons of God” _have_ existed and _do_ exist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind‐born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the Jewish _Bible_, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is “independent criticism” so‐called, or “internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter of _Genesis_, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with the _Zohar_. There were giants in the earth in those days; _and also after that_, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].(854) What does this sentence, “and also after that,” signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earth _before_, _i.e._, before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race; _and also after that_ when other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the “mighty men ... men of renown,” among whom is placed Nimrod the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” that “God saw that the wickedness of man was great,” nor in the builders of Babel, for this was _after_ the Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who produced _monstra quædam de genere giganteo_, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying‐out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes. And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it: Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.(855) This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,” as is candidly confessed by Fourmont(856)—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through the _Zohar_ to the Western, and the _Book of Dzyan_ to the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what the _Zohar_ tells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.(857) We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the “Adversary,” is included in _Job_ among the “sons” of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.(858) But of this later on. Now the _Zohar_ says that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, were _not_ guilty, but mixed _themselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so_.(859) Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub‐division of the “Thrones.”(860) It also explains that the Ischins—“Men‐spirits,” _viri spirituales_(861)—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not “small men” but “men _smaller_ (in the sense of inferiority) than men.” Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then, _i.e._, gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel. But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is a _mystery_, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides: There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.(862) And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says: This venerable divine name (_nome divino e venerabile_) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he‐goat.(863) Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence “one separated from God”—the Devil. In the _Zohar_, Azazel is rather the “sacrificial victim” than the “formal adversary of Jehovah,” as Spencer would have it.(864) The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this “Host” by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his “Host” are simply the Hebrew “Prometheus,” and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. The _Zohar_ shows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these “Spirits” as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the “transgressing” Angels in the _Book of Enoch_, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to make _one see what is behind him_—viz., “magic mirrors.” Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.(865) “These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man” (_i.e._, of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead‐letter expresses? It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform the _animal_ of clay into an immortal _God_. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us: The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man‐God, is above even Angels. On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter. Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man‐like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in the _Bible_ and even in the _New Testament_ which has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would‐be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead‐letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy. Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in _Isis Unveiled_, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the “bride” of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master “Get thee behind me, Satan” was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of _Genesis_—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words: “Say we not well thou hast a devil?” Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in the _Rig Veda_, the Occult volume _par excellence_ of Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in the _Purânas_—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In the _Rig Veda_, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma‐drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In the _Purânas_, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma‐juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the “enemies of the Gods” the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent‐gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of the _militant_ Host. Turning to the _Bible_, we find Satan, one of the “Sons of God,”(866) becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in the _Kabalah_,(867) Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael, _who are one_? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_ Samael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher _terrestrial_ Wisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) is _influenced_ by Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remains _uninfluenced_. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael‐Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil! The Origin Of The Satanic Myth. Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi‐savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries, Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.(868) Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun‐gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is “one as God,” or his “Double” for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the “War in Heaven,” its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (_a_) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (_b_) the “Dragons” held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (_c_) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the “Sons of the Dragon” and “Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine. There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent’s Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the “Unavoidable Cycle,” more generally known as the “Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region. In De Bourbourg’s book, Votan, the Mexican Demi‐god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was a Snake’s hole, “_un agujero de colubra_”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a “Son of the Snakes,” or a Serpent.(869) This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the “Snake’s hole” is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the “Sons of the Serpent‐god,” or “Sons of the Dragon.” “The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,” says Movers. The Druids of the Celto‐Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes. “I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,” they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent’s Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.(870) Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of “Builders” or “Architects,” for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them “frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,” as Taliesin says.(871) De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo‐ Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. “I am Hivim,” they say. “Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”(872) Furthermore, the “War in Heaven” is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightened _Inner Man_ had to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the “Dragon‐Slayer,” as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a “Son of the Serpent” and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in a _new_ body, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity. Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the _dark side_ of Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years. Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi‐god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon’s or Serpent’s tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon’s head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon’s tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon’s head, played a prominent