The Secret Doctrine

The Titans of Hesiod’s Theogony were copied in Greece from the Suras and Asuras of India. These Hesiodic Titans, the Uranides, which were once upon a time numbered as only six, have been recently discovered, in an old fragment relating to the Greek myth, to be seven, the seventh being called Phoreg. Thus their identity with the Seven Rectors is fully demonstrated. The origin of the War in Heaven and the Fall has, in our mind, to be traced unavoidably to India, and perhaps far earlier than the Purânic accounts thereof. For the Târakâmaya was in a later age, and there are accounts of three distinct Wars to be traced in almost every Cosmogony.

The first War happened in the night of time, between the Gods and (A)‐suras, and lasted for the period of one Divine Year.(673) On this occasion the Deities were defeated by the Daityas, under the leadership of Hrâda. But afterwards, owing to a device of Vishnu, to whom the conquered Gods applied for help, the latter defeated the Asuras. In the Vishnu Purâna no interval is found between the two Wars. In the Esoteric Doctrine, however, one War takes place before the building of the Solar System; another, on Earth, at the “creation” of man; and a third War is mentioned as taking place at the close of the Fourth Race, between its Adepts and those of the Fifth Race; that is, between the Initiates of the “Sacred Island” and the Sorcerers of Atlantis. We shall notice the first contest, as recounted by Parâshara, and endeavour to separate the two accounts, which are purposely blended together.

It is there stated that as the Daityas and Asuras were engaged in the duties of their respective Orders (Varnas) and followed the paths prescribed by holy writ, practising also religious penance—a queer employment for Demons if they are identical with our Devils, as it is claimed—it was impossible for the Gods to destroy them. The prayers addressed by the Gods to Vishnu are curious, as showing the ideas involved in an anthropomorphic Deity. Having, after their defeat, “fled to the northern shore of the Milky Ocean [Atlantic Ocean],”(674) the discomfited Gods address many supplications “to the first of Beings, the divine Vishnu,” and among others the following:

Glory to thee, who art one with the Saints, whose perfect nature is ever blessed, and traverses, unobstructed, all permeable elements. Glory to thee, who art one with the Serpent‐Race, double‐tongued, impetuous, cruel, insatiate of enjoyment and abounding with wealth.... Glory to thee, ... O Lord, who hast neither colour nor extension, nor bulk (ghana), nor any predicable qualities, and whose essence (rûpa), purest of the pure, is appreciable only by holy Paramarshis [the greatest of Sages or Rishis]. We bow to thee, in the nature of Brahma, uncreated, undecaying (avyaya); who art in our bodies, and in all other bodies, and in all living creatures; and beside whom nothing exists. We glorify that Vâsudeva, the lord (of all), who is without soil, the seed of all things, exempt from dissolution, unborn, eternal; being, in essence, Paramapadâtmavat [beyond the condition of Spirit], and, in substance (rûpa), the whole of this (Universe).(675)

The above is quoted as an illustration of the vast field offered by the Purânas to adverse and erroneous criticism, by every European bigot who forms an estimate of an alien religion on mere external evidence. Any man accustomed to subject what he reads to thoughtful analysis, will see at a glance the incongruity of addressing the accepted “Unknowable,” the formless, and attributeless Absolute, such as the Vedântins define Brahman, as being “one with the Serpent‐Race, double‐tongued, cruel and insatiable,” thus associating the abstract with the concrete, and bestowing adjectives on that which is free from any limitations, and conditionless. Even Professor Wilson, who, after living surrounded by Brâhmans and Pandits in India for so many years, ought to have known better—even that scholar lost no opportunity of criticizing the Hindû Scriptures on this account. Thus, he exclaims: The Purânas constantly teach incompatible doctrines! According to this passage,(676) the Supreme Being is not the inert cause of creation only, but exercises the functions of an active providence. The Commentator quotes a text of the Veda in support of this view: “Universal Soul entering into men, governs their conduct.” Incongruities, however, are as frequent in the Vedas as in the Purânas.

Less frequent, in sober truth, than in the Mosaic Bible. But prejudice is great in the hearts of our Orientalists, especially in those of “reverend” scholars. Universal Soul is not the inert Cause of Creation or (Para) Brahman, but simply that which we call the Sixth Principle of Intellectual Kosmos, on the manifested plane of being. It is Mahat, or Mahâbuddhi, the Great Soul, the Vehicle of Spirit, the first primeval reflection of the formless CAUSE, and that which is even beyond Spirit. So much for Professor Wilson’s uncalled‐for fling at the Purânas. As for the apparently incongruous appeal to Vishnu by the defeated Gods, the explanation is there, in the text of Vishnu Purâna, if Orientalists would only notice it. There is Vishnu as Brahmâ, and Vishnu in his two aspects, philosophy teaches. There is but one Brahman, “essentially Prakriti and Spirit.” This ignorance is truly and beautifully expressed in the praise of the Yogins to Brahmâ, “the upholder of the earth,” when they say:

Those who have not practised devotion conceive erroneously of the nature of the world. The ignorant, who do not perceive that this Universe is of the nature of Wisdom, and judge of it as an object of perception only, are lost in the ocean of spiritual ignorance. But they who know true Wisdom, and whose minds are pure, behold this whole world as one with Divine Knowledge, as one with thee, O God! Be favourable, O universal Spirit!(677) Therefore, it is not Vishnu, “the inert cause of creation,” which exercised the functions of an Active Providence, but the Universal Soul, that which, in its material aspect, Éliphas Lévi calls Astral Light. And this Soul is, in its dual aspect of Spirit and Matter, the true anthropomorphic God of the Theists; for this God is a personification of that Universal Creative Agent, both pure and impure, owing to its manifested condition and differentiation in this Mâyâvic World—God and Devil, truly. But Professor Wilson failed to see how Vishnu, in this character, closely resembles the Lord God of Israel, “especially in his policy of deception, temptation, and cunning.” In the Vishnu Purâna this is made as plain as can be. For it is said there, that:

At the conclusion of their prayers (stotra) the Gods beheld the Sovereign Deity Hari (Vishnu) armed with the shell, the discus, and the mace, riding on Garuda. Now Garuda is the Manvantaric Cycle, as will be shown in its place. Vishnu, therefore, is the Deity in Space and Time, the peculiar God of the Vaishnavas. Such Gods are called in Esoteric Philosophy tribal or racial; that is to say, one of the many Dhyânis or Gods, or Elohim, one of whom was generally chosen for some special reason by a nation or a tribe, and thus became gradually a “God above all Gods,”(678) the “highest God,” as Jehovah, Osiris, Bel, or any other of the Seven Regents.

“The tree is known by its fruit”; the nature of a God by his actions. We must either judge these actions by the dead‐letter narratives, or must accept them allegorically. If we compare the two—Vishnu, as the defender and champion of the defeated Gods; and Jehovah, the defender and champion of the “chosen” people, so called by antiphrasis, no doubt, as it is the Jews who had chosen that “jealous” God—we shall find that both use deceit and cunning. They do so on the principle of “the end justifying the means,” in order to have the best of their respective opponents and foes—the Demons. Thus while, according to the Kabalists, Jehovah assumes the shape of the tempting Serpent in the Garden of Eden, sends Satan with a special mission to tempt Job, harasses and wearies Pharaoh with Saraï, Abraham’s wife, and “hardens” another Pharaoh’s heart against Moses, lest there should be no opportunity for plaguing his victims “with great plagues,” Vishnu is made in his Purâna to resort to a trick no less unworthy of any respectable God. The defeated Gods addressed Vishnu as follows:

Have compassion upon us, O Lord, and protect us, who have come to thee for succour from the Daityas (Demons)! They have seized upon the three worlds, and appropriated the offerings which are our portion, taking care not to transgress the precepts of the Veda. Although we, as well as they, are parts of thee(679) ... engaged [as they are] ... in the paths prescribed by the holy writ ... it is impossible for us to destroy them. Do thou, whose wisdom is immeasurable (Ameyâtman) instruct us in some device by which we may be able to exterminate the enemies of the Gods! When the mighty Vishnu heard their request, he emitted from his body an illusory form (Mâyâmoha, the “deluder by illusion”) which he gave to the Gods and thus spake: “This Mâyâmoha shall wholly beguile the Daityas, so that, being led astray from the path of the Vedas, they may be put to death.... Go then and fear not. Let this delusive vision precede you. It shall this day be of great service unto you, O Gods!”

