part in the Mysteries of the Sun’s (Vikartana’s) Initiation, when the

Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight. The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King‐Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand‐headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon‐serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliest _Purânas_. The children of Surasâ are the mighty “Dragons.” The _Vâyu Purâna_ replacing the “Dragons” of Surasâ of the _Vishnu Purâna_ by the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the “Dragons” and “Serpents” of Wisdom. We have only to compare the Sun‐gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun‐gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other. Let us take Agni the Fire‐god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the “Angel of the Sun,” the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the “Saviour”—and proceed in order. (1) Agni, the Fire‐god, is called Vaishvânara in the _Rig Veda_. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant‐demon,(873) whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,(874) and live in Hiranyapura, “_the golden city, floating in the air_.”(875) Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step‐son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire‐god, or Sun (Kashyapa‐Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, the _six‐faced_ planet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin‐youth, born of Agni,(876) for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.(877) Târaka’s Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.(878) While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent‐Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra‐han, the “Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu, “Leader of the Celestial Host.” Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is called Târaka‐jit, “Vanquisher of Târaka,”(879) Kumâra Guha, the “mysterious Virgin‐youth,” Siddha‐sena, “Leader of the Siddhas,” and Shakti‐dhara, “Spear‐holder.” (2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun‐god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa‐Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the “Angel of the Sun,” who is “like,” and “one with, God.” Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not‐to‐be‐questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power. Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos‐Apollo, the “Light of Life and of the World,”(880) who arises out of the Golden‐winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun‐god _par excellence_. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,(881) and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, the _too holy and wise_ Demon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the “golden star island,” the “earth which floats in the air,” which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt “from all sensual love.”(882) He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the “red Dragon,” connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child‐birth, as Python attacks Apollo’s mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the spirit of Homer’s allegories, ever had a real inkling of the _esoteric_ meaning of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, he would have understood St. John’s _Revelation_, and even the _Pentateuch_, better than he does. For the way to the _Bible_ lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols. (3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John’s _Revelation_, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist: Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, who _curses him_, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.(883) This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other. The gods have weapons forged for them,(884) and Merodach [the Archangel Michael in _Revelation_] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.(885) This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge. The symbols of the “Dragon” and “War in Heaven” have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In the _Vedas_ this Ahi‐Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi‐Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra‐han or the “Slayer of Vritra,” as Michael is called the Conqueror and “Slayer of the Dragon.” Both these “Enemies” are then the “Old Dragon” precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense. The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in the _Vendîdâd_. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to “invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares(886) of the Earth”;(887) which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra‐mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words: “I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”(888) The “Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one “of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of those _manifested_ Powers; and “their sons and their flocks” refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations. “Amshaspand” is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the “maker of the _material_ world.” Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as “the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”(889) who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple. Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent of _Genesis_, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the “Red Dragon.” He is the Angel of Death, for the _Talmud_ says that “the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.” He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra. “Simoon is called Atabutos” or—Diabolos, the Devil. Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in the _Book of the Dead_—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent’s head with a spear; and Typhon is the all‐destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,(890) whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.(891) Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their “Slayers” are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun‐gods or _Creative_ Powers. In the _Book of the Dead_ those principles are called the “Sons of Rebellion.”(892) In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called the _deceiving Serpent_ ... calls the Sons of Rebellion in _Air_, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.(893) In the Scandinavian _Eddas_ the “War” of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the “Wolf” who comes out of “Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The “Evil Spirits,”(894) who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globe _since its creation_, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it: The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.(895) This is only another version of the Hindû “War in Heaven,” between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries. It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves as _wise_ as the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the “Brotherhood of the Serpent,” have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem of _Wisdom_, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All‐good, not the All‐bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. The _draco volans_, the “flying dragon” of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.(896) The Jews formerly worshipped the latter _idol_ themselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the “One God.”(897) The appellation Sa’tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an “Adversary” (from the verb _shatana_, “to be adverse,” “to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest “Adversary” _of all the other Gods_—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the “Adversary” _of men_. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter of _Genesis_, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first to _create_ that original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the “Lord God” himself, who, saying, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” made woman, and “brought her unto the man.”(898) If the unpleasant little incident that followed _was_ and is still to be regarded as the “original sin,” then it exhibits the Creator’s divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either “male and female,” or “alone.” It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the “_agent provocateur_,” and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel, “the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,” the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master’s and Creator’s blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity in _Genesis_ in their dead‐letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; they _know_ how to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err. There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a “blind” purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten‐fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God‐name which was their own property.(899) The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters of _Genesis_ variously as “God,” the “Lord God,” and “Lord” simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the _Kabalah_. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed into _mankind_—male and female, Jah‐ veh.(900) The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit, “ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in his _incorruptible nature_. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the “boneless” Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the “Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah‐Cain, the male part of Adam the _dual_ man, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel, _the first natural woman_,(901) and sheds the _virgin blood_. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that “Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”(902) and the _Talmud_ adding that “the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”(903)—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah‐hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular. _There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil._ Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death for that of life—_that man may live for ever_. Satan represents metaphysically simply the _reverse_ or the _polar opposite_ of everything in Nature.(904) He is the “Adversary,” allegorically, the “Murderer,” and the great Enemy of _all_, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and the _rationale_ of certain early Christian sects—called _heretical_ and viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of the _treacherous_ apostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity. As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda‐baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all‐embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.(905) They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao‐Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda‐baoth.(906) This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that “Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.” The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes of _fallen_ men—allegorically, and _those men themselves_—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni‐Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi‐dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil, “of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.” And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans, simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent of _Genesis_, and thus prove the new dogma. Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon. It matters little whether it were Isis, or Ceres, the Kabiria, or again the Kabiri, who taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolizing all the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either a _myth_ along with the others, or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc.—then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, and along with it all the Patriarchs—the Antediluvian and Pre‐Atlantean Titans. As has now been discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the God of _power and generation_, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.(907) Tubal‐ Cain is a Kabir, “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”; or—if this will please better—he is one with Hephæstus or Vulcan. Jabal again is taken from the Kabiri, instructors in agriculture, “such as have cattle,” and Jubal is “the father of all those who handle the harp,” he, or _they_ who fabricated the harp for Cronus and the trident for Poseidon.(908) The history or “fables” about the mysterious Telchines—fables echoing each and all the archaic events of our Esoteric Teachings—furnish us with a key to the origin of Cain’s genealogy in the third chapter of _Genesis_; they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies “the accursed blood” of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines—it is argued—the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the Gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a Deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah? The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteans also. Says Decharme: Like Lemnos and Samothrace, Rhodes, the birth‐place of the Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation.(909) The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like the Samothrace of the Kabiri, it is connected by the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present. But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every Pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs contain, in poetized form, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies of Seth and Cain,(910) and the further equally futile attempt to show them as _real_, _historical_ men, has only led to more serious enquiries into the history of the past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed _revelation_. For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Cronus‐Saturn is also proved. That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Bryant(911) concurs with all those who are of opinion that Sydic, or Sadic, was the Patriarch Noah, and also Melchizedek; and that the name by which he is called, Sadic, corresponds with the character given him in _Genesis_.(912) He was צדיק, Sadic, a _just man_, and perfect in his generation. All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and through his sons transmitted to posterity.(913) Now it is Sanchuniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchi‐zedek). True enough, as this information has descended to us through the _Preparatio Evangelica_ of Eusebius, it may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than likely that he dealt with Sanchuniathon’s works as he has with Manetho’s Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic, Cronus, or Saturn, with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah’s characteristic as a _just man_, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek, “king of Salem, and priest of the most high God,” after “his own order”;(914) and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they became rabbinically and kabalistically. In speaking of Adam, Cain, Mars, etc., as _personifications_, we find the author of the _Source of Measures_ enunciating our very Esoteric Teachings in his kabalistic researches. Thus he says: Now, Mars was the Lord of _birth_, and of _death_, of _generation_ and of _destruction_, of _ploughing_, of _building_, of _sculpture_ or stone‐cutting, of _architecture_, ... in fine, of all comprised under our English word ARTS. He was the _primal principle_, disintegrating into the modification of _two opposites for production_. Astronomically, too,(915) he held the birthplace of the day and year, _the place of its increase of strength_, Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as _birth_, was _Good_; as _death_, was _Evil_. As _good_, he was _light_; as _bad_, he was _night_. As _good_, he was _man_; as _bad_, he was _woman_. He held the cardinal points, and as _Cain_, or _Vulcan_,(916) or _Pater Sadic_, or _Melchizadek_, he was lord of the _ecliptic_, or _balance_, or _line of adjustment_, and therefore was _The Just One_. The ancients held to there being seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadic, _The Just or Right One_, was Lord of the eighth, which was _Mater Terra_.