After this, the great Delusion (Mâyâmoha) having proceeded (to earth), beheld the Daityas, engaged in ascetic penances, and approaching them, in the semblance of a Digambara (naked mendicant) with his head shaven ... he thus addressed them, in gentle accents: “Ho, lords of the Daitya race, wherefore is it that you practise these acts of penances?” etc.(680) Finally the Daityas were seduced by the wily talk of Mâyâmoha, as Eve was seduced by the advice of the Serpent. They became apostates to the Vedas. As Dr. Muir translates the passage:

The great Deceiver, practising illusion, next beguiled other Daityas, by means of many other sorts of heresy. In a very short time, these Asuras (Daityas), deluded by the Deceiver [who was Vishnu] abandoned the entire system founded on the ordinances of the triple Veda. Some reviled the Vedas; others, the ceremonial of sacrifice; and others, the Brâhmans. This (they exclaimed), is a doctrine which will not bear discussion: the slaughter (of animals, in sacrifice), is not conducive to religious merit. (To say, that) oblations of butter consumed in the fire produce any future reward, is the assertion of a child.... If it be a fact that a beast slain in sacrifice is exalted to heaven, why does not the worshipper slaughter his own father?... Infallible utterances do not, great Asuras, fall from the skies; it is only assertions founded on reasoning that are accepted by me and by other [intelligent] persons like yourselves! Thus by numerous methods the Daityas were unsettled by the great Deceiver [Reason].... When the Daityas had entered on the path of error, the Deities mustered all their energies and approached to battle. Then followed a combat between the Gods and the Asuras; and the latter, who had abandoned the right road, were smitten by the former. In previous times they had been defended by the armour of righteousness which they bore; but, when that had been destroyed, they, also, perished.(681)

Whatever may be thought of the Hindûs, no enemy of theirs can regard them as fools. A people, whose holy men and sages have left to the world the greatest and most sublime philosophies that ever emanated from the minds of men, must have known the difference between right and wrong. Even a savage can discern white from black, good from bad, and deceit from sincerity and truthfulness. Those who had narrated this event in the biography of their God, must have seen that in this case it was that God who was the Arch‐Deceiver, and the Daityas, who “never transgressed the precepts of the Vedas,” who had the sunny side in the transaction, and who were the true “Gods.” Thence there must have been, and there is a secret meaning hidden under this allegory. In no class of society, in no nation, are deceit and craft considered as divine virtues—except perhaps in the clerical classes of Theologians and modern Jesuitism.

The Vishnu Purâna,(682) like all other works of this kind, passed at a later period into the hands of the Temple‐Brâhmans, and the old MSS. have, no doubt, been further tampered with by sectarians. But there was a time when the Purânas were esoteric works, and so they are still for the Initiates who can read them with the key that is in their possession.

Whether the Brâhman Initiates will ever give out the full meaning of these allegories, is a question with which the writer is not concerned. The present object is to show that, while honouring the Creative Powers in their multiple forms, no philosopher could have, or ever has, accepted the allegory for its true spirit, except, perhaps, some philosophers belonging to the present “superior and civilized” Christian races. For, as shown, Jehovah is not one whit the superior of Vishnu on the plane of ethics. This is why the Occultists, and even some Kabalists, whether or not they regard those creative Forces as living and conscious Entities—and one does not see why they should not be so accepted—will never confuse the Cause with the Effect, and accept the Spirit of the Earth for Parabrahman, or Ain Suph. At all events they know well the true nature of what was called by the Greeks Father‐Æther, Jupiter‐Titan, etc. They know that the Soul of the Astral Light is divine, and its Body—the Light‐waves on the lower planes—infernal. This Light is symbolized by the “Magic Head” in the Zohar, the Double Face on the Double Pyramid; the black Pyramid rising against a pure white ground, with a white Head and Face within its black Triangle; the White Pyramid, inverted—the reflection of the first in the dark Waters—showing the black reflection of the white Face.

This is the Astral Light, or Demon est Deus Inversus.

To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient Cosmology necessitates the study and comparative analysis of all the great religions of antiquity; for it is only by this method that the root‐idea can be made plain. Exact Science, could it soar so high, in tracing the operations of Nature to their ultimate and original sources, would call this idea the Hierarchy of Forces. The original, transcendental and philosophical conception was one. But as systems began to reflect more and more with every age the idiosyncrasies of nations, and as the latter, after separating, settled into distinct groups, each evolving along its own national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually became veiled by the overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the Forces, or rather the intelligent Powers of Nature, received divine honours to which they were hardly entitled, in others—as now in Europe and the other civilized lands—the very thought of such Forces being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is proclaimed unscientific. Therefore one finds relief in such statements as are found in the Introduction to Asgard and the Gods; “Tales and Traditions of our Northern Ancestors,” edited by W. S. W. Anson, who says:

Although in Central Asia, or on the banks of the Indus, in the Land of the Pyramids, and in the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and even in the North, whither Kelts, Teutons and Slavs wandered, the religious conceptions of the people have taken different forms, yet their common origin is still perceptible. We point out this connection between the stories of the Gods, and the deep thought contained in them, and their importance, in order that the reader may see that it is not a magic world of erratic fancy which opens out before him, but that ... Life and Nature formed the basis of the existence and action of these divinities.(683) And though it is impossible for any Occultist or student of Eastern Esotericism to concur in the strange idea that, “the religious conceptions of the most famous nations of antiquity are connected with the beginnings of civilization amongst the Germanic races,”(684) he is yet glad to find such truths expressed as that: “These fairy tales are not senseless stories written for the amusement of the idle; they embody the profound religion of our forefathers.”(685)

Precisely so. Not only their Religion, but likewise their History. For a myth, in Greek μῦθος, means oral tradition, passed from mouth to mouth from one generation to the other; and even in the modern etymology the term stands for a fabulous statement conveying some important truth; a tale of some extraordinary personage whose biography has become overgrown, owing to the veneration of successive generations, with rich popular fancy, but which is no wholesale fable. Like our ancestors, the primitive Âryans, we believe firmly in the personality and intelligence of more than one phenomenon‐producing Force in Nature.

As time rolled on, the archaic teaching grew dimmer; and the nations more or less lost sight of the Highest and One Principle of all things, and began to transfer the abstract attributes of the Causeless Cause to the caused effects, which became in their turn causative, the Creative Powers of the Universe; the great nations thus acted from fear of profaning the Idea; the smaller, because they either failed to grasp it, or lacked the power of philosophic conception needed to preserve it in all its immaculate purity. But one and all, with the exception of the latest Âryans, now become Europeans and Christians, show this veneration in their Cosmogonies. As Thomas Taylor,(686) the most intuitional of all the translators of the Greek Fragments, shows, no nation has ever conceived the One Principle as the immediate creator of the visible Universe, for no sane man would credit a planner and architect with having built with his own hands the edifice he admires. On the testimony of Damascius in his work, On First Principles (Περὶ Πρώτων Ἀρχῶν), they referred to it as the “Unknown Darkness.” The Babylonians passed over this principle in silence. “To that God,” says Porphyry, in his On Abstinence (Περί ἀποχῆς τῶν ἐμψύχων), “who is above all things, neither external speech ought to be addressed, nor yet that which is inward.” Hesiod begins his Theogony with the words, “Chaos of all things was the first produced,”(687) thus allowing the inference that its Cause or Producer must be passed over in reverential silence.

Homer in his poems ascends no higher than Night, which he represents Zeus as reverencing. According to all the ancient theologists, and the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, Zeus, or the immediate Artificer of the Universe, is not the highest God; any more than Sir Christopher Wren in his physical, human aspect is the Mind in him which produced his great works of art. Homer, therefore, is not only silent with respect to the First Principle, but likewise with respect to those two Principles immediately posterior to the First, the Æther and Chaos of Orpheus and Hesiod, and the Bound and Infinity of Pythagoras and Plato.(688) Proclus says of this Highest Principle that it is “the Unity of Unities, and beyond the first Adyta ... more ineffable than all Silence, and more occult than all Essence ... concealed amidst the intelligible Gods.”(689)

To what was written by Thomas Taylor in 1797—namely, that the “Jews appear to have ascended no higher ... than the immediate Artificer of the Universe,” as “Moses introduces a darkness on the face of the deep, without even insinuating that there was any cause of its existence,”(690) one might add something more. Never have the Jews in their Bible—a purely esoteric, symbolical work—so profoundly degraded their metaphorical deity as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their one living yet personal God.

This First, or rather One, Principle was called the “Circle of Heaven,” symbolized by the hierogram of a Point within a Circle or Equilateral Triangle, the Point being the Logos. Thus, in the Rig Veda, wherein Brahmâ is not even named. Cosmogony is preluded with the Hiranyagarbha, the “Golden Egg,” and Prajâpati (later on Brahmâ), from whom emanate all the Hierarchies of “Creators.” The Monad, or Point, is the original and is the Unit from which follows the entire numeral system. This Point is the First Cause, but THAT from which it emanates, or of which, rather, it is the expression, the Logos, is passed over in silence. In its turn, the universal symbol, the _Point __ within the Circle_, was not yet the Architect, but the Cause of that Architect; and the latter stood to it in precisely the same relation as the Point itself stood to the Circumference of the Circle, which cannot be defined, according to Hermes Trismegistus. Porphyry shows that the Monad and the Duad of Pythagoras are identical with Plato’s Infinite and Finite, in Philebus, or what Plato calls the ἄπειρον and πέρας. It is the latter only, the Mother, which is substantial, the former being the “Cause of all Unity and measure of all things”;(691) the Duad, Mûlaprakriti, the Veil of Parabrahman, being thus shown to be the Mother of the Logos and, at the same time, his Daughter—that is to say, the object of his perception—the produced producer and the secondary cause of it. With Pythagoras, the Monad returns into Silence and Darkness, as soon as it has evolved the Triad, from which emanate the remaining 7 numbers of the 10 numbers which are at the base of the Manifested Universe.

In the Norse Cosmogony it is again the same. In the beginning was a great Abyss (Chaos), neither Day nor Night existed; the Abyss was Ginnungagap, the yawning gulf, without beginning, without end. All‐Father, the Uncreated, the Unseen, dwelt in the Depth of the Abyss (Space) and willed, and what was willed came into being.(692)

As in the Hindû Cosmogony, the evolution of the Universe is divided into two acts, which are called in India the Prâkrita and Pâdma Creations. Before the warm rays pouring from the Home of Brightness awaken life in the Great Waters of Space, the Elements of the First Creation come into view, and from them is formed the Giant Ymir, or Örgelmir (literally, Seething Clay), Primordial Matter differentiated from Chaos. Then comes the Cow Audumla, the Nourisher,(693) from whom is born Buri, the Producer, whose son Bör (Born), by Bestla, the daughter of the Frost‐Giants, the sons of Ymir, had three sons, Odin, Willi and We, or Spirit, Will, and Holiness. This was when Darkness still reigned throughout Space, when the Ases, the Creative Powers, or Dhyân Chohans, were not yet evolved, and the Yggdrasil, the Tree of the Universe of Time and of Life, had not yet grown, and there was, as yet, no Walhalla, or Hall of Heroes. The Scandinavian legends of Creation, of our Earth and World, begin with Time and human Life. All that precedes it is for them Darkness, wherein All‐ Father, the Cause of all, dwells. As observed by the editor of Asgard and the Gods, though these legends have in them the idea of that All‐Father, the original cause of all, “he is scarcely more than mentioned in the poems,” not, as he thinks, because before the preaching of the Gospel, the idea “could not rise to distinct conceptions of the Eternal,” but on account of its deep esoteric character.

Therefore, all the Creative Gods, or Personal Deities, begin at the secondary stage of Cosmic Evolution. Zeus is born in, and out of Cronus—Time. So is Brahmâ the production and emanation of Kâla, “Eternity and Time,” Kâla being one of the names of Vishnu. Hence we find Odin, the Father of the Gods and of the Ases, as Brahmâ is the Father of the Gods and of the Asuras; and hence also the androgyne character of all the chief Creative Gods, from the second Monad of the Greeks down to the Sephira Adam Kadmon, the Brahmâ or Prajâpati‐ Vâch of the Vedas, and the androgyne of Plato, which is but another version of the Indian symbol.

The best metaphysical definition of primeval Theogony, in the spirit of the Vedântins, may be found in the “Notes on the Bhagavad Gîtâ”, by T. Subba Row. Parabrahman, the Unknown and the Incognizable, as the lecturer tells his audience: Is not Ego, it is not Non‐Ego, nor is it consciousness ... it is not even Âtmâ ... but though not itself an object of knowledge, it is yet capable of supporting and giving rise to every kind of object and every kind of existence which becomes an object of knowledge.... [It is] the one essence from which starts into existence a centre of energy ... [which he calls the Logos].(694) This Logos is the Shabda Brahman of the Hindûs, which he will not even call Îshvara (the “Lord” God), lest the term should create confusion in the people’s minds. It is the Avalokiteshvara of the Buddhists, the Verbum of the Christians in its real esoteric meaning, not in its theological disfigurement.

It is, the first Jñâta, or the Ego in the Kosmos, and every other Ego ... is but its reflection and manifestation.... It exists in a latent condition in the bosom of Parabrahman, at the time of Pralaya.... [During Manvantara] it has a consciousness and an individuality of its own.... [It is a centre of energy, but] such centres of energy are almost innumerable in the bosom of Parabrahman. It must not be supposed, that [even] this Logos is [the Creator, or that it is] but a single centre of energy.... Their number is almost infinite.... [This] is the first Ego that appears in Kosmos, and is the end of all evolution. [It is the abstract Ego].... This is the first manifestation [or aspect] of Parabrahman.... When once it starts into existence as a conscious being, ... from its objective standpoint, Parabrahman appears to it as Mûlaprakriti. Please bear this in mind ... for here is the root of the whole difficulty about Purusha and Prakriti felt by the various writers on Vedântic philosophy.... This Mûlaprakriti is material to it [the Logos], as any material object is material to us. This Mûlaprakriti is no more Parabrahman than the bundle of attributes of a pillar is the pillar itself; Parabrahman is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mûlaprakriti is a sort of veil thrown over it. Parabrahman by itself cannot be seen as it is. It is seen by the Logos with a veil thrown over it, and that veil is the mighty expanse of Cosmic Matter.... Parabrahman, after having appeared on the one hand as the Ego, and on the other as Mûlaprakriti, acts as the one energy through the Logos.(695)

And the lecturer explains what he means by this acting of Something which is Nothing, though it is the ALL, by a fine simile. He compares the Logos to the Sun through which light and heat radiate, but whose energy, light and heat, exist in some unknown condition in Space and are diffused in Space only as visible light and heat, the Sun being only the agent thereof. This is the first triadic hypostasis. The quaternary is made up by the energizing light shed by the Logos. The Hebrew Kabalists stated it in a manner which is esoterically identical with the Vedântic. Ain Suph, they taught, could not be comprehended, could not be located, nor named, though the Causeless Cause of all. Hence its name, Ain Suph, is a term of negation, “the Inscrutable, the Incognizable, and the Unnameable.” They made of it, therefore, a Boundless Circle, a Sphere, of which human intellect, with the utmost stretch, could only perceive the vault. In the words of one who has unriddled much in the Kabalistical system most thoroughly, in one of its meanings, in its numerical and geometrical esotericism:

Close your eyes, and from your own consciousness of perception try and think outward to the extremest limits in every direction. You will find that equal lines or rays of perception extend out evenly in all directions, so that the utmost effort of perception will terminate in the vault of a sphere. The limitation of this sphere will, of necessity, be a great Circle, and the direct rays of thought in any and every direction must be right line radii of the circle. This, then, must be, humanly speaking, the extremest all‐embracing conception of the Ain Suph manifest, which formulates itself as a geometrical figure, viz., of a circle, with its elements of curved circumference and right line diameter divided into radii. Hence, a geometrical shape is the first recognizable means of connection between the Ain Suph and the intelligence of man.(696)