(917) This makes their functions, after they had been degraded, plain enough, and establishes the identity. The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead‐letter and within the period of biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary, supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to follow that Deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that: There were two distinct races of Cabiri, the first consisting of Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionusus of Mnaseas; the second, of the children of Shem, who are the Cabiri of Sanchoniatho, while their father Sydyk is consequently the scriptural Shem.(918) The Kabirim, the “Mighty Ones,” are identical with our primeval Dhyân Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the Rulers and Instructors of the primeval races, who are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the Divine Dynasties. The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged Continents. Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Persia on the other—a country ever at war with the former—there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to admit of such coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every available source, in order to the better compare those of the Magi with the so‐called Grecian “fables.” Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fairy tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the history of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel of the history and the pre‐historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says as follows: Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one succeeding the other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000, and while the former were still in existence. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but wiser and kinder. Here we recognize the Atlantean Giants and the Âryans, or the Râkshasas of the _Râmâyana_ and the children of Bharata‐varsha, or India; the Ante‐ and the Post‐diluvians of the _Bible_. Gyan (or Gnan, Jnâna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge), also called Gian‐ben‐Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.(919) He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic, the _sorcery_ of the Devs. Gian‐ben‐Gian had reigned 2,000 years when Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being produced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate, or Karma.(920) They count ten kings in their last metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam. These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given by Berosus. Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to identify them with the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew traditions, for the Jewish myth, though disdaining in its exclusiveness to speak of Pre‐Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly inferred, by sending out Cain—_one of the only two living men on earth_—into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.(921) Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the 9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on this, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. We read in the _Critias_: First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsed _since the war of the nations_, which lived above and outside the Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this side. In the _Timæus_ Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Âryans were 200,000 years old when the first great “Island,” or Continent, was submerged, there seems hardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldæa and Persia through whose exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to posterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week “seven days,” and speaking of a “week of years” when each of its days represents 360 solar years, and the whole “week” is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the present times call an age a “century.” They of Plato’s day, the initiated writers, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years; while the Hindûs, more independent than any, have never concealed their chronology. Thus, for 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time—_i.e._, from the first appearance of the Âryan Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking(922) and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato’s small island of Atlantis—the Âryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yuga, and was the Mahâbhârata, or Great War, so famous in Indian history. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their isolation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era. History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first time through Herodotus, if we do not take into account the _Bible_, and its queer chronology.(923) And how little Herodotus _could_ tell is confessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Saïs, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says: Behind the chapel ... is the tomb of One, _whose name I consider it impious to divulge_.... In the enclosure stand large obelisks and there is a _lake_ near, surrounded with a stone wall formed _in a circle_.... In this lake they perform by night, that person’s adventures, which the Egyptians call _Mysteries_: on these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the particulars of them, _I must observe a discreet silence_.(924) On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations. From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them. Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates, were in every temple—especially in those of Isis and Serapis—each pressing a finger to the lips. And the Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after initiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death. And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our conceptions of Science and the duration of things! The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as some think. But this is not so; they are only transformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call them Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy‐ two kings of that name.(925) Three among them reigned for 1,000 years each.(926) Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was murdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire preserved in the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence—the origin of fire‐ worship, as some Orientalists think! Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re‐ discovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also how to make brass‐ work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work called _Eternal Wisdom_, and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is built on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend. In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war against the Giants on a twelve‐legged Horse, whose birth is attributed to the _amours_ of a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This “Dodecapod” was found on the “dry island” or new continent; much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his tremendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an enormous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of Damavend.(927) Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev‐bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. Like his grand‐sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far more rare and rapid—a bird called Simorgh‐Anke. A marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.(928) What says that Persian Phœnix? It complains of its old age, for it was born cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give us again 840,000 years.(929) Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the Pre‐Adamites, says the “Romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif”!(930) What says the _Book of Numbers_? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons—Ka‐yin, Habel, and Seth—represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah‐ Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo‐geological key), the Third Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which uncovered the “nakedness” of the Parent Race, and of the “Mindless,” _i.e._, committed sin. Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf or Kaph. He finds there the Peris ill‐treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana,(931) whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the “dry island,” _i.e._, the new continent of Europe.(932) After him came Giamschid, who builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his great pride, believes himself immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate punishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of Dhulkarnayn, the “two‐horned.” But this epithet has no connection with the “two‐horned” gentleman of the cloven foot. The “two‐horned” is the epithet given in Asia—which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of the attributes of the Devil—to those conquerors who have subdued the world from the East to the West. Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new Dynasty. Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To begin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf? Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far beyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors of the Parsîs or Farsîs. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the “Fortunate Islands,” wherein, from the beginning of life on earth, bubbles the “Fountain of Life.”(933) The legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first “dry island” (continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf, “the stony girdle that surrounds the world.” A journey of seven months’ duration will bring him who is possessed of “Soliman’s Ring” to that “Fountain,” if he keep on journeying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying, therefore, from Persia _straight_ North, will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one between the sixtieth and forty‐fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath, or Taimuraz, upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.(934) Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow‐capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus, _there is a great continent now concealed from all_; that it is reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve‐legged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will twelve _wings_,(935) or by those who have the patience to wait for the good pleasure of Simorgh‐Anke, who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the “dry island” and its severed parts.(936) This relates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric Cycle. It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth century A.D., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first, in a country “beyond the Ocean,” a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldæan. He says: The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky; and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise. During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his posterity now inhabits.(937) The twelve‐legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the “dry island.” The “Christian Topography” of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which has now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a “dry island” beyond the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer. _In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the right end_(_938_)_ of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is motionless._(_939_)_ The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara._(_940_)_ There was eternal spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to‐day, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat_(_941_)_ reigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the head of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated [begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ... Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was divided by the Water of Life._(_942_) _It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth’s] body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It gets purified [on its return] to her heart—which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man’s dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes._(_943_)_ During the First and Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the great __ Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head‐gear [the cap]. She travailed harder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the World._(_944_)_ She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck_(_945_)_ downward [to the South‐West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn]. Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon’s mouth, etc._ This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of human life its Root‐Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part of the world now known as Asia was only cut off from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters. If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachable _mirage_ to the few arctic travellers who perceived it. During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the “head” from the “neck.” Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most noryhern part of Spitzbergen,(946) on Mercator’s Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin’s Bay and the neighbouring islands and promontories. _There_ it hardly reached, southward, the seventieth degree of latitude; _here_ it formed the horseshoe continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the fiftieth degree a little South‐West, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared. Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic Traditions. Thus it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have reached the profane historian, Rudbeck, a Swedish Scientist, about two centuries ago, tried to prove that Sweden was the Atlantis of Plato. He even thought that he had found in the configuration of ancient Upsala, the situation and measurements of the capital of “Atlantis” as given by the Greek sage. As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so was Bailly likewise, and still more so, for Sweden and Norway had formed part and parcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just as Eastern and Western Siberia and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the Asiatic. Only, once more, when was it? We can find it out approximately only by studying the _Purânas_, that is to say if we will have nought to do with the Secret Teachings. Three‐quarters of a century have already elapsed since Wilford brought forward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the “White Island,” the Atala of the _Purânas_. This was sheer nonsense, as the Atala is one of the seven Dvîpas, or Islands, belonging to the nether Lokas, one of the seven regions of Pâtâla (the antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford(947) shows, the _Purânas_ place it “on the seventh zone or seventh climate”—rather, on the seventh measure of heat—which thus locates it between the latitudes of 24° and 28° North. It is then to be sought on the same degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the latitudes of 50° and 60°. Wilford speaks of it as Atala, Atlantis, the White Island. Its enemy is called the “White Devil,” the Demon of Terror, for he says: In their [the Hindû and Persian] romances, we see Cai‐caus going to the mountain of _Az‐burj_, or _As‐burj_, _at the foot of which_ the sun sets, to fight the _Div‐sefid_, or white devil, the _Târa‐ daitya_ of the _Purânas_, and whose abode was on the _seventh stage_ of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the Bauddhists; ... or, in other words, to the White Island.(948) Now here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx’s riddle, the erroneous solution of which will ever destroy their authority—if not their persons—in the eyes of every Hindû scholar, whether or not an Initiate. For there is not a statement in the _Purânas_—on the conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations—which has not several meanings, and which does not apply to both the physical and the metaphysical worlds. If the old Hindûs divided the face of the Globe into seven Zones, Climates, Dvîpas, geographically, and into seven Hells and seven Heavens, allegorically, the measure of seven did not apply in both cases to the same localities. Now it is the North Pole, the country of “Meru,” which is the seventh division, as it answers to the seventh Principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the Occult calculation. It represents the region of Âtmâ, of pure Soul, and Spirituality. Hence Pushkara is shown as the seventh Zone, or Dvîpa, which encompasses the Kshîra Ocean, or Ocean of Milk (the ever‐frozen white region) in the _Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_.