This Great Circle, which Eastern Esotericism reduces to the Point within the Boundless Circle, is the Avalokiteshvara, the Logos, or Verbum, of which T. Subba Row speaks. But this Circle or manifested God is as unknown to us, except through its manifested Universe, as is the ONE, though easier, or rather more possible to our highest conceptions. This Logos which sleeps in the bosom of Parabrahman, during Pralaya, as our “Ego is latent [in us] at the time of Sushupti,” or sleep, which cannot cognize Parabrahman otherwise than as Mûlaprakriti—the latter being a Cosmic Veil which is “the mighty expanse of Cosmic Matter”—is thus only an organ in Cosmic Creation, through which radiate the Energy and Wisdom of Parabrahman, unknown to the Logos, as it is to ourselves. Moreover, as the Logos is as unknown to us as Parabrahman is unknown in reality to the Logos, both Eastern Esotericism and the Kabalah, in order to bring the Logos within the range of our conceptions, have resolved the abstract synthesis into concrete images; viz., into the reflections or multiplied aspects of that Logos, or Avalokiteshvara, Brahmâ Ormazd, Osiris, Adam Kadmon, call it by any of such names you will; which aspects, or manvantaric emanations, are the Dhyân Chohans, the Elohim, the Devas, the Amshaspends, etc. Metaphysicians explain the root and germ of the latter, according to T. Subba Row, as the first manifestation of Parabrahman, “the highest trinity that we are capable of understanding,” which is Mûlaprakriti, the Veil, the Logos, and the Conscious Energy of the latter, or its Power and Light, called in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, Daiviprakriti;

or “Matter, Force and the Ego, or the one root of Self, of which every other kind of self is but a manifestation or a reflection.” It is then only in this Light of consciousness, of mental and physical perception, that practical Occultism can throw the Logos into visibility by geometrical figures, which, when closely studied, will yield not only a scientific explanation of the real, objective, existence(697) of the “Seven Sons of the Divine Sophia,” which is this Light of the Logos, but will show, by means of other yet undiscovered keys, that, with regard to Humanity, these “Seven Sons” and their numberless emanations, centres of energy personified, are an absolute necessity. Make away with them, and the Mystery of Being and Mankind will never be unriddled, nor even closely approached.

It is through this Light that everything is created. This Root of mental SELF is also the root of physical Self, for this Light is the permutation, in our manifested world, of Mûlaprakriti, called Aditi in the Vedas. In its third aspect it becomes Vâch,(698) the Daughter and the Mother of the Logos, as Isis is the Daughter and the Mother of Osiris, who is Horns, and Moot, the Daughter, Wife, and Mother, of Ammon, in the Egyptian Moon‐glyph. In the Kabalah, Sephira is the same as Shekinah, and is, in another synthesis, the Wife, Daughter, and Mother of the Heavenly Man, Adam Kadmon, and is even identical with him, just as Vâch is identical with Brahmâ, and is called the female Logos. In the Rig Veda, Vâch is “Mystic Speech,” by whom Occult Knowledge and Wisdom are communicated to man, and thus Vâch is said to have “entered the Rishis.” She is “generated by the Gods”; she is the Divine Vâch, the “Queen of Gods”; and she is associated, like Sephira with the Sephiroth, with the Prajâpatis in their work of creation. Moreover, she is called the “Mother of the Vedas,” “since it is through her powers, [as Mystic Speech] that Brahmâ revealed them, and also owing to her power that he produced the Universe”; that is to say, through Speech, and words, synthesized by the “Word” and numbers.(699)

But when Vâch is also spoken of as the daughter of Daksha, “the God who lives in all the Kalpas,” her mâyâvic character is shown; during the Pralaya she disappears, absorbed in the One, all‐devouring Ray. But there are two distinct aspects in universal Esotericism, Eastern and Western, in all these personations of the female Power in Nature, or Nature the noumenal and the phenomenal. One is its purely metaphysical aspect, as described by the learned lecturer in his “Notes on the Bhagavad Gîtâ”; the other terrestrial and physical, and at the same time divine from the stand‐point of practical human conception and Occultism. They are all the symbols and personifications of Chaos, the Great Deep, or the Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable Veil between the INCOGNIZABLE and the Logos of Creation. “Connecting himself through his mind with Vâch, Brahmâ [the Logos] created the Primordial Waters.” In the Katha Upanishad it is stated still more clearly: Prajâpati was this Universe. Vâch was a second to him. He associated with her ... she produced these creatures and again reëntered Prajâpati.

This connects Vâch and Sephira with the Goddess Kwan‐Yin, the “Merciful Mother,” the Divine Voice of the Soul, even in exoteric Buddhism, and with the female aspect of Kwan‐Shai‐Yin, the Logos, the Verbum of Creation, and at the same time with the Voice that speaks audibly to the Initiate, according to Esoteric Budhism. Bath Kol, the Filia Vocis, the Daughter of the Divine Voice of the Hebrews, responding from the Mercy Seat within the Veil of the Temple is—a result.

And here we may incidentally point out one of the many unjust slurs thrown by the “good and pious” missionaries in India on the religion of the land. The allegory, in the Shatapatha Brâhmana, that Brahmâ, as the Father of men, performed the work of procreation by incestuous intercourse with his own daughter Vâch, also called Sandhyâ, Twilight, and Shatarûpâ, of a hundred forms, is incessantly thrown in the teeth of the Brâhmans, as condemning their “detestable, false religion.” Besides the fact, conveniently forgotten by the Europeans, that the Patriarch Lot is shown guilty of the same crime under the human form, whereas it was under the form of a buck that Brahmâ, or rather Prajâpati, accomplished the incest with his daughter, who had that of a hind (rohit), the esoteric reading of the third chapter of Genesis shows the same. Moreover, there is certainly a cosmic, and not a physiological, meaning attached to the Indian allegory, since Vâch is a permutation of Aditi and Mûlaprakriti, or Chaos, and Brahmâ a permutation of Nârâyana, the Spirit of God entering into, and fructifying Nature; and, therefore, there is nothing phallic in the conception at all.

As already stated, Aditi‐Vâch is the female Logos, or Verbum, the Word; and Sephira in the Kabalah is the same. These feminine Logoi are all correlations, in their noumenal aspect, of Light, and Sound, and Æther, showing how well‐informed were the Ancients both in Physical Science, as now known to the moderns, and also as to the birth of that Science in the Spiritual and Astral spheres. Our old writers said that Vâch is of four kinds. These are called Parâ, Pashyantî, Madhyamâ, Vaikharî. This statement you will find in the Rig Veda itself and in several of the Upanishads. Vaikharî Vâch is what we utter. It is Sound, Speech, that again which becomes comprehensive and objective to one of our physical senses and may be brought under the laws of perception. Hence: Every kind of Vaikharî Vâch exists in its Madhyamâ ... Pashyantî and ultimately in its Parâ form.... The reason why this Pranava(700) is called Vâch is this, that these four principles of the great Kosmos correspond to these four forms of Vâch.... The whole Kosmos in its objective form is Vaikharî Vâch; the Light of the Logos is the Madhyamâ form; and the Logos itself the Pasyantî form; while Parabrahman is the Parâ [beyond the Noumenon of all Noumena] aspect of that Vâch.(701)

Thus Vâch, Shekinah, or the “Music of the Spheres” of Pythagoras, are one, if we take for our example instances in the three most (apparently) dissimilar religious philosophies in the world, the Hindû, the Greek and the Chaldean Hebrew. These personations and allegories may be viewed under four chief and three lesser aspects, or seven in all, as in Esotericism. The Parâ form is the ever subjective and latent Light and Sound, which exist eternally in the bosom of the INCOGNIZABLE; when transferred into the ideation of the Logos, or its latent Light, it is called Pasyantî, and when it becomes that Light expressed, it is Madhyamâ. Now the Kabalah gives the definition thus: There are three kinds of Light, and that [the fourth] which interpenetrates the others; (1) the clear and the penetrating, the objective Light, (2) the reflected Light, and (3) the abstract Light.

The ten Sephiroth, the Three and the Seven, are called in the Kabalah the Ten Words, DBRIM (Dabarim), the Numbers and the Emanations of the Heavenly Light, which is both Adam Kadmon and Sephira, Prajâpati‐Vâch, or Brahmâ. Light, Sound, Number, are the three factors of creation in the Kabalah. Parabrahman cannot be known except through the luminous Point, the Logos, which knows not Parabrahman but only Mûlaprakriti. Similarly Adam Kadmon knew only Shekinah, though he was the Vehicle of Ain Suph. And, as Adam Kadmon, he is, in the Esoteric interpretation, the total of the Number Ten, the Sephiroth, himself being a Trinity, or the three attributes of the Incognizable Deity in One.(702) “When the Heavenly Man (or Logos) first assumed the form of the Crown(703) [Kether] and identified himself with Sephira, he caused Seven splendid Lights to emanate from it [the Crown],” which made in their totality Ten; so Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, once he became separated from, yet identical with Vâch, caused the seven Rishis, the seven Manus or Prajâpatis, to issue from that Crown. In exotericism one will always find 10 and 7, of either Sephira or Prajâpati; in esoteric rendering always 3 and 7, which yield also 10. Only when divided, in the manifested sphere, into 3 and 7, they form [circle with vertical line], the androgyne, and [circle containing an X], or the figure X manifested and differentiated.

This will help the student to understand why Pythagoras esteemed the Deity, the Logos, to be the Centre of Unity and Source of Harmony. We say this Deity was the Logos, not the Monad that dwelleth in Solitude and Silence, because Pythagoras taught that Unity being indivisible is no number. And this is also why it was required of the candidate, who applied for admittance into his school, that he should have already studied as a preliminary step, the sciences of Arithmetic, Astronomy, Geometry and Music, which were held to be the four divisions of Mathematics.(704) Again, this explains why the Pythagoreans asserted that the doctrine of Numbers, the chief of all in Esotericism, had been revealed to man by the Celestial Deities; that the World had been called forth out of Chaos by Sound, or Harmony, and constructed according to the principles of musical proportion; that the seven planets which rule the destiny of mortals have a harmonious motion and, as Censorinus says: Intervals corresponding to musical diastemes, rendering various sounds, so perfectly consonant, that they produce the sweetest melody, which is inaudible to us, only by reason of the greatness of the sound, which our ears are incapable of receiving.

In the Pythagorean Theogony, the Hierarchies of the Heavenly Host and Gods were numbered, and also expressed numerically. Pythagoras had studied Esoteric Science in India; therefore we find his pupils saying: The Monad [the manifested One] is the principle of all things. From the Monad and the indeterminate Duad (Chaos), Numbers; from Numbers, Points; from Points, Lines; from Lines, Superficies; from Superficies, Solids; from these, Solid Bodies, whose elements are four, Fire, Water, Air, Earth; of all which transmuted [correlated], and totally changed, the World consists.(705) And this, if it does not unriddle the mystery altogether, may at any rate lift a corner of the veil off those wondrous allegories that have been thrown over Vâch, the most mysterious of all the Brâhmanical Goddesses; she who is termed “the melodious Cow who milked forth sustenance and Water”—the Earth with all her mystic powers; and again she “who yields us nourishment and sustenance”—the physical Earth. Isis is also mystic Nature and also Earth; and her cow’s horns identify her with Vâch, who, after being recognized in her highest form as Parâ, becomes, at the lower or material end of creation, Vaikharî. Hence she is mystic, though physical, Nature, with all her magic ways and properties.

Again, as Goddess of Speech and of Sound, and a permutation of Aditi, she is Chaos, in one sense. At any rate, she is the “Mother of the Gods,” and it is from Brahmâ, Îshvara or the Logos, and Vâch, as from Adam Kadmon and Sephira, that the real manifested Theogony has to start. Beyond, all is Darkness and abstract speculation. With the Dhyân Chohans or the Gods, the Seers, the Prophets and the Adepts in general are on firm ground. Whether as Aditi, or the Divine Sophia of the Greek Gnostics, she is the mother of the Seven Sons, the Angels of the Face, of the Deep, or the Great Green One of the Book of the Dead. Says the Book of Dzyan, or Real Knowledge, obtained through meditation: The Great Mother lay with the [triangle], and the |, and the [square], the second | and the [five‐pointed star],(706)_ in her Bosom, ready to bring them forth, the valiant Sons of the [square] [triangle] || [or 4,320,000, the Cycle], whose two Elders are the [circle] [Circle] and the · [Point]._

At the beginning of every Cycle of 4,320,000, the Seven, or as some nations had it Eight, Great Gods, descend to establish the new order of things and to give the impetus to the new cycle. That eighth God was the unifying Circle, or Logos, separated and made distinct from its Host, in exoteric dogma, just as the three divine hypostases of the ancient Greeks are now considered in the Churches as three distinct personæ. As a Commentary says: _The Mighty Ones perform their great works, and leave behind them __ everlasting monuments to commemorate their visit, every time they penetrate within our mâyâvic veil [atmosphere]._(707) Thus we are taught that the great Pyramids were built under their direct supervision, “when Dhruva [the then Pole‐star], was at his lowest culmination, and the Krittikâs [Pleiades] looked over his head [were on the same meridian but above] to watch the work of the Giants.” Thus, as the first Pyramids were built at the beginning of a Sidereal Year, under Dhruva (Alpha Polaris), it must have been over 31,000 years (31,105) ago. Bunsen was right in admitting for Egypt an antiquity of over 21,000 years, but this concession hardly exhausts truth and fact in this question. As Mr. Gerald Massey says:

The stories told by Egyptian priests and others of time‐keeping in Egypt are now beginning to look less like lies in the sight of all who have escaped from biblical bondage. Inscriptions have lately been found at Sakkarah, making mention of two Sothiac cycles ... registered at that time, now some 6,000 years ago. Thus when Herodotus was in Egypt, the Egyptians had—as now known—observed at least five different Sothiac cycles of 1,461 years.... The priests informed the Greek enquirer that time had been reckoned by them for so long that the sun had twice risen where it then set, and twice set where it then arose. This ... can only be realized as a fact in nature by means of two cycles of Precession, or a period of 51,736 years.(708)

Mor Isaac(709) shows the ancient Syrians defining their World of the “Rulers” and “Active Gods” in the same way as the Chaldeans. The lowest World was the Sublunary—our own—watched by the Angels of the first or lower order; the one that came next in rank, was Mercury, ruled by the Archangels: then came Venus, whose Gods were the Principalities; the fourth was that of the Sun, the domain and region of the highest and mightiest Gods of our system, the solar Gods of all nations; the fifth was Mars, ruled by the Virtues; the sixth, that of Bel or Jupiter, was governed by the Dominions; the seventh, the World of Saturn, by the Thrones. These are the Worlds of Form. Above come the Four higher ones, making Seven again, since the Three highest are “unmentionable and unpronounceable.” The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is the domain of the Cherubs; the ninth, belonging to the walking and numberless stars on account of their distance, has the Seraphs; as to the tenth, Kircher, quoting Mor Isaac, says that it is composed “of invisible stars that could be taken, they said, for clouds, so massed are they in the zone that we call Via Straminis, the Milky Way”; and he hastens to explain that “these are the stars of Lucifer, engulfed with him in his terrible shipwreck.” That which comes after and beyond the ten Worlds (our Quaternary), or the Arûpa World, the Syrians could not tell. “All they knew was that it is there that begins the vast and incomprehensible Ocean of the Infinite, the abode of the True Divinity, without boundary or end.”

Champollion shows the same belief among the Egyptians. Hermes having spoken of the Father‐Mother and Son, whose Spirit—collectively the Divine Fiat—shapes the Universe, says: “Seven Agents [Media] were also formed, to contain the Material [or manifested] Worlds within their respective Circles, and the action of these Agents was named Destiny.” He further enumerates seven and ten and twelve orders, but it would take too long to detail them here.

As the Rig Vidhâna together with the Brahmânda Purâna and all such works, whether describing the magic efficacy of the Rig Vedic Mantras, or the future Kalpas, are declared by Dr. Weber and others to be modern compilations “belonging probably only to the time of the Purânas,” it is useless to refer the reader to their mystic explanations; and one may as well simply quote from the archaic books utterly unknown to the Orientalists. These works explain that which so puzzles the scholars, namely that the Saptarshis, the “Mind‐born Sons” of Brahmâ, are referred to in the Shatapatha Brâhmana under one set of names; in the Mahâbhârata under another set; and that the Vâyu Purâna makes even nine instead of seven Rishis, by adding the names of Bhrigu and Daksha to the list. But the same occurs in every exoteric Scripture. The Secret Doctrine gives a long genealogy of Rishis, but separates them into many classes. Like the Gods of the Egyptians, who were divided into seven, and even twelve, Classes, so are the Indian Rishis in their Hierarchies. The first three Groups are the Divine, the Cosmical and the Sublunary. Then come the Solar Gods of our System, the Planetary, the Submundane, and the purely Human—the Heroes and the Mânushi.