(949) And Pushkara, with its two Varshas, lies directly at the foot of Meru. For it is said that: The two countries north and south of Meru are _shaped like a bow_, ... [and that] one half of the surface of the earth is on the south of Meru and the other half on the north of Meru—_beyond which is half of Pushkara_. Geographically, then, Pushkara is America, Northern and Southern; and allegorically it is the prolongation of Jambu‐dvîpa,(950) in the middle of which stands Meru, for it is the country inhabited by beings who live ten thousand years, who are free from sickness or failing; where there is neither virtue nor vice, caste or laws, for these men are “of the same nature as the Gods.”(951) Wilford is inclined to see Meru in Mount Atlas, and locates there also the Lokâloka. Now Meru, we are told, which is the Svar‐loka, the abode of Brahmâ, of Vishnu, and the Olympus of Indian exoteric religions, is described geographically as “passing through the middle of the earth‐globe, and protruding on either side.”(952) On its upper station are the Gods, at the nether, or South Pole, is the abode of Demons (Hells). How then can Meru be Mount Atlas? Besides which, Târadaitya, a Demon, cannot be placed on the seventh zone if the latter be identified with the White Island, which is Shveta‐dvîpa, for reasons given in the foot‐note above. Wilford accuses the modern Brâhmans “of having jumbled them [islands and countries] all together”; but it is _he_ who has jumbled them still more. He believes that as the _Brahmânda_ and _Vâyu Purânas_ divide the old Continent into seven Dvîpas, said to be surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond which lie the regions and mountains of Atala, hence: Most probably the Greeks derived their notion of the celebrated Atlantis, which, as it could not be found after having once been discovered, they conceived to have been destroyed by some shock of nature.(953) As we find certain difficulties in believing that the Egyptian priests, Plato, and even Homer, all built their notions of Atlantis on Atala—a nether region located at the Southern Pole—we prefer holding to the statements given in the Secret Books. We believe in the seven Continents, four of which have already lived their day, the fifth still exists, and two are to appear in the future. We believe that each of these is not strictly a continent in the modern sense of the word, but that each name, from Jambu down to Pushkara,(954) refers to the geographical names given (i) to the dry lands covering the face of the whole Earth during the period of a Root‐Race, in general; (ii) to what remained of these after a geological Race Pralaya, as Jambu, for instance; and (iii) to those localities which will enter, after future cataclysms, into the formation of new universal Continents, Peninsulas, or Dvîpas(955)—each Continent being, in one sense, a greater or smaller region of dry land surrounded with water. Thus, that whatever “jumble” the nomenclature of these may represent to the profane, there is none, in fact, to him who has the key. Thus, we believe we know that, though two of the Paurânic Islands—the Sixth and Seventh Continents—are yet to come, nevertheless there _were_, or there _are_, lands which will enter into the composition of the future dry lands, of new Earths whose geographical faces will be entirely changed, as were those of the past. Therefore we find in the _Purânas_ that Shâka‐dvîpa is (or will be) a Continent, and that Shankha‐dvîpa, as shown in the _Vâyu Purâna_, is only “a minor island,” one of the nine divisions (to which _Vâyu_ adds six more) of Bhârata‐varsha. Because Shankha‐dvîpa was peopled by “Mlechchhas [unclean foreigners], who worshipped Hindû divinities,” therefore they were connected with India.(956) This accounts for Shankhâsura, a King of a portion of Shankha‐ dvîpa, who was killed by Krishna; that King who resided in the palace “which was an ocean shell, and whose subjects lived in shells also,” says Wilford. On the banks of the Nîlâ(957) there were frequent contests between the Devatâs [Divine Beings, Demi‐gods] and the Daityas [Giants]: but the latter tribe having prevailed, their king and leader, Shankhâsura, who resided in the ocean, made frequent incursions ... in the night.(958) It is not on the banks of the Nile, as Wilford supposes, but on the coasts of Western Africa, South of where now lies Morocco, that these battles took place. There was a time when the whole of the Sahara Desert was a sea, then a continent as fertile as the Delta, and then, only after another temporary submersion, it became a desert similar to that other wilderness, the Desert of Shamo or Gobi. This is shown in Paurânic tradition, for on the same page as above cited, it is said: The people were between two fires; for, while Shankhâsura was ravaging one side of the continent, Cracacha [or Krauncha], king of Crauncha‐dwîp [Krauncha‐dvîpa], used to desolate the other: both armies ... thus _changed the most fertile of regions into a barren desert_. That not only the last island of Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large Continent, first divided, and then broken later on into seven peninsulas and islands (called Dvîpas), preceded Europe, is sure. It covered the whole of the North and South Atlantic regions, as well as portions of the North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the Indian Ocean (relics of Lemuria). The claim is corroborated by Indian _Purânas_, Greek writers, and Asiatic, Persian, and Mahommedan traditions. Wilford, who sorely confuses the Hindû and the Mussulman legends, shows this, however, clearly.(959) His facts and quotations from the _Purânas_ give direct and conclusive evidence that the Âryan Hindûs and other ancient nations were earlier navigators than the Phœnicians, who are now credited with having been the first seamen that appeared in the post‐diluvian times. This is what we read in the _Asiatick Researches_: In this distress the few natives, who survived [in the war between Devatâs and Daityas] raised their hands and hearts to Bhagavân, and exclaimed, “Let him that can deliver us ... be our king”; using the word ÎT [a _magic_ term not understood by Wilford, evidently] which reëchoed through the whole country.(960) Then comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kâlî are strangely agitated, “when there appeared from the waves ... a man, afterwards called ÎT, at the head of a numerous army, saying ‘_abhayan_,’ or _there is no fear_”; and scattered the enemy. “The King ÎT,” explains Wilford, “is a subordinate incarnation of Mrīra”—Mrida, a form of Rudra, probably?—who “reëstablished peace and prosperity throughout all Shankha‐dvîpa, through Barbaradêsa, Misra‐st’hân and Arva‐st’hân, or Arabia,”(961) etc. Surely, if the Hindû _Purânas_ give a description of wars on continents and islands situated beyond Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean; if their writers speak of Barbaras and other people such as Arabs—they who were never known to navigate, or cross the Kâla‐pâni, the Black Waters of the Ocean, in the days of Phœnician navigation—then these _Purânas_ must be older than those Phœnicians who are placed at from 2,000 to 3,000 years B.C. At any rate, their traditions must have been older,(962) for an Adept writes: _In the above accounts, the Hindûs speak of this island as existing and in great power; it must, therefore, have been more than eleven thousand years ago._ But another proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindû Âryans who described the last surviving island of Atlantis, or rather of that remnant of the Eastern portion of that Continent which had perished soon after the upheaval of the two Americas(963)—the two Varshas of Pushkara. And they described what they knew, for they had once dwelt on it. This may be demonstrated, moreover, on an astronomical calculation by an Adept who criticizes Wilford. Recalling what that Orientalist had brought forward concerning the Mount Ashburj “at the foot of which the sun sets,” where was the war between the Devatâs and the Daityas,(964) he says: _We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lost island, and of the remaining Mount Ashburj. It was on the seventh stage of the world_, _i.e._, _in the seventh climate (which is between the latitude of 24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north).... This island, the daughter of the Ocean, is frequently described as lying in the West; and the Sun is represented as setting at the foot of its mountain (Ashburj, Atlas, Teneriffe or Nila, no matter the name), and fighting the White Devil of the __“__White Island.__”_ Now, if we consider this statement from its astronomical aspect, as Krishna is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God, and as he is said to have killed Div‐sefid, the White Devil—a _possible_ personification of the ancient inhabitants at the foot of the Atlas—he may perchance be only a representation of the vertical beams of the Sun. Again, these inhabitants, the Atlantides, as we have seen, are accused by Diodorus of daily _cursing_ the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is, however, only an astronomical interpretation. It will now be proved that Shankhâsura, and Shankha‐dvîpa, and all their history, is also geographically and ethnologically Plato’s Atlantis in Hindû dress. It has just been remarked that since, in the Paurânic accounts, the island is _still existing_, these accounts must be older than the 11,000 years which have elapsed since Shankha‐dvîpa, or the Poseidonis of Atlantis, disappeared. But is it not barely possible that Hindûs should have known the island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical demonstrations, which make this quite plain if with the said Adept one assumes that: _At the time when the summer tropical __“__colure__”__ passed through the Pleiades, when Cor Leonis would be upon the equator, and when Leo_ was vertical _to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island of Atlantis at noon_. This explains, perhaps, why the Sinhalese, the heirs of the Râkshasas and Giants of Lankâ, and the direct descendants of Sinha, or Leo, became connected with Shankha‐dvîpa or Poseidonis (Plato’s Atlantis). Only, as shown by Mackey’s _Sphinxiad_, this must have occurred about 23,000 years ago, _astronomically_; at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must have been rather more than 27 degrees, and consequently Taurus must have passed over Atlantis or Shankha‐dvîpa. And that it was so is clearly demonstrated. Say the Commentaries: _The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bhârata to Shankha to meet Rishabha [Taurus] every Kalpa. But when those of the White Island [who descended originally from Shveta‐dvîpa],_(_965_)_ who had mixed with the Daityas [Giants] of the land of iniquity, had become black with sin, then Nandi remained for ever in the White Island [or Shveta‐dvîpa].... Those of the Fourth World [Race] lost AUM._ Asburj, or Azburj, whether the peak of Teneriffe or not, was a volcano, when the sinking of the “Western Atala,” or Hell, began, and those who were saved told the tale to their children. Plato’s Atlantis perished between water below and fire above; the great mountain vomiting flames all the while. _The __“__fire‐vomiting Monster__”__ survived alone out of the ruins of the unfortunate island._ Do the Greeks, who are accused of borrowing a Hindû fiction (Atala), and inventing from it another (Atlantis), stand also accused of getting their geographical notions and the number seven from them? “The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt that it did once,” says Proclus, “for Marcellus, who wrote a history of Ethiopian affairs, says that such, and so great, an island once existed, and this is evidenced by those who composed histories relative to the external sea. For _they relate that in this time there were seven islands_ in the Atlantic sea sacred to Proserpine; and besides these, three of immense magnitude, sacred to Pluto, ... Jupiter, ... and Neptune. And, besides this, the inhabitants of the last island [Poseidonis] _preserved the memory of the prodigious magnitude_ of the Atlantic island as related by their ancestors, and of its governing for many periods all the islands in the Atlantic sea. From this _isle_ one may pass to other large islands beyond, which are not far from the firm land, near which is the true sea.” These seven Dvîpas [inaccurately rendered islands] constitute, according to Marcellus, the body of the famous Atlantis.... This evidently shows that _Atlantis is the old continent_.... The Atlantis was destroyed after a violent storm [?]: this is well known to the Paurâunics, some of whom assert that in consequence of this dreadful convulsion of nature, six of the Dvîpas disappeared.(966) Enough proofs have now been given to satisfy the greatest sceptic. Nevertheless, direct proofs based on exact Science will also be added. And yet even though volumes were written, it would be to no purpose for those who will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their respective authorities. Hence the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon, the mount in the land of Mizpeth—meaning “anathema,” “destruction”—is the same as Mount Armon. As a proof of this, Josephus is often quoted, as affirming that still in his own day enormous bones of giants were daily discovered on it. But it was the land of Balaam the prophet, whom the “Lord loved well.” And so mixed up are facts and personages in the said scholiasts’ brains, that, when the _Zohar_ explains the “Birds” which inspired Balaam to mean “Serpents,” to wit, the Wise Men and Adepts at whose School he had learnt the mysteries of prophecy—the opportunity is again taken of showing Mount Hermon inhabited by the “winged dragons of Evil, whose chief is Samael”—the Jewish Satan! As Spencer says: It is to those unclean spirits chained on Mount Hermon of the Desert, that the scape‐goat of Israel, who assumed the name of one of them [Azaz(y)el], was sent. We say it is not so. The _Zohar_ has the following explanation on the practice of magic which is called in Hebrew Nehhaschim, or the “Serpents’ Works.” It says (part iii. col. 302): It is called Nehhaschim, because the magicians [practical Kabalists] work _surrounded by the light of the Primordial Serpent_, which they perceive in heaven as a luminous zone composed of myriads of small stars. This means simply the Astral Eight, so called by the Martinists, by Éliphas Lévi, and now by all the modern Occultists. The “Curse” From A Philosophical Point Of View. The foregoing teachings of the Secret Doctrine, supplemented by universal traditions, must now have demonstrated that the _Brâhmanas_ and _Purânas_, the _Vendîdâd_ and other Mazdean scriptures, down to the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, and finally to the Jewish sacred records, all have the same origin. None are meaningless and baseless stories, invented to entrap the unwary profane; all are allegories intended to convey, under a more or less fantastic veil, the great truths gathered in the same field of pre‐ historic tradition. Space forbids us, in these volumes, from entering into further and more minute details with respect to the four Races which preceded our own. But before offering to the student the history of the psychic and spiritual evolution of the direct antediluvian fathers of our Fifth (Âryan) Humanity, and before demonstrating its bearing upon all the other side branches grown from the same trunk, we have to elucidate a few more facts. It has been shown, on the evidence of the whole ancient literary world, and the intuitional speculations of more than one Philosopher and Scientist of the later ages, that the tenets of our Esoteric Doctrine are, in almost every case, corroborated by inferential as well as by direct proof, that neither the “legendary” Giants, nor the lost Continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding Races, are quite baseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume, Science will find itself more than once unable to reply; these Addenda, will, it is hoped, finally dispose of every sceptical remark with regard to the sacred number in nature, and our figures in general. Meanwhile, one task is left incomplete—the disposing of that most pernicious of all the theological dogmas, the Curse under which man‐kind is alleged to have suffered ever since the supposed disobedience of Adam and Eve in the bower of Eden. Creative powers in man were the gift of Divine Wisdom, not the result of sin. This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, who first _curses_ Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed crime committed, and then _blesses_ his “chosen people” by saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”(967) The Curse was not brought on mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological law. Nor was the Curse of Karma called down upon them for seeking _natural_ union, as all the mindless animal‐world does in its proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the life‐essence for no purpose except bestial personal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of _Genesis_ will be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the commencing Fourth Races. In the beginning, conception was as easy for woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that woman should bring forth her young ones “in sorrow.” Since that period, however, during the evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity between its seed and the “Serpent’s” seed, the seed or product of Karma and Divine Wisdom. For the seed of woman, or lust, _bruised the head_ of the seed of _the fruit of wisdom and knowledge_, by turning the holy mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the Law of Karma “bruised the _heel_” of the Atlantean Race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind,(968) until, from being the healthy king of animal creation in the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our Race, a helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the Globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals!(969) This is the real Curse from the physiological standpoint, almost the only one touched upon in Kabalistic Esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the Curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its progress hand‐in‐hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse instead of a blessing—a gift quickened by the “Lords of Wisdom,” who have poured on the human Manas the fresh dew of their own Spirit and Essence. The Divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to regret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically depicted by Æschylus in his “Prometheus Bound,” when, at the close of the first Titanic Age (the Age that followed that of Ethereal Man, of the pious Kandu and Pramlochâ), nascent, physical mankind, still mindless and (physiologically) senseless, is described as— Seeing, they saw in vain; Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams, Through the long time all things at random mixed. Our Saviours, the Agnishvâtta and other divine “Sons of the Flame of Wisdom”—personified by the Greeks in Prometheus(970)—may well be left unrecognized and unthanked, in the injustice of the human heart. They may, in our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora’s gift; but to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy, as the Evil Ones, is too heavy a Karma for “Him” who, when Zeus “ardently desired” to quench the entire human race, “dared alone” to save that “mortal race” from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is make to say: From sinking blasted down to Hades’ gloom. For this by these dire tortures I am bent, Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold, I who did mortals pity.... The chorus remarking very pertinently: Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals! Prometheus answers: Yea, and besides ’twas I that gave them fire. CHORUS: Have now these short‐lived creatures flame‐eyed fire? PROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn.... But, with the arts, the “fire” received has turned into the greatest curse; the animal element, and _consciousness_ of its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality.(971) It is this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall. Thus arises the responsibility of free‐will; the Titanic passions which represent humanity in its darkest aspect; The restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires, when, with self‐asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the restraints of law.(972) Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato’s _Protagoras_, with that “wisdom which ministers to physical well‐being,” but the lower aspect of Manas of the animal (Kâma) having remained unchanged, instead of “an untainted mind, heaven’s first gift,” there was created the eternal vulture of ever unsatisfied desire, of regret and despair, coupled with “the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals” (556), unto the day when Prometheus is released by his heaven‐appointed deliverer, Herakles. Now Christians—Roman Catholics especially—have tried to prophetically connect this drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake could be made. The true Theosophist, the pursuer of Divine Wisdom and worshipper of Absolute Perfection—the Unknown Deity which is neither Zeus nor Jehovah—will demur to such an idea. Pointing to antiquity he will prove that there never has been an _original_ sin, but only an abuse of physical intelligence—the Psychic being guided by the Animal, and both putting out the light of the Spiritual. He will say: All you who can read between the lines, study Ancient Wisdom in the old dramas, the Indian and the Greek; read carefully the “Prometheus Bound,” enacted in the theatres of Athens 2,400 years ago! The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor Æschylus; but, as Bunsen says, it “is older than the Hellenes themselves,” for it belongs, in truth, to the dawn of human consciousness. The _crucified_ Titan is the personified symbol of the collective Logos, the “Host,” and of the “Lords of Wisdom” or the Heavenly Man, who incarnated in Humanity. Moreover, as his name (_Pro_‐me‐_theus_, “he who sees before him” or futurity) shows(973)—in the arts he devised and taught to humanity, psychological insight was not the least. For as he complains to the daughters of Oceanus: Of prophecies the various modes I fixed, (492) And among dreams did first discriminate The truthful vision ... and mortals guided To a mysterious art.... All arts to mortals from Prometheus came.... Leaving for a few pages the main subject, let us pause and see what may be the hidden meaning of this, the most ancient as it is the most suggestive of traditional allegories. As it relates directly to the early Races, this will be no real digression. The subject of Æschylus’ trilogy, of which two plays are lost, is known to all cultured readers. The Demi‐god robs the Gods (the Elohim) of their secret—the mystery of the _Creative Fire_. For this sacrilegious attempt he is struck down by Cronus(974) and delivered unto Zeus, the Father and Creator of a mankind which he would have wished to have blind intellectually, and animal‐like; a _Personal_ Deity, which will not see Man “like one of us.” Hence Prometheus, the “Fire and Light‐giver,” is chained on Mount Caucasus and condemned to suffer torture. But the triform Fates (Karma), whose decrees, as the Titan says, even Zeus— E’en he the fore‐ordained cannot escape.... —ordain that those sufferings will last only to that day when a son of Zeus— Ay, a son bearing stronger than his sire (787) One of thine [Io’s] own descendants it must be (791) —is born. This “Son” will deliver Prometheus (suffering Humanity) from his own fatal gift. His name is, “He who has to come.” On the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other allegorical sentence, may be twisted into almost any meaning—on the authority of the words pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to Io, the daughter of Inachus, persecuted by Zeus—a whole prophecy is constructed by some Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan: And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase, Wast hailed _as the illustrious spouse of Zeus_ ... (853) ... stroking thee With _touch alone of unalarming hand_; Then thou _dark Epaphos_ shalt bear, whose name Records his sacred gendering ... (870). This was construed by several fanatics—Des Mousseaux and De Mirville amongst others—into a clear prophecy. Io “is the mother of God,” we are told, and “dark Epaphos”—Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his Father, except metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that Father; nor has the Christian Saviour hurled _his_ Father down into Hades. Prometheus says (in verse 930) that Zeus will be humbled yet: ... such marriage he prepares Which from his throne of power to nothingness Shall hurl him down; so shall be all fulfilled His father Kronos’ curse.... .... Then let him sit Confiding in his lofty thunder‐peals, And wielding with both hands the fiery bolt; For _these shall not avail, but fall he shall,_ _A fall disgraceful_, not to be endured.... (980). “Dark Epaphos” was the Dionysus‐Sabasius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter in the Sabasian Mysteries, during which the “Father of the Gods,” assuming the shape of a _Serpent_, begot on Demeter Dionysus, or the Solar Bacchus. Io is the Moon, and at the same time the Eve of a _new race_, and so is Demeter—in the present case. The Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but it does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours who have appeared periodically in various countries and among various nations, in their transitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the mysteries of cyclic transformations, in the series of which mankind, having passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state, from spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the opposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its primitive state, when _woman knew no man_, and human progeny _was created, not begotten_. That state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter shall discover and really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast problem of sex. It will be like “the light that never shone on sea or land,” and has to come to men through the Theosophical Society. That light will lead on and up to _true spiritual intuition_. Then, as expressed once in a letter to a Theosophist, _The world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs, for the world will have discovered that individuals have it in their own powers to procreate Buddha‐like children—or Demons_.... When that knowledge comes, all dogmatic religions, and with these the Demons, will die out. If we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the character of the heroes, the mystery may be unriddled. Cronus is of course “Time” in its cyclic course. He swallows his children—the _personal_ Gods of exoteric dogmas included. Instead of Zeus he has swallowed his stone idol; but the symbol has grown, and has only developed in human fancy as mankind has been cycling down toward only its physical and intellectual—not spiritual—perfection. When it is as far advanced in its spiritual evolution Cronus will be no longer deceived. Instead of the stone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction itself. Because, the Serpent of Wisdom, represented in the Sabasian Mysteries by the anthropomorphized Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers, will have begotten in Time (Cronus) a progeny—Dionysus‐Bacchus, or the “dark Epaphos,” the “mighty one,” the Race that will overthrow him. Where will he be born? Prometheus traces him to his origin and birth‐place in his prophecy to Io. Io is the Moon‐goddess of generation—for she is Isis and she is Eve, the Great Mother.(975) He traces the path of the (racial) wanderings as plainly as words can express it. She has to quit Europe and go to Asia’s continent, reaching there the highest of the mountains of Caucasus (v. 737), the Titan telling her: When thou hast crossed the flood, limit betwixt Two continents, fronting the burning East.... (810)— that she must travel Eastward, after passing the “Kimmerian Bosphorus,” and cross what is evidently the Volga and now Astrakhân on the Caspian Sea. After this she will encounter “fierce northern blasts” and cross thither to the land of the “Arimaspian host” (East of Herodotus’ Scythia) to— Pluto’s gold‐abounding flood.... (825). This is rightly conjectured by Professor Newman to have meant the Ural, the Arimaspi of Herodotus being “the recognized inhabitants of this golden region.” And here comes (between verses 825 and 835) a puzzle to all the European interpreters. Says the Titan: To these [Arimaspi and Grypes] approach not; a far border land Thou next shalt reach, where dwells a swarthy race Near the Sun’s founts, whence is the Æthiop river; Along its banks proceed till thou attain The mighty rapids, where from Bybline heights Pure draughts of sacred water Neilos sends. There Io was ordained to found a colony for herself and her sons. Now we must see how the passage is interpreted. Io is told that she has to travel Eastward till she comes to the river Ethiops, which she is to follow till it falls into the Nile—hence the perplexity. “According to the geographical theories of the earliest Greeks,” we are informed by the author of the version of “Prometheus Bound”: This condition was fulfilled by the river Indus. Arrian (vi. 1) mentions that Alexander the Great, when preparing to sail down the Indus [having seen crocodiles in the river Indus, and in no other river except the Nile ...], seemed to himself to have discovered the sources of the Nile; as though the Nile, rising from some place in India, and flowing through much desert land, and thereby losing its name Indus, next ... flowed through inhabited land, being now called Nile by the Ethiopians of those parts and afterwards by the Egyptians. Virgil in the IVth Georgic echoes the obsolete error.(976) Both Alexander and Virgil may have erred considerably in their geographical notions; but the prophecy of Prometheus has not in the least so sinned—not, at any rate, in its Esoteric spirit. When a certain Race is symbolized, and events pertaining to its history are rendered allegorically, no topographical accuracy ought to be expected in the itinerary traced for its personification. Yet it so happens, that the river Ethiops is certainly the Indus, and it is also the Nîl or Nîlâ. It is the river born on the Kailâsa Heaven mountain, the Mansion of the Gods—22,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was the Ethiops river, and was so called by the Greeks, long before the days of Alexander, because its banks, from Attock down to Sind, were peopled by tribes generally referred to as the Eastern Ethiopians. India and Egypt were two kindred nations, and the Eastern Ethiopians—the mighty builders—have come from India, as is pretty well proved, it is hoped, in _Isis Unveiled_.(977) Then why could not Alexander, and even the learned Virgil, have used the word Nile or Neilos when speaking of the Indus, since it is one of its names? To this day the Indus is called, in the regions around Kalabagh, Nîl, “blue,” and Nîlâ, the “blue river.” The water there is of such a dark blue colour that this name was given to it from time immemorial; a small town on its banks being called by the same name, and existing to this day. Evidently Arrian, who wrote far later than the days of Alexander, and who was ignorant of the old name of the Indus, has unconsciously slandered the Greek conqueror. Nor are our modern historians much wiser, in judging as they do, for they often make the most sweeping declarations on mere appearances, as much as their ancient colleagues ever did in days of old, when no Encyclopædias were yet ready for them. The race of Io, the “cow‐horned maid,” is then simply the first pioneer race of the Æthiopians brought by her from the Indus to the Nile, which received its name in memory of the mother river of the colonists from India.(978) Therefore Prometheus says to Io(979) that the sacred Neilos—the God, not the river—shall guide her “to the land, _three‐ cornered_,” namely, to the Delta, where her sons are foreordained to found “that far‐off colony.” (833 _et seqq._) It is there that a new race (the Egyptians) will begin, and a “female race” (873) which, “fifth in descent” from dark Epaphos— Fifty in number shall return to Argos. Then one of the fifty virgins will fail through love and shall— ... A kingly race in Argos bear.... But from this seed shall dauntless heroes spring, Bow—famous, who shall free me from these ills. When these heroes shall arise, the Titan does not reveal; for as he remarks: This, to set forth at large needs lengthy speech. But “Argos” is Arghyavarsha, the Land of Libations of the old Hierophants, whence the Deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became ages later that of its neighbour, India—the Aryâvarta of old. That the subject formed part of the Sabasian Mysteries is made known by several ancient writers; among others by Cicero(980) and by Clemens Alexandrinus.(981) The latter writers are the only ones who attribute the fact of Æschylus being charged by the Athenians with sacrilege and condemned to be stoned to death to its true cause. They say that being himself uninitiated, Æschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his Trilogies on a public stage.