At present, however, we are only concerned with the Pre‐cosmic, Divine Gods, the Prajâpatis, or the Seven Builders. This Group is found unmistakably in every Cosmogony. Owing to the loss of Egyptian archaic documents, since, according to M. Maspero, “the materials and historical data on hand to study the history of the religious evolution in Egypt are neither complete nor very often intelligible,” the ancient Hymns and inscriptions on the tombs must be appealed to, in order to have the statements brought forward from the Secret Doctrine partially and indirectly corroborated. One such shows that Osiris, like Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, Adam Kadmon, Ormazd, and so many other Logoi, was the chief and synthesis of the Group of “Creators” or Builders. Before Osiris became the “One” and the Highest God of Egypt, he was worshipped at Abydos as the Head, or Leader, of the Heavenly Host of the Builders belonging to the higher of the three Orders. The Hymn engraved on the votive stele of a tomb from Abydos (3rd register) addresses Osiris thus:

Salutations to thee, O Osiris, elder son of Seb; thou the greatest over the six Gods issued from the Goddess Noo [Primordial Water], thou the great favourite of thy father Ra; Father of Fathers, King of Duration, Master in the Eternity ... who, as soon as these issued from thy Mother’s Bosom, gathered all the Crowns and attached the Uræus [serpent or naja](710) on thy head; multiform God, whose name is unknown and who has many names in towns and provinces.

Coming out from the Primordial Water crowned with the Uræus, which is the serpent‐emblem of Cosmic Fire, and himself the seventh over the six Primary Gods, issued from Father‐Mother, Noo and Noot, the Sky, who can Osiris be, but the chief Prajâpati, the chief Sephira, the chief Amshaspend, Ormazd! That this latter Solar and Cosmic God stood, in the beginning of religious evolution, in the same position as the Archangel, “whose name was secret,” is certain. This Archangel was Michael, the representative on earth of the Hidden Jewish God; in short, it is his “Face” that is said to have gone before the Jews like a “Pillar of Fire.” Burnouf says: “The seven Amshaspends, who are most assuredly our Archangels, designate also the personifications of the Divine Virtues.”(711) And these Archangels, therefore, are as certainly the Saptarshis of the Hindus, though it is next to impossible to class each with its Pagan prototype and parallel, since, as in the case of Osiris, they have all so “many names in towns and provinces.” Some of the most important, however, will be shown in their order.

One thing is thus undeniably proven. The more we study their Hierarchies and find out their identity, the more proofs we acquire that there is not one of the past or present personal Gods, known to us from the earliest days of history, that does not belong to the third stage of cosmic manifestation. In every religion we find the Concealed Deity forming the ground work; then the Ray therefrom, that falls into primordial Cosmic Matter, the first manifestation; then the Androgyne result, the dual Male and Female abstract Force personified, the second stage; this finally separates itself, in the third, into Seven Forces, called the Creative Powers by all the ancient religions, and the Virtues of God by the Christians. The later explanations and abstract metaphysical qualifications have not prevented the Roman and Greek Churches from worshipping these “Virtues” under the personifications and distinct names of the Seven Archangels. In the Book of Druschim,(712) in the Talmud, a distinction between these groups is given which is the correct Kabalistical explanation. It says:

There are three Groups (or Orders) of Sephiroth. 1st. The Sephiroth called the “Divine Attributes” [abstract]. 2nd. The Physical or Sidereal Sephiroth [personal]—one group of seven, the other of ten. 3rd. The metaphysical Sephiroth, or periphrasis of Jehovah, who are the first three Sephiroth [Kether, Chokmah and Binah], the rest of the seven being the (personal) seven Spirits of the Presence [also of the planets].

The same division has to be applied to the primary, secondary and tertiary evolution of Gods in every Theogony, if one wishes to translate the meaning esoterically. We must not confuse the purely metaphysical personifications of the abstract attributes of Deity, with their reflection—the Sidereal Gods. This reflection, however, is in reality the objective expression of the abstraction; living Entities and the models formed on that divine Prototype. Moreover, the three metaphysical Sephiroth, or the “periphrasis of Jehovah,” are not Jehovah. It is the latter himself, with the additional titles of Adonai, Elohim, Sabbaoth, and the numerous names lavished on him, who is the periphrasis of the Shaddai (שדי), the Omnipotent. The name is a circumlocution, indeed, a too abundant figure of Jewish rhetoric, and has always been denounced by the Occultists. To the Jewish Kabalists, and even the Christian Alchemists and Rosicrucians, Jehovah was a convenient screen, unified by the folding of its many panels, and adopted as a substitute; one name of an individual Sephira being as good as another name, for those who had the secret. The Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable, the Sidereal “Sum Total,” was invented for no other purpose than to mislead the profane and to symbolize life and generation.(713) The real secret and unpronounceable Name, the “Word that is no word,” has to be sought in the seven names of the first Seven Emanations, or the “Sons of the Fire,” in the secret Scriptures of all the great nations, and even in the Zohar, the Kabalistic lore of the smallest of all of them, viz., the Jewish. This word, composed of seven letters in every tongue, is found embodied in the architectural remains of every great sacred building in the world; from the Cyclopean remains on Easter Island—part of a Continent buried under the seas nearer 4,000,000 years ago(714) than 20,000—down to the earliest Egyptian pyramids.

We shall have to enter more fully into this subject later on, and to bring practical illustrations to prove the statements made in the text.

For the present it is sufficient to show, by a few instances, the truth of what has been asserted at the beginning of this work, namely, that no Cosmogony, the world over, with the sole exception of the Christian, has ever attributed to the One Highest Cause, the Universal Deific Principle, the immediate creation of our earth, or man, or anything connected with these. This statement holds as well for the Hebrew or Chaldean Kabalah as it does for Genesis, had the latter been ever thoroughly understood and, what is still more important, correctly translated.(715) Everywhere there is either a Logos—a “Light shining in Darkness,” truly—or the Architect of the Worlds is esoterically in the plural number. The Latin Church, paradoxical as ever, while applying the epithet of Creator to Jehovah alone, adopts a whole Kyriel of names for the working Forces of the latter, names which betray the secret. For if the said Forces had nought to do with “Creation” so‐called, why call them Elohim (Alhim), a plural word; Divine Workmen and Energies (Ἐνέργειαι), incandescent celestial stones (lapides igniti cœlorum); and especially Supporters of the World (Κοσμοκράτορες), Governors or Rulers of the World (Rectores Mundi), Wheels of the World (Rotæ), Auphanim, Flames and Powers, Sons of God (B’ne Alhim), Vigilant Counsellors, etc.?

It is often asserted, and unjustly, as usual, that China, nearly as old a country as India, had no Cosmogony. It was unknown to Confucius, and the Buddhists extended their Cosmogony without introducing a Personal God,(716) it is complained. The Yi‐King, “the very essence of ancient thought and the combined work of the most venerated sages,” fails to show a distinct Cosmogony. Nevertheless, one existed, and a very distinct one. Only as Confucius did not admit of a future life(717) and the Chinese Buddhists reject the idea of One Creator, accepting one Cause and its numberless effects, they are misunderstood by the believers in a Personal God. The “Great Extreme,” as the commencement of “changes” (transmigrations), is the shortest and, perhaps, the most suggestive of all Cosmogonies for those who, like the Confucianists, love virtue for its own sake and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually looking to reward and profit. The “Great Extreme” of Confucius produces “Two Figures.” These Two produce in their turn the “Four Images”; these again the “Eight Symbols.” It is complained that though the Confucianists see in them “heaven, earth and man in miniature,” we can see in them anything we like. No doubt, and so it is with regard to many symbols, especially those of the latest religions. But they who know something of Occult numerals, see in these “Figures” the symbol, however rude, of a harmonious progressive Evolution of Kosmos and its Beings, both Heavenly and Terrestrial. And any one who has studied the numerical evolution in the primeval Cosmogony of Pythagoras—a contemporary of Confucius—can never fail to find in his Triad, Tetraktys and Decad, emerging from the One and solitary Monad, the same idea. Confucius is laughed at by his Christian biographer for “talking of divination,” before and after this passage, and is represented as saying:

The eight symbols determine good and ill fortune, and these lead to great deeds. There are no imitable images greater than heaven and earth. There are no changes greater than the four seasons [meaning North, South, East and West, etc.]. There are no suspended images brighter than the sun and moon. In preparing things for use, there is none greater than the sage. In determining good and ill‐luck there is nothing greater than the divining straws and the tortoise.(718) Therefore, the “divining straws” and the “tortoise,” the “symbolic sets of lines,” and the great sage who looks at them as they become one and two, and two become four, and four become eight, and the other sets “three and six,” are laughed to scorn, only because his wise symbols are misunderstood.