(982) But he would have incurred the same condemnation had he been initiated; which must have been the case, as otherwise he must, like Socrates, have had a Daimon to reveal to him the secret and sacred allegorical Drama of Initiation. At all events, it is not the “father of the Greek tragedy” who invented the prophecy of Prometheus; for he only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed by the priests during the Mysteria of the Sabasia.(983) The latter was one of the oldest sacred festivals, whose origin is to this day unknown to history. Mythologists connect it through Mithras, the Sun, called Sabasius on some old monuments, with Jupiter and Bacchus. It was never, however, the property of the Greeks, but dates from days immemorial. The translator of the drama wonders how Æschylus could become guilty of such Discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the “Prometheus Bound” and that depicted in the remaining dramas.(984) This is just because Æschylus, like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain the intellectual “Sphinx” of the ages. Between Zeus, the Abstract Deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter represented in the Mysteries no higher a principle than the lower aspect of human physical intelligence—Manas wedded to Kâma; whereas Prometheus—the divine aspect of Manas merging into and aspiring to Buddhi—was the divine Soul. Zeus, whenever shown as yielding to his lower passions, is the Human Soul and nothing more—the _jealous_ God, revengeful and cruel in its Egotism or “I‐am‐ness.” Hence, Zeus is represented as a Serpent—the intellectual tempter of man—which, nevertheless, begets in the course of cyclic evolution the “Man‐Saviour,” the Solar Bacchus or Dionysus—_more than a man_. Dionysus is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha, the heavenly Wise One, and with the coming (tenth) Avatâra, the glorified Spiritual Christos, who will deliver the suffering Chrestos—mankind, or Prometheus, on its trial. This, say Brâhmanical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the latter only occasionally), will happen at the end of the Kali Yuga. It is only after the appearance of Kalki Avatâra, or Sosiosh, that man will be born from woman without sin. Then will Brahmâ, the Hindû deity, Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), the Zoroastrian, Zeus, the Greco‐Olympian Don Juan, Jehovah, the jealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their likes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy—vanish and disappear in thin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the _dark aspects_ of all these Deities, ever represented as their “twin brothers” and creatures, in exoteric legend—their own _reflection_ on Earth, in Esoteric Philosophy. The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion will be subdued. There is one Eternal Law in Nature, one that always tends to adjust contraries, and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this Law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false Gods, and find itself finally—Self‐redeemed. In its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus, of whom the proto‐ and anti‐types are found in every ancient Theogony, stands in each of them at the very origin of physical evil, because at the threshold of human physical life. Cronus is “Time,” whose first law is that the order of the successive and harmonious phases, in the process of evolution during cyclic development, should be strictly preserved—under the severe penalty of abnormal growth with all its ensuing results. It was not in the programme of natural development, that man—higher animal though he may be—should become at once, intellectually, spiritually, and psychically, the Demi‐god he is on Earth, while his physical frame remains weaker, more helpless and ephemeral, than that of almost any huge mammal. The contrast is too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its indwelling God. The gift of Prometheus thus became a Curse—though _foreknown_ and _foreseen_ by the Host personified in that personage, as his name well shows.(985) It is in this that rests, at one and the same time, its sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a portion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free‐ will to passive slavery, intellectual self‐conscious pain and even torture, “while myriad time shall flow,” to inane, imbecile, instinctual beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the programme of Nature, the Heavenly Host, “Prometheus,” still sacrificed itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind.(986) But while saving man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the tortures of the self‐consciousness of his responsibility—the result of his free will—besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir. This torture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became henceforward blended with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was still un‐achieved at that period of formation. Spiritual evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical, once its homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the chief cause, if not the sole origin, of Evil.(987) Highly philosophical is the allegory which shows Cronus cursing Zeus for dethroning him, in the primitive Golden Age of Saturn, when all men were Demi‐gods, and for creating a physical race of men weak and helpless in comparison; and then as delivering to his (Zeus’) revenge the culprit, who despoiled the Gods of their prerogative of creation and who thereby raised man to their level, intellectually and spiritually. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus represents the Host of the Primeval Progenitors, of the Pitaras, the “Fathers” who created man senseless and without mind; while the Divine Titan stands for the Spiritual Creators, the Devas who “fell” into generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger, than the “Prometheans”; therefore, the latter are shown conquered. “The lower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of Zeus,” was on this Earth in its own sphere and plane of action; whereas the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the meshes of Matter. The inferior Host were masters of all the Cosmic and lower Titanic Forces; the higher Titan possessed only the Intellectual and Spiritual Fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind; the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of Matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance. In every such case one sees once more— A god ... in fetters, anguish fraught; The foe of Zeus, in hatred held of all— a God, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered in self‐sacrifice— For that to men he [I] bore too fond a mind— as the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by selfishness and egoïsm in every instance. The modern Prometheus has now become Epi‐metneus, “he who sees only after the event”; because the universal philanthropy of the former has long ago degenerated into selfishness and self‐adoration. Man will become the _free_ Titan of old, but not before cyclic evolution has reestablished the broken harmony between the two natures—the terrestrial and the divine; after which he becomes impermeable to the lower Titanic Forces, invulnerable in his Personality, and immortal in his Individuality—but this cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated from his nature. When man understands that “_Deus non __ fecit mortem_,”(988) but that man has created it himself, he will re‐become the Prometheus before his Fall. For the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mythos in Greece, the reader is referred to Part II of this Volume, Section XX, “Prometheus, the Titan,” etc. In the said Part—a kind of supplement to the present portion—every additional information is given upon those tenets that will be the most controverted and questioned. This work is so heterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged standards of Theology and Modern Science, that no proof which tends to show that these standards often usurp an illegal authority should be neglected. Additional Fragments From A Commentary On The Verses Of Stanza XII. The MS. from which these additional explanations are taken belongs to the group called _Tongshaktchi Sangye Songa_, or the “Records of the Thirty‐ five Buddhas of Confession,” as they are _exoterically_ called. These personages, however, though called in the Northern Buddhist religion Buddhas, may just as well be called Rishis, Avatâras, etc., as they are “Buddhas who have preceded Shâkyamuni” only for the Northern followers of the ethics preached by Gautama. These great Mahâtmâs, or Buddhas, are a universal and common property; they are _historical_ Sages—at any rate for all the Occultists who believe in such a Hierarchy of Sages, and who have had its existence proved to them by the learned ones of the Fraternity. They are chosen from among some ninety‐seven Buddhas in one group, and fifty‐three in another,(989) mostly imaginary personages, who are really the personifications of the powers of the first‐named.(990) These “Baskets” of the oldest writings on “palm leaves” are kept very secret. Each MS. has appended to it a short synopsis of the history of that sub‐ race to which the particular Buddha‐Lha belonged. The one special MS. from which the fragments which follow have been extracted, and then rendered into more comprehensible language, is said to have been copied from stone tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest days of the Fifth Race, who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the chief continents of the Atlantean Race. The day when much, if not all, of that which is given here from the Archaic Records, will be found correct, is not far distant. Then the modern Symbologists will acquire the certitude that even Odin, or the God Woden, the highest God in the German and Scandinavian mythology, is one of these thirty‐five Buddhas; one of the earliest, indeed, for the Continent to which he and his Race belonged is also one of the earliest—so early, in truth, that in those days tropical nature was to be found, where now lie eternal unthawing snows, and one could cross almost by dry land from Norway _viâ_ Iceland and Greenland, to the lands that at present surround Hudson’s Bay.(991) In similar fashion, in the palmy days of the Atlantean Giants, the sons of the “Giants from the East,” a pilgrim could perform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara Desert, to the lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events which were never written outside the human memory, but which were religiously transmitted from one generation to another, and from race to race, may have been preserved by constant transmission “within the book volume of the brain,” and through countless æons, with more truth and accuracy than inside any written document or record. “That which is part of our souls is eternal,” says Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our Souls than that which happens at the dawn of our lives? Those lives are countless, but the Soul or Spirit that animates us throughout these myriads of existences is the same; and though “the book volume” of the _physical brain_ may forget events within the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections can never desert the Divine Soul within us. Its whispers may be too soft, the sound of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical senses; yet the shadow of events _that were_, just as much as the shadow of the events _that are to come_, is within its perceptive powers, and is ever present before its mind’s eye. It is this Soul‐voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe in tradition more than in written history, that what is said below is all true, and relates to pre‐historic facts. This is what is written in one passage: _The Kings of Light have departed in wrath. The sins of men have become so black that Earth quivers in her great agony.... The Azure Seats remain empty. Who of the Brown, who of the Red, or yet among the Black [Races], can sit in the Seats of the Blessed, the Seats of Knowledge and Mercy? Who can assume the Flower of Power, the Plant of the Golden Stem and the Azure Blossom?_ The “Kings of Light” is the name given in all old records to the Sovereigns of the Divine Dynasties. The “Azure Seats” are translated “Celestial Thrones” in certain documents. The “Flower of Power” is now the Lotus; what it may have been at that period, who can tell? The writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his people. They had become bereft of their “Azure” (Celestial) Kings, and “they of the deva‐hue,” the moon‐like complexion, and “they of the refulgent (golden) face” have gone “to the Land of Bliss, the Land of Fire and Metal”—or, agreeably with the rules of symbolism, to the lands lying North and East, from whence “the Great Waters have been swept away, sucked in by the Earth and dissipated in the Air.” The wise races had perceived “the black Storm‐dragons, called down by the Dragons of Wisdom”—and “had fled, led on by the shining Protectors of the most Excellent Land”—the great ancient Adepts, presumably; those the Hindûs refer to as their Manus and Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata Manu. They “of the yellow hue” are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations; and the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There, entirely new races were born; there, they lived and died until the separation of the nations. But this “separation” did not take place either in the localities assigned for it by Modern Science, nor in the way the Âryans are shown to have divided and separated by Prof. Max Müller and other Âryanists. Nearly two‐thirds of one million years have elapsed since that period. The yellow‐faced giants of the Post‐Atlantean day had ample time, through this forced confinement to one part of the world, with the same racial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, during a period of nearly 700,000 years, to branch off into the most heterogeneous and diversified types. The same is shown in Africa; nowhere does a more extraordinary variability of types exist, from black to almost white, from gigantic men to dwarfish races; and this only because of their forced isolation. The Africans have not left their continent for several hundred thousands of years. If to‐morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear and other lands to reëmerge instead, and if the African tribes were to separate and scatter on the face of the Earth, it is they who, in about a hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured nations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into _superior_ and _inferior_ races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy. Such are the facts given in the Archaic Records. Collating and comparing them with some modern theories of evolution, _minus_ Natural Selection,(992) these statements appear quite reasonable and logical. Thus, while the Âryans are the descendants of the _yellow_ Adam, the gigantic and highly civilized Atlanto‐Âryan race, the Semites—and the Jews along with them—are those of the _red_ Adam, and thus both De Quatrefages and the writers of the Mosaic _Genesis_ are right. For, could chapter v of the First Book of Moses be compared with the genealogies found in our Archaic Bible, the period from Adam unto Noah would be found noticed therein, though of course under different names, the respective years of the Patriarchs being turned into periods, and the whole being symbolical and allegorical. In the MS. under consideration many and frequent are the references to the great knowledge and civilization of the Atlantean nations, showing the polity of several of them and the nature of their arts and sciences. If the Third Root‐Race, the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, are already spoken of as having been drowned “with their high civilizations and Gods,”(993) how much more may the same be said of the Atlanteans! It is from the Fourth Race that the early Âryans got their knowledge of “the bundle of wonderful things,” the Sabhâ and Mâyâsabhâ, mentioned in the _Mahâbhârata_, the gift of Mâyâsura to the Pândavas. It is from them that they learnt æronautics, Vimâna Vidyâ, the “knowledge of flying in air‐vehicles,” and, therefore, their great arts of Meteorography and Meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Âryans inherited their most valuable Science of the hidden virtues of precious and other stones, of Chemistry, or rather Alchemy, of Mineralogy, Geology, Physics and Astronomy. Several times the writer has put to herself the question: Is the story of _Exodus_—in its details at least—as narrated in the _Old Testament_, original? Or is it, like the story of Moses himself and many others, simply another version of the legends told of the Atlanteans? For who, upon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail to perceive the great similarity of the fundamental features? Remember the anger of “God” at the obduracy of Pharaoh, his command to the “chosen” ones to spoil the Egyptians, before departing, of their “jewels of silver and jewels of gold,”(994) and finally the Egyptians and their Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea. Then read the following fragment of the earlier story from the Commentary: _And the __“__Great King of the Dazzling Face__”__ the chief of all the Yellow‐faced, was sad, seeing the sins of the Black‐faced._ _He sent his air‐vehicles [Vimânas] to all his brother‐chiefs [chiefs of other nations and tribes] with pious men within, saying:_ “_Prepare. Arise, ye men of the Good Law, and cross the land while [yet] dry._ “_The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the land. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face [the Sorcerers] live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires [the Gnomes and Fire Elementals] are preparing their magic Agnyastra [fire‐weapons worked by Magic]. But the Lords of the Dark Eye [__‘__Evil Eye__’__] are stronger than they [the Elementals] and they are the slaves of the mighty ones. They are versed in Astra [Vidyâ, the highest magical knowledge]._(_995_)_ Come and use yours_ [i.e., _your magic powers, in order to counteract those of the Sorcerers]. Let every Lord of the Dazzling Face [an Adept of the White Magic] cause the Vimâna of every Lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands [or possession], lest any [of the Sorcerers] should by its means escape from the waters, avoid the Rod of the Four [Karmic Deities], and save his wicked [followers, or people]._ “_May every Yellow Face send sleep from himself to [mesmerize?] every Black Face. May even they [the Sorcerers] avoid pain and suffering. May __ every man true to the Solar Gods bind [paralyze] every man under the Lunar Gods, lest he should suffer or escape his destiny._ “_And may every Yellow Face offer of his life‐water [blood] to the speaking animal of a Black Face, lest he awaken his master._(996) “_The hour has struck, the black night is ready._ “_Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the Great Four._(_997_)_ May the Kings of Light return._” _The great King fell upon his Dazzling Face and wept...._ _When the Kings assembled, the waters had already moved...._ _[But] the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the water‐mark. Their Kings reached them in their Vimânas, and led them on to the lands of Fire and Metal [East and North]._ Still, in another passage, it is said: _Stars [meteors] showered on the lands of the Black Faces; but they slept._ _The speaking beasts [the magic watchers] kept quiet._ _The nether Lords waited for orders, but they came not, for their masters slept._ _The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end of the Earth to the other. High lands remained, the bottom of the Earth [the lands of the antipodes] remained dry. There dwelt those who escaped; the men of the Yellow Faces and of the straight eye [the frank and sincere people]._ _When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their Vimânas in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone._ Then a passage shows some of the more powerful Magicians of the “Dark Faces,” who awoke earlier than the others, pursuing those who had “spoilt them” and who were in the rear‐guard, for—“the nations that were led away were as thick as the stars of the milky way,” says a more modern Commentary, written in Sanskrit only. _Like as a dragon‐snake uncoils slowly its body, so the Sons of Men, led on by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their folds, and spreading out, expanded like a running stream of sweet waters ... many of the faint‐hearted among them perished on their way. But most were saved._ Yet the pursuers, “whose heads and chests soared high above the water,” chased them “for three lunar terms” until finally reached by the rising waves, they perished to the last man, the soil sinking under their feet and the Earth engulfing those who had desecrated her. This sounds a good deal like the original material upon which the similar story in _Exodus_ was built many hundred thousands of years later. The biography of Moses, the story of his birth, childhood and rescue from the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, is now shown to have been adapted from the Chaldæan narrative about Sargon. And if so, the Assyrian tiles in the British Museum being a good proof of it, why not that of the Jews robbing the Egyptians of their jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and so on? The gigantic Magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the “Lords of the Dark Face,” may, in the later narrative, have become the Egyptian Magi, and the yellow‐faced nations of the Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of Jacob, the “chosen people”! One more statement has to be made. There have been several Divine Dynasties—a series for every Root‐Race beginning with the Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity. The last seven Dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldæan records belonged to the Fifth Race, which, though generally called Âryan, was not entirely so, as it was ever largely mixed up with races to which Ethnology gives other names. It would be impossible, in view of the limited space at our disposal, to go any further into the description of the Atlanteans, in whom the whole East believes as much as we believe in the ancient Egyptians, but whose existence the majority of the Western Scientists deny, as they have denied, before this, many a truth, from the existence of Homer down to that of the carrier pigeon. The civilization of the Atlanteans was greater than even that of the Egyptians. It is their degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato’s Atlantis, who built the first Pyramids in the country, and that certainty before the advent of the “Eastern Æthiopians,” as Herodotus calls the Egyptians. This may be well inferred from the statement made by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the Pyramids that: There are also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which, it is said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be lost. These men who “divined the coming of floods” were not Egyptians, who never had any, except the periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last remnants of the Atlanteans, we maintain; those races which are dimly suspected by Science, and thinking of which Mr. Charles Gould, the well‐ known Geologist, says: Can we suppose that we have at all exhausted the great museum of nature? Have we, in fact, penetrated yet beyond its antechambers? Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? or have we in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldæa and of China, shadowy mementoes of pre‐historic man, handed down by tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands from others, which, like the fabled (?) Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization.(998) After this one can turn with more confidence to the words of a Master who wrote, several years before these words were penned by Mr. Gould: _The Fourth Race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and Roman and even Egyptian civilizations are nothing compared to the civilizations that began with the Third Race [—after its separation]._ But if this civilization and the mastery of arts and sciences are denied to the Third and Fourth Races, no one will deny that between the great civilizations of antiquity, such as those of Egypt and India, there stretched the dark ages of crass ignorance and barbarism ever since the beginning of the Christian era up to our modern civilization, during which period all recollection of these traditions was lost. As said in _Isis Unveiled_: Why should we forget that, ages before the prows of the adventurous Genoese clove the Western waters, the Phœnician vessels had circumnavigated the Globe, and spread civilization in regions now silent and deserted? What Archæologist will dare assert that the same hand which planned the Pyramids of Egypt, Karnak, and the thousand ruins now crumbling to oblivion on the sandy banks of the Nile, did _not_ erect the monumental Nagkon‐Wat of Cambodia; or trace the hieroglyphics on the obelisks and doors of the deserted Indian village, newly discovered in British Columbia by Lord Dufferin; or those on the ruins of Palenque and Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics we treasure in our museums—last mementoes of the long “lost arts”—speak loudly in favour of ancient civilization? And do they not prove, over and over again, that nations and continents that have passed away have buried along with them arts and sciences, which neither the first crucible ever heated in a mediæval cloister, nor the last cracked by a modern chemist, have revived, nor will—at least, in the present century. And the same question may be put now that was put then; it may be once more asked: How does it happen that the most advanced standpoint that has been reached in our times, only enables us to see in the dim distance up the Alpine path of knowledge the monumental proofs that earlier explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached and occupied? If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of Luxor—the Tyrian purple, the bright vermilion, and dazzling blue which decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on the first day of their application; the indestructible cement of the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking; the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass? And if Chemistry is so little able to rival even the early mediæval ages in some arts, why boast of achievements which, according to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of years ago. The more Archæology and Philology advance, the more humiliating to our pride are the discoveries which are daily made, the more glorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who, perhaps on account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have been until now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire of superstition. Among other Arts and Sciences, the Ancients—ay, as an heirloom from the Atlanteans—had those of Astronomy and Symbolism, which included the knowledge of the Zodiac. As already explained, the whole of Antiquity believed, with good reason, that humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the Planets, and these with the Zodiacal Signs. The whole world’s history is recorded in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt there is an example in the Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sûfî, the writer has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of the past—and also of the _future_—history of our Globe. Yet the original records exist, most undeniably. As Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, and those they do happen to know of they fail to understand, as witness Bentley, the reader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to turn to the work of Denon(999) in which the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs can be found and examined. Having seen them personally, the writer has no longer need to trust to what other students—who have examined and studied both very carefully—have to say of them. The assertion of the Egyptian Priests to Herodotus, that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, has been corroborated by Mackey, who states that the Poles are represented on the Zodiacs in both positions. And in that which shows the Poles [polar axes] at right angles, there are marks which show, that it was not the last time they were in that position; _but the first_ [—after the Zodiacs had been traced]. Capricorn, is, therein, represented at the North Pole; and Cancer is divided, near its middle, at the South Pole; which is a confirmation that, originally they had their winter when the Sun was in Cancer. But the chief characteristics of its being a monument commemorating the _first time_ that the Pole had been in that position, are the Lion and the Virgin.(1000) Broadly calculated, it is believed by Egyptologists that the Great Pyramid was built 3,350 B.C.;(1001) and that Menes and his Dynasty existed 750 years before the appearance of the Fourth Dynasty—during which the Pyramids are _supposed_ to have been built. Thus 4,100 years B.C. is the age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s declaration that all the facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians had already— Made very great progress in the arts of civilization _before the age of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley of the Nile_—(1002) is very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis of the comparatively modern civilizing of Egypt. It points to a great civilization in _pre‐ historic_ times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo‐Hor, the “servants of Horus,” were the people who had settled in Egypt; and, as M. Maspéro affirms, it is to this “pre‐historic race” that— Belongs the honour of having constituted Egypt, such as we know it, from the commencement of the historic period. And Staniland Wake adds: They founded the principal cities of Egypt, and established the most important sanctuaries.(1003) This was _before_ the Great Pyramid epoch, and when Egypt had hardly arisen from the waters. Yet: They possessed the hieroglyphic form of writing special to the Egyptians, and must have been already considerably advanced in civilization. As says Lenormant: It was the country of the great pre‐historic sanctuaries, seats of the sacerdotal dominion, which played the most important part in the origin of civilization. What is the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000, at the utmost of 5,000, years B.C. (Maspéro). Now it is claimed that it is by means of the Cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal Year) that the approximate year of the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained. Assuming that the long narrow downward passage leading from the entrance was directed towards the pole‐star of the pyramid builders, astronomers have shown that in the year 2,170 B.C. the passage pointed to Alpha Draconis, the then pole‐star.... Mr. Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer, after stating that the pole‐ star was in the required position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in 2,170 B.C., says: “either of these would correspond with the position of the descending passage in the Great Pyramid; but Egyptologists tell us there can absolutely be no doubt that the later epoch is far too late.”(1004) But we are also told that: This relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an extraordinary one ... it could not occur again for a whole Sidereal Year.(1005) This demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of three Sidereal Years, the Great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years ago, or in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least as readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C. Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, the same characteristics of the signs as on the Dendera Zodiac are found. Those who know the Hindû symbols and constellations well, will be able to find out from the description of the Egyptian, whether the indications of time are correct or not. On the Dendera Zodiac, as preserved by the modern Egyptian Coptic and Greek Adepts, and explained a little differently by Mackey, the Dion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is almost straight, pointing downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this position agreeing with the _original_ conformation of these constellations. But adds Mackey: In many places we see the Lion [Sinha], with his tail turned up over his back, and ending with a Serpent’s head; thereby, shewing that the Lion had been _inverted_: which, indeed, must have been the case with the whole Zodiac, and every other Constellation, when the Pole had been inverted. Speaking of the _circular_ Zodiac, which is also given by Denon, he says: There ... the Lion is standing _on_ the Serpent, and his tail forming a curve downward, from which we find that, _though six or seven hundred thousand years_ must have passed between the two positions, yet they had made but little or no difference in the Constellations of Leo and the Hydra; while Virgo is represented very differently in the two—in the circular Zodiac, the Virgin is _nursing her child_: but it seems that they had not had that idea when the Pole was first within the plane of the Ecliptic; for in _this_ Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see three Virgins between the Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds, in her hand, an ear of wheat. It is much to be lamented that, there is in this Zodiac a breach of the figures in the latter part of Leo and the beginning of Virgo, which has taken away one _Decan_ out of each sign.(1006) Nevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong to three different epochs; namely, to the last three family races of the fourth sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race, each of which must have lived approximately from 25,000 to 30,000 years. The first of these, the “Âryan‐ Asiatics,” witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the Giant Atlanteans(1007) (the Ruta and Daitya Island‐Continents) who perished some 850,000 years ago, toward the close of the Miocene Age.(1008) The fourth sub‐race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteans—the Âryo‐Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years ago. In order to understand this, the reader is asked to glance at the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root‐ Race—generally, though hardly correctly, called the Âryan Race—and the explanations appended to it. Let the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root‐ Races and the evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and concisely in Mr. Sinnett’s _Esoteric Buddhism_. 1. There are seven Rounds in every Manvantara; this Round is the Fourth, and we are in the Fifth Root‐Race, at present. 2. Each Root‐Race has seven sub‐races. 3. Each sub‐race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be called “branch” or “family” races. 4. The little tribes, shoots, and offshoots of the last‐named are countless, and depend on Karmic action. Examine the Genealogical Tree hereto appended, and you will understand. The illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist the reader in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the confusion which exists between the terms which have been used at different times for the divisions of Humanity. It is also here attempted to express in figures—but only within approximate limits, for the sake of comparison—the duration of time through which it is possible to definitely distinguish one division from another. It would only lead to hopeless confusion if any attempt were made to give accurate dates to a few; for the Races, sub‐races, etc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap and are entangled with each other until it is nearly impossible to separate them. [Illustration: Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root‐Race.] The Human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably as an illustration. The main stem of a tree may be compared to the Root‐Race (A). Its larger limbs to the various sub‐races; seven in number (B1, B2, etc.). On each of these limbs are seven “branches,” or “family” races (C). After this the cactus‐plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy “leaves” are covered with sharp spines, each of which may be compared to a nation or tribe of human beings. Now our Fifth Root‐Race has already been in existence—as a Race _sui generis_ and quite free from its parent stem—about 1,000,000 years; therefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding sub‐races has lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each family race has an average existence of about 30,000 years, and thus the European “family race” has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or the innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding “season” of three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the comparative approximation of duration between the lives of a “family race” and a Sidereal Year. The knowledge of the foregoing, and the absolutely correct divisions of time, formed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were taught to the Disciples, and where they were transmitted by one Hierophant to another. Everyone is aware that the European Astronomers assign—arbitrarily enough—the date of the invention of the Egyptian Zodiac to the years 2,000 or 2,400 B.C. (Proctor); and insist that the date of this invention coincides with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid. This, to an Occultist and Eastern Astronomer, must appear quite absurd. The Cycle of the Kali Yuga is said to have begun between the 17th and 18th of February in the year 3,102 B.C. Now the Hindûs claim that in the year 20,400 before Kali Yugam, the origin of their Zodiac coincided with the Spring Equinox—there being at the time a conjunction of the Sun and Moon—and Bailly proved by a lengthy and careful computation of that date, that, even if fictitious, the epoch from which they had started to establish the beginning of their Kali Yuga was _very real_. That “epoch is the year 3,102 before our era,” he writes.(1009) The lunar eclipse arriving just a fortnight after the beginning of the Black Age—it took place in a point situated between the Wheat Ear of Virgo and the star Θ of the same constellation. One of their most esoteric Cycles is based upon certain conjunctions and respective positions of Virgo and the Pleiades (Krittika). Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern India and Lankâ,(1010) the esoteric meaning was evidently identical. The “three Virgins,” or Virgo in three different positions, meant, with both, the record of the first three “Divine or Astronomical Dynasties,” who taught the Third Root‐Race; and after having abandoned the Atlanteans to their doom, returned, or redescended rather, during the third sub‐race of the Fifth, in order to reveal to saved humanity the mysteries of their birth‐place—the Sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical record of the human Races and the three Dynasties (Gods, Manes—Semi‐divine Astrals of the Third and Fourth—and the Heroes of the Fifth Race) which preceded the purely human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and passages of the Egyptian Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles of course changed the face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed each time. In Mackey’s _Sphinxiad_ the speculations of the bold author must have horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, for he says, fantastically enough: But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by those monuments [the Labyrinth, the Pyramids and the Zodiacs] _does not exceed five millions of years_:(1011) which falls short of the records given us both by the [esoteric] Chinese and Hindoos: which latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or eight millions of years:(1012) which I have seen upon a talisman of porcelain.(1013) The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura Maya, as the modern Hindûs still have. As stated in _Esoteric Buddhism_, the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and “Romans” some thousand years ago, were “remnants of the Atlanto‐Âryans”—the former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans; the last‐named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose sudden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The _human_ Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the _knowledge_ of the Atlanteans, though there was no longer Atlantean blood in their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic Records. All this has been shown long ago.(1014) And it is just because the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75,000 and 80,000 years old that the Zodiac of the Greeks is far later. Volney has correctly pointed out that it is only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.(1015) Conclusion. Space forbids us to say anything more, and this part of _The Secret Doctrine_ has to be closed. The forty‐nine Stanzas and the few fragments from the Commentaries which have been given are all that can be published in these Volumes. These, with some still older Records—to which none but the highest Initiates have access—and a whole library of comments, glossaries, and explanations, form the synopsis of Man’s Genesis. It is from these Commentaries that we have hitherto quoted and tried to explain the hidden meaning of some of the allegories, thus showing the true views of Esoteric Antiquity upon Geology, Anthropology, and even Ethnology. In the Part which follows we will endeavour to establish a still closer metaphysical connection between the earliest Races and their Creators, the _Divine_ Men from other Worlds; accompanying the statements proffered with the most important demonstrations of the same in Esoteric Astronomy and Symbolism. The duration of the “periods” that separate, in space and time, the Fourth from the Fifth Race—in the historical(1016) or even the legendary beginnings of the latter—is too tremendous for us to offer, even to a Theosophist, any more detailed accounts of them. During the course of the Post‐diluvian Ages, which were marked at certain periodical epochs by the most terrible cataclysms, too many races and nations were born, and disappeared almost without leaving a trace, for anyone to offer any description of the slightest value concerning them. Whether the Masters of Wisdom have a full and consecutive history of our Race from its incipient stage down to the present times; whether they possess the uninterrupted record of man since he developed into a complete physical being, and became thereby the king of the animals and master on this Earth—is not for the writer to say. Most probably they have, and such is our own personal conviction. But if so, this knowledge is only for the highest Initiates, who do not take their students into their confidence. The writer can, therefore, give but what she has herself been taught, and no more, and even this will appear to the profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic dream, than as a possible reality. This is only natural and as it should be, since for years such was the impression made upon the humble writer of these pages herself. Born and bred in European, matter‐of‐fact and presumably civilized, countries, she assimilated the foregoing with the utmost difficulty. But there are proofs of a certain character which become irrefutable and are undeniable in the long run, to every earnest and unprejudiced mind. For a series of years such were offered to her, and now she has the full certitude that our present Globe and its human Races must have been born, grown and developed in this, and in no other way. But this is the personal view of the writer; and her orthodoxy cannot be expected to have any more weight than any other “doxy,” in the eyes of those to whom every fresh theory is heterodox until otherwise proved. Therefore are we Occultists fully prepared for such questions as these: How do we know that the writer has not invented the whole scheme? And supposing _she_ has not, how can one tell that the whole of the foregoing, as given in the Stanzas, is not the product of the imagination of the ancients? How could they have preserved the records of such an immense, such an incredible antiquity? The answer that the history of this world since its formation and to its end is “written in the stars,” _i.e._, is recorded in the Zodiac and Universal Symbolism, whose keys are in the keeping of the Initiates, will hardly satisfy the doubters. The antiquity of the Zodiac in Egypt is much doubted, and it is denied point‐blank with regard to India. “Your conclusions are often excellent, but your premises are always doubtful,” the writer was once told by a profane friend. To this, the answer came that it was at least one point gained on scientific syllogisms, for, with the exception of a few problems from the domain of purely Physical Science, both the premises and conclusions of men of Science are as hypothetical as they are almost invariably erroneous. And if they do not so appear to the profane, the reason is simply this: the said profane are very little aware, taking as they do their scientific data on faith, that both premises and conclusions are generally the product of the same brains, which, however learned, are not infallible—a truism demonstrated daily by the shifting and re‐shifting of scientific theories and speculations. However it may be, the records of the temples, zodiacal and traditional, as well as the ideographic records of the East, as read by the Adepts of the Sacred Science or Vidyâ, are not a whit more doubtful than the so‐ called ancient history of the European nations, now edited, corrected, and amplified by half a century of archæological discoveries, and the very problematical readings of the Assyrian tiles, cuneiform fragments, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Our data also are based upon the same “readings”—in addition to an almost inexhaustible number of secret works of which Europe knows nothing—_plus_ the perfect knowledge by the Initiates of the symbolism of every word so recorded. Some of these records belong to an immense antiquity. Every Archæologist and Palæontologist is acquainted with the ideographic productions of certain semi‐savage tribes, who from time immemorial have aimed at rendering their thoughts symbolically. This is the earliest mode of recording events and ideas. And how old this knowledge is in the human race may be inferred from some signs, evidently ideographic, found on hatchets of the Palæolithic period. The Red Indian tribes of America, only a few years ago, comparatively speaking, petitioned the President of the United States to grant them possession of four small lakes, the petition being written on the tiny surface of a piece of fabric, which was covered with barely a dozen representations of animals and birds. The American savages have a number of such different kinds of writing, but not one of our Scientists is yet familiar with, or even knows of, the early hieroglyphic cypher, still preserved in some Fraternities, and named in Occultism the Senzar. Moreover, all those who have decided to regard such modes of writing—_e.g._, the ideographs of the Red Indians, and even the Chinese characters—as “attempts of the early races of mankind to express their untutored thoughts,” will decidedly object to our statement, that writing was invented by the Atlanteans, and not at all by the Phœnicians. Indeed, such a claim as that writing was known to mankind many hundreds of millenniums ago, in the face of the Philologists who have decreed that writing was unknown in the days of Pânini, in India, as also to the Greeks in the time of Homer, will be met by general disapprobation, if not with silent scorn. All denial and ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will maintain the claim, and simply for this reason: from Bacon down to our modern Royal Society, we have too long a period full of the most ludicrous mistakes made by Science, to warrant our believing in modern scientific assumptions rather than in the statements of our Teachers. Writing, our Scientists say, was unknown to Pânini; and this Sage nevertheless composed a grammar which contains 3,996 rules, and is the most perfect of all the grammars that were ever made! Pânini is made out to have lived barely a few centuries B.C., by the most liberal; and the rocks in Iran and Central Asia—whence the Philologists and Historians show us the ancestors of the same Pânini, the Brâhmans, coming into India—are _covered with writing_, two and three thousand years old, at least, and twelve thousand, according to some fearless Palæontologists. Writing was an _ars incognita_ in the days of Hesiod and Homer, agreeably to Grote, and was unknown to the Greeks so late as 770 B.C.; and the Phœnicians who had _invented_ it, and knew writing as far back as 1,500 B.C. at the earliest,(1017) were living among the Greeks, and elbowing them, all the time! All these scientific and contradictory conclusions disappeared, however, into thin air, when Schliemann discovered (_a_) the site of ancient Troy, whose actual existence had been so long regarded as a fable, and (_b_) excavated from that site earthenware vessels with inscriptions _in characters unknown_ to Palæontologists and the all‐ denying Sanskritists. Who will now deny Troy, or these archaic inscriptions? As Professor Virchow witnesses: I was myself an eye‐witness of two such discoveries, and helped to gather the articles together. The slanderers have long since been silenced, who were not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an imposture.