So the author of the volume cited and his colleagues will no doubt scoff at the Stanzas given in our text, for they represent precisely the same idea. The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots. Yet all these represent the most abstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of our Universe. At all events it may, perhaps, answer better to the requirements and the scientific purposes of our age, than the cosmogonical essays of St. Augustine and the Venerable Bede, though these were published over a millennium later than the Confucian.

Confucius, one of the greatest sages of the ancient world, believed in ancient magic, and practised it himself, “if we take for granted the statements of Kià‐yü” and “he praised it to the skies in the Yi‐king,” we are told by his reverend critic. Nevertheless, even in his age, 600 B.C., Confucius and his school taught the sphericity of the earth and even the heliocentric system; while, at about thrice 600 years after the Chinese philosopher, the Popes of Rome threatened and even burnt “heretics” for asserting the same. He is laughed at for speaking of the “Sacred Tortoise.” No unprejudiced person can see any great difference between a Tortoise and a Lamb as candidates for sacredness, as both are symbols and no more. The Ox, the Eagle,(719) and the Lion, and occasionally the Dove are the “sacred animals” of the Western Bible; the first three are found grouped round the Evangelists; the fourth, associated with these, a human face, is a Seraph, i.e., a “fiery serpent,” the Gnostic Agathodæmon probably.

The choice is curious, and shows how paradoxical were the first Christians in their selections. For why should they have chosen these symbols of Egyptian Paganism, when the Eagle is never mentioned in the New Testament save once, when Jesus refers to it as a carrion eater,(720) and in the Old Testament it is called unclean; when the Lion is made a point of comparison with Satan, both roaring for men to devour; and the Oxen are driven out of the Temple? On the other hand the Serpent, brought in as an exemplar of wisdom, is now regarded as the symbol of the Devil. The esoteric pearl of Christ’s religion, degraded into Christian theology, may indeed be said to have chosen a strange and unfitting shell to be born in and evolved from. As explained, the Sacred Animals and the Flames or Sparks, within the Holy Four, refer to the Prototypes of all that is found in the Universe in the Divine Thought, in the Root, which is the Perfect Cube, or the Foundation of the Kosmos, collectively and individually. They have all an occult reference to primordial Cosmic Forms, and the first concretions, work, and evolution of Kosmos.

In the earliest Hindû exoteric Cosmogonies, it is not even the Demiurge who creates. For it is said in one of the Purânas: The great Architect of the World gives the first impulse to the rotatory motion of our planetary system by stepping in turn over each planet and body. It is this action “that causes each sphere to turn around itself, and all around the Sun.” After which action, “it is the Brahmândika,” the Solar and Lunar Pitris, the Dhyân Chohans, “who take charge of their respective spheres [earths and planets], to the end of the Kalpa.” The Creators are the Rishis, most of whom are credited with the authorship of the Mantras, or Hymns, of the Rig Veda. They are sometimes seven, sometimes ten, when they become Prajâpati, the Lord of Beings; then they rebecome the seven and the fourteen Manus, as the representatives of the seven and fourteen Cycles of Existence, or Days of Brahmâ, thus answering to the seven Æons, when, at the end of the first stage of Evolution, they are transformed into the seven stellar Rishis, the Saptarshis; while their human Doubles appear as Heroes, Kings and Sages on this earth.

The Esoteric Doctrine of the East having thus furnished and struck the key‐note, which, under its allegorical garb, is, as may be seen, as scientific as it is philosophical and poetical, every nation has followed its lead. It is from the exoteric religions that we have to dig out the root‐idea before we turn to esoteric truths, lest the latter should be rejected. Furthermore, every symbol, in every national religion, may be read esoterically; and the proof of its being correctly read when transliterated into its corresponding numerals and geometrical forms, may be obtained from the extraordinary agreement of all glyphs and symbols, however much they may externally vary among themselves. For in the origin those symbols were all identical. Take, for instance, the opening sentences in various Cosmogonies; in every case it is a Circle, an Egg, or a Head. Darkness is always associated with this first symbol and surrounds it, as is shown in the Hindû, the Egyptian, the Chaldeo‐Hebrew and even the Scandinavian systems. Hence black ravens, black doves, black waters and even black flames; the seventh tongue of Agni, the Fire‐God being called Kâlî, the “Black,” since it was a black flickering flame. Two “black” doves flew from Egypt and, settling on the oaks of Dodona, gave their names to the Grecian Gods. Noah sends out a “black” raven after the Deluge, which is a symbol for the Cosmic Pralaya, after which began the real creation or evolution of our Earth and Humanity.

Odin’s “black” ravens fluttered round the Goddess Saga and “whispered to her of the past and of the future.” Now what is the inner meaning of all those black birds? It is that they are all connected with the primeval Wisdom, which flows out of the pre‐cosmic Source of All, symbolized by the Head, the Circle or the Egg; and they all have an identical meaning and relate to the primordial Archetypal Man, Adam Kadmon, the Creative Origin of all things, which is composed of the Host of Cosmic Powers—the Creative Dhyân Chohans, beyond which all is Darkness.

Let us enquire of the wisdom of the Kabalah, even veiled and distorted as it now is, to explain in its numerical language an approximate meaning, at least of the word “raven.” This is its number value as given in the Source of Measures: The term Raven is used but once, and taken as Eth‐h’ orebv את־הערב=678, or 113 × 6; while the Dove is mentioned five times. Its value is 71, and 71 × 5=355. Six diameters, or the Raven, crossing, would divide the circumference of a circle of 355 into 12 parts or compartments; and 355 subdivided for each unit by 6, would equal 213‐0, or the Head [“beginning”] in the first verse of Genesis. This divided, or subdivided, after the same fashion, by 2, or the 355 by 12, would give 213‐2, or the word B’râsh, ב־ראש, or the first word of Genesis, with its prepositional prefix, signifying the same concreted general form, astronomically, with the one here intended.

Now the secret reading of the first verse in Genesis being: “In Râsh (B’râsh) or Head, developed Gods, the Heavens and the Earth”—it is easy to comprehend the esoteric meaning of the Raven, once that the like meaning of the Flood, or Noah’s Deluge, is ascertained. Whatever the many other meanings of this emblematical allegory may be, its chief meaning is that of a new Cycle and a new Round—our Fourth Round.(721) The Raven, or the Eth‐h’ orebv, yields the same numerical value as the Head, and returned not to the Ark, while the Dove returned, carrying the olive‐branch; when Noah, the new man of the new Race—whose prototype is Vaivasvata Manu, prepared to leave the Ark, the Womb, or Argha, of terrestrial Nature, he is the symbol of the purely spiritual, sexless and androgyne man of the first three Races, who vanished from Earth for ever. Numerically, in the Kabalah, Jehovah, Adam, Noah, are one. At best, then, it is Deity descending on Ararat and later, on Sinai, to incarnate henceforth in man, his image, through the natural process, the mother’s womb, whose symbols are the Ark, the Mount (Sinai), etc., in Genesis. The Jewish allegory is astronomical and physiological, rather than anthropomorphic.