(1018) Nor were truthful women spared any more than truthful men. Du Chaillu, Gordon Cumming, Madame Merian,(1019) Bruce, and a host of others were charged with lying. Says the author of _Mythical Monsters_, who gives this information in the Introduction:(1020) Madame Merian was accused of deliberate falsehood in reference to her description of a bird‐eating spider nearly two hundred years ago. But now‐a‐days ... reliable observers have confirmed it in regard to South America, India, and elsewhere. Audubon was similarly accused by botanists of having invented the yellow water‐lily, which he figured in his _Birds of the South_ under the name of Nymphæa lutea, and after having lain under the imputation for years, was confirmed at last by the discovery of the long‐lost flower in Florida ... in ... 1876.(1021) And, as Audubon was called a liar for this, and for his Haliætus Washingtonii,(1022) so Victor Hugo was ridiculed for his marvellous word‐ painting of the devil‐fish, and his description of a man becoming its helpless victim. The thing was derided as a monstrous impossibility; yet within a few years were discovered, on the shores of Newfoundland, cuttle‐ fishes with arms extending to thirty feet in length, and capable of dragging a good‐sized boat beneath the surface; and their action has been reproduced _for centuries past_ ... by Japanese artists.(1023) And if Troy was denied, and regarded as a myth; the existence of Herculaneum and Pompeii declared a fiction; the travels of Marco Polo laughed at and called as absurd a fable as one of Baron Münchausen’s tales, why should the writer of _Isis Unveiled_ and of _The Secret Doctrine_ be any better treated? Mr. Charles Gould, the author of the above‐cited volume quotes, in his excellent work, a few lines from _Macmillan_ (1860), which are as true as life, and too much to the point not to be reproduced: When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game.... As soon as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the great (mis?) guiding spirit, _à priori_ by name, who furnishes philosophers with their omniscience _pro re natâ_, whispers that no such thing _can_ be, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax. The heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When Leverrier and Adams predicted a planet by calculation, it was gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet which had been calculated was not _the_ planet but another which had clandestinely and improperly got into the neighbourhood of the true body. _The disposition to suspect hoax is stronger than the disposition to hoax._ Who was it that first announced that the classical writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax perpetrated by the monks in what the announcer would be as little or less inclined than Dr. Maitland to call the dark ages?(1024) Thus let it be. No disbeliever who takes _The Secret Doctrine_ for a “hoax” is forced, or even asked, to credit our statements, which have already been proclaimed to be such by certain very clever American journalists even before the work went to press.(1025) Nor, after all, is it necessary that any one should believe in the Occult Sciences and the Old Teachings, before he knows anything of, or even believes in his own Soul. No great truth has ever been accepted _à __ priori_, and generally a century or two has passed before it has begun to glimmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in such cases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths of to‐day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and _vice versà_. It is only in the twentieth century that portions, if not the whole, of the present work will be vindicated. It is not destructive of our statements, therefore, even if Sir John Evans does affirm that writing was unknown in the Stone Age. For it may have been unknown during that period in the Fifth Âryan Race, and yet have been perfectly known to the Atlanteans of the Fourth, in the palmy days of their highest civilization. The cycles of the rise and fall of nations and races are there to account for it. If told that there have been cases before now of forged pseudographs being palmed off on the credulous, and that our work may be classed with Jacolliot’s _Bible in India_—although, by the way, there are more truths mixed up with its errors than are found in the works of orthodox and recognized Orientalists—the charge and comparison will dismay us very little. We bide our time. Even the famous _Ezour Veda_ of the last century, considered by Voltaire “the most precious gift from the East to the West,” and by Max Müller “about the silliest book that can be read,” is not altogether without facts and truths in it. The cases when the _à priori_ negations of specialists have become justified by subsequent corroborations, form but an insignificant percentage of those that have been fully vindicated by subsequent discoveries and confirmed, to the great dismay of the learned objectors. _Ezour Veda_ was a very small bone of contention compared with the triumph of Sir William Jones, Anquetil du Perron, and others in the matter of Sanskrit and its literature. Such facts are recorded by Professor Max Müller himself, who, speaking of the discomfiture of Dugald Stewart and Co. in connection with this, states that: If the facts about Sanskrit were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise not to see that the conclusions drawn from them were inevitable. He therefore denied the reality of such a language as Sanskrit altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanskrit had been put together after the model of Greek and Latin, by those arch‐forgers and liars, the Brâhmans, and that the whole of Sanskrit literature was an imposition.(1026) The writer is quite willing and feels proud to keep company with these Brâhmans, and other _historical_ “liars,” in the opinion of our modern Dugald Stewarts. She has lived too long, and her experience has been too varied and personal, for her not to know at least something of human nature. “When you doubt, abstain,” says the wise Zoroaster, whose prudent aphorism is found corroborated in every case by daily life and experience. Yet, like St. John the Baptist, this Sage of the past ages is found preaching in the desert, in company with a more modern Philosopher, namely Bacon, who offers the same priceless bit of practical wisdom, when saying: In contemplation [in any question of knowledge, we add], if a man begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but _if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties_. With this piece of advice from the father of English Philosophy to the representatives of British Scepticism we ought to close the debate, but our Theosophical readers are entitled to a final piece of Occult information. Enough has been said to show that evolution in general, events, mankind, and everything else in Nature proceed in cycles. We have spoken of seven Races, five of which have nearly completed their earthly career, and have claimed that every Root‐Race, with its sub‐races and innumerable family divisions and tribes, was entirely distinct from its preceding and succeeding Race. This will be objected to, on the authority of uniform experience, in the question of Anthropology and Ethnology. Man—save in colour and type, and perhaps a difference in facial peculiarities and cranial capacity—has been ever the same under every climate and in every part of the world, say the Naturalists; ay, even in stature—this, while maintaining that man descends from the same unknown ancestor as the ape; a claim that is logically impossible without an infinite variation of stature and form from his first evolution into a biped. The very logical persons who maintain both propositions are welcome to their paradoxical views. Once more we address only those who, doubting the general derivation of myths from “the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature,” think it Less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demi‐gods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions, are transformations, than to believe them to be inventions. It is only such “transformations” in physical nature, as much as in the memory and conceptions of our present mankind, that the Secret Doctrine teaches. It confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of Modern Science, based upon the experience and exact observations of barely a few centuries, with the unbroken tradition and records of its Sanctuaries; and brushing away that tissue of cobweb‐like theories, spun in the darkness that covers a period of hardly a few millenniums, which Europeans call their “history,” the Old Science says to us: Listen, now, to my version of the memoirs of Humanity. The Human Races are born one from the other, grow, develop, become old, and die. Their sub‐races and nations follow the same rule. If your all‐ denying Modern Science and so‐called Philosophy do not contest that the human family is composed of a variety of well‐defined types and races, it is only because the fact is undeniable; no one would say that there was no external difference between an Englishman, an African negro, and a Japanese or Chinaman. On the other hand, it is formally denied by most Naturalists that _mixed_ human races, _i.e._, the seeds for entirely new races, are any longer formed in our days, although indeed the latter is maintained on good grounds by De Quatrefages and some others. Nevertheless our general proposition will not be accepted. It will be said that whatever forms man has passed through in the long pre‐historic past there are no more changes for him—save certain variations, as at present—in the future. Hence that our Sixth and Seventh Root‐Races are fictions. To this it is again answered: How do you know? Your experience is limited to a few thousand years, to less than a day in the whole age of Humanity and to the present types of the actual continents and isles of our Fifth Race. How can you tell what will or will not be? Meanwhile, such is the prophecy of the Secret Books and their not uncertain statements. Since the beginning of the Atlantean Race many million years have passed, yet we find the last of the Atlanteans still mixed up with the Âryan element, 11,000 years ago. This shows the enormous overlapping of one Race over the Race which succeeds it, though in characters and external type the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new features of the younger Race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human races. Now, Occult Philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new Race and races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced. Pure Anglo‐Saxons hardly three hundred years ago, the Americans of the United States have already become a nation apart, and, owing to a strong admixture of various nationalities and inter‐marriage, almost a race _sui generis_, not only mentally, but also physically. To quote from De Quatrefages: Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to play the part of a primary race in fresh crossings. Mankind, in its present state, has thus been formed, certainly for the greatest part, by the successive crossing of a number of races _at present undetermined_.(1027) Thus the Americans have become in only three centuries a “primary race,” temporarily, before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all other now existing races. They are, in short, the germs of the _sixth_ sub‐race, and in some few hundred years more, will become most decidedly the pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European or fifth sub‐race, in all its new characteristics. After this, in about 25,000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub‐race; until, in consequence of cataclysms—the first series of those which must one day destroy Europe, and still later the whole Âryan Race (and thus affect both Americas), as also most of the lands directly connected with the confines of our continent and isles—the Sixth Root‐Race will have appeared on the stage of our Round. When shall this be? Who knows save the great Masters of Wisdom, perchance, and they are as silent upon the subject as the snow‐capped peaks that tower above them. All we know is, that it will silently come into existence; so silently, indeed, that for long millenniums will its pioneers—the peculiar children who will grow into peculiar men and women—be regarded as anomalous _lusûs naturæ_, abnormal oddities physically and mentally. Then, as they increase, and their numbers become with every age greater, one day they will awake to find themselves in a majority. Then the present men will begin to be regarded as exceptional mongrels, until they die out in their turn in civilized lands, surviving only in small groups on islands—the mountain peaks of to‐day—where they will vegetate, degenerate, and finally die out, perhaps millions of years hence, as the Aztecs have, as the Nyam‐Nyam and the dwarfish Moola Koorumba of the Nilghiri Hills are dying. All these are the remnants of once mighty races, the recollection of whose existence has entirely died out of the remembrance of modern generations, just as we shall vanish from the memory of the Sixth Race Humanity. The Fifth will overlap the Sixth Race for many hundreds of millenniums, changing with it more slowly than its new successor, still changing in stature, general physique, and mentality, just as the Fourth overlapped our Âryan Race, and the Third had overlapped the Atlanteans. This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout the whole sixth and seventh sub‐races.(1028) But the _last_ remnants of the Fifth Continent will not disappear until some time after the birth of the _new_ Race; when another and _new_ dwelling, the Sixth Continent, will have appeared above the _new_ waters on the face of the Globe, so as to receive the new stranger. To it also will emigrate and there will settle all those who will be fortunate enough to escape the general disaster. When this shall be—as just said—it is not for the writer to know. Only, as Nature no more proceeds by sudden jumps and starts, than man changes suddenly from a child into a mature man, the final cataclysm will be preceded by many smaller submersions and destructions both by wave and volcanic fires. The exultant pulse will beat high in the heart of the race now in the American zone, but there will be no more Americans when the Sixth Race commences; no more, in fact, than Europeans; for they will have now become a _new Race, and many new nations_. Yet the Fifth will not die, but will survive for a while; overlapping the new Race for many hundred thousands of years to come, it will, as we have just said, become transformed with it more slowly than its new successor—still getting entirely altered in mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind will not grow again into giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the Atlanteans; because while the evolution of the Fourth Race led the latter down to the very bottom of materiality in its physical development, the present Race is on its ascending arc; and the Sixth will be rapidly growing out of its bonds of matter, and even of flesh. Thus it is the mankind of the New World, the senior by far of our Old one—a fact men had also forgotten—of Pâtâla (the Antipodes, or the Nether World, as America is called in India), whose mission and Karma it is, to sow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and far more glorious Race than any of those we know of at present. The Cycles of Matter will be succeeded by Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind. On the law of parallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind will be composed of glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of Cyclic Destiny, and not one of its Units can escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the burden of its coöperative work with Nature. Thus will Mankind, race after race, perform its appointed Cyclic Pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun to, change, each Tropical Year after the other dropping one sub‐race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other less favoured groups—the failures of Nature—will, like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind. Such is the course of Nature under the sway of Karmic Law; of Ever‐present and Ever‐becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few Occultists: _The Present is the child of the Past; the Future, the begotten of the Present. And yet, O present moment! knowest thou not that thou hast no parent, nor canst thou have a child; that thou art ever begetting but thyself? Before thou hast even begun to say __“__I am the progeny of the departed moment, the child of the past,__”__ thou hast become that past itself. Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou art no more the Present but verily that Future. Thus, are the Past, the Present, and the Future the Ever‐living Trinity in One—the Mahámâyâ of the Absolute __“__IS.__”_