And here lies the abyss between the Âryan and Semitic systems, though both are built on the same foundation. As shown by an expounder of the Kabalah: The basic idea underlying the philosophy of the Hebrews was that God contained all things within himself and that man was his image; man, including woman [as androgynes; and that] geometry (and numbers and measures applicable to astronomy) are contained in the terms man and woman; and the apparent incongruity of such a mode was eliminated by showing the connection of man and woman with a particular system of numbers and measures and geometry, by the parturient time‐periods, which furnished the connecting link between the terms used and the facts shown, and perfected the mode used.(722)

It is argued that, the primal cause being absolutely incognizable, “the symbol of its first comprehensible manifestation was the conception of a circle with its diameter line, so as at once to carry the idea of geometry, phallicism, and astronomy”; and this was finally applied to the “signification of simply human generative organs.” Hence the whole cycle of events from Adam and the Patriarchs down to Noah is made to apply to phallic and astronomical uses, the one regulating the other, as the lunar periods, for instance. Hence, too, the Genesis of the Hebrews begins after their coming out of the Ark, and the end of the Flood, i.e., at the Fourth Race. With the Aryan people it is different.

Eastern Esotericism has never degraded the One Infinite Deity, the Container of all things, to such uses; and this is shown by the absence of Brahmâ from the Rig Veda and the modest positions occupied therein by Rudra and Vishnu, who became the powerful and great Gods, the “Infinites” of the exoteric creeds, ages later. But even they, “Creators” as they all three maybe, are not the direct “Creators” and “forefathers of men.” The latter are shown occupying a still lower scale, and are called the Prajâpatis, the Pitris, our Lunar Ancestors, etc., but never the One Infinite God. Esoteric Philosophy shows only physical man as created in the image of the Deity; which Deity, however, is only the “minor Gods.” It is the HIGHER‐SELF, the real EGO, who alone is divine and GOD.

There was neither day nor night, nor sky nor earth, nor darkness nor light, nor any other thing save only One, unapprehensive by intellect, or That which is Brahma and Pums (Spirit) and Pradhâna ([crude] Matter).(723) VISHNU PURÂNA (I. ii.) In Vishnu Purâna, Parâshara says to Maitreya, his pupil: I have thus explained to you, excellent Muni, six creations ... the creation of the Arvâksrotas beings was the seventh, and was that of man.(724) Then he proceeds to speak of two additional and very mysterious creations, variously interpreted by the commentators.

Origen, commenting upon the books written by Celsus, his Gnostic opponent—books which were all destroyed by the prudent Church Fathers—evidently answers the objections of his contradictor and reveals his system at the same time. This was clearly septenary. But the theogony of Celsus, the genesis of the stars or planets, and of sound and colour, found as an answer satire, and no more. Celsus, you see, “desiring to exhibit his learning,” speaks of a ladder of creation with seven gates, and on the top of it the eighth, ever closed. The mysteries of the Persian Mithras are explained and “musical reasons, moreover, are added.” And to these again he strives “to add a second explanation connected also with musical considerations,”(725) that is to say with the seven notes of the scale, the seven Spirits of the Stars, etc. Valentinus expatiates upon the power of the great Seven, who were summoned to bring forth this universe after Ar(r)hetos, or the Ineffable, whose name is composed of seven letters, had represented the first Hebdomad. The name Ar(r)hetos indicates the sevenfold nature of the One, the Logos. “The Goddess Rhea,” says Proclus, “is a Monad, Duad, and Heptad,” comprehending in herself all the Titanidæ, “who are seven.”(726)

The Seven Creations are found in almost every Purâna. They are all preceded by what Wilson translates as the “Indiscrete Principle,” Absolute Spirit, independent of any relation with objects of sense. They are: (1) Mahattattva, the Universal Soul, Infinite Intellect, or Divine Mind; (2) Tanmâtras, Bhûta or Bhûtasarga, Elemental Creation the first differentiation of Universal Indiscrete Substance; (3) Indriya or Aindriyaka, Organic Evolution. “These three were the Prâkrita Creations, the developments of indiscrete nature, preceded by the Indiscrete Principle”; (4) Mukhya, “the Fundamental Creation (of perceptible things) was that of inanimate bodies”;(727) (5) Tairyagyonya or Tiryaksrotas, was that of animals; (6) Ûrdhvasrotas, or that of divinities(?);(728) (7) Arvâksrotas, was that of man.(729) This is the order given in the exoteric texts. According to esoteric teaching there are seven Primary, and seven Secondary “Creations”; the former being the Forces self‐evolving from the one causeless FORCE; the latter showing the manifested Universe emanating from the already differentiated divine Elements.

Esoterically, as well as exoterically, all the above enumerated Creations stand for the seven periods of Evolution, whether after an Age or a Day of Brahmâ. This is the teaching par excellence of Occult Philosophy, which, however, never uses the term “creation,” nor even that of evolution, with regard to Primary “Creation”; but calls all such Forces the “aspects of the Causeless Force.” In the Bible, the seven periods are dwarfed into the six Days of Creation and the seventh Day of Rest, and the Westerns adhere to the letter. In the Hindû Philosophy, when the active Creator has produced the World of Gods, the Germs of all the undifferentiated Elements, and the Rudiments of future Senses—the World of Noumena, in short—the Universe remains unaltered for a Day of Brahmâ, a period of 4,320,000,000 years. This is the seventh passive Period, or the “Sabbath” of Eastern Philosophy, following six periods of active evolution. In the Shatapatha Brâhmana, Brahma (neuter), the Absolute Cause of all Causes, radiates the Gods. Having radiated the Gods, through its inherent nature, the work is interrupted. In the First Book of Manu it is said:

At the expiration of each Night (Pralaya), Brahma, having been asleep, awakes, and, through the sole energy of the motion, causes to emanate from itself the Spirit [or mind], which in its essence is, and yet is not. In the Sepher Yetzirah, the Kabalistic “Book of Creation,” the author has evidently reëchoed the words of Manu. In it the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed from the eternity, boundless and absolute; and as having emitted from itself the Spirit. One is the Spirit of the living God, blessed be his Name, who liveth for ever! Voice, Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy Spirit.(730) And this is the Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized by the Fathers. From this triple One emanated the whole Kosmos. First from One emanated number Two, or Air, the creative element; and then number Three, Water, proceeded from the Air; Ether or Fire completes the mystic Four, the Arba‐il. In the Eastern doctrine, Fire is the first Element—Ether, synthesizing the whole, since it contains all of them.

In the Vishnu Purâna, the whole seven periods are given; and the progressive Evolution of the “Spirit‐Soul,” and of the seven Forms of Matter, or Principles, is shown. It is impossible to enumerate them in this work. The reader is asked to peruse one of the Purânas. R. Yehudah began, it is written: “Elohim said: Let there be a firmament, in the midst of waters.” Come, see! At the time that the Holy ... created the world, He [they] created 7 heavens Above. He created 7 earths Below, 7 seas, 7 days, 7 rivers, 7 weeks, 7 years, 7 times, and 7,000 years that the world has been, ... the seventh of all (the millennium).... So here are 7 earths Below, they are all inhabited except those which are above, and those which are below. And ... between each earth, a heaven (firmament) is spread out between each other.... And there are in them [these earths] creatures who look different one from the other; ... but if you object and say that all the children of the world came out from Adam, it is not so.... And the lower earths, where do they come from? They are from the chain of the earth, and from the Heaven above.(731)

Irenæus also is our witness—and a very unwilling one—that the Gnostics taught the same system, veiling very carefully the true esoteric meaning. This “veiling,” however, is identical with that of the Vishnu Purâna and others. Thus Irenæus writes of the Marcosians: They maintain that first of all the four elements, fire, water, earth and air, were produced after the image of the primary Tetrad above, and that then if we add their operations, namely, heat, cold, moisture and dryness, an exact likeness of the Ogdoad is presented.(732) Only this “likeness” and the Ogdoad itself is a blind, just as in the seven creations of the Vishnu Purâna, to which two more are added, of which the eighth, termed Anugraha, “possesses both the qualities of goodness and darkness,” a Sânkhyan more than a Purânic idea. For Irenæus says again, that: They [the Gnostics] had a like eighth creation which was good and bad, divine and human. They affirm that man was formed on the eighth day. Sometimes they affirm that he was made on the sixth day, and at others on the eighth; unless, perchance, they mean that his earthly part was formed on the sixth day and his fleshly part [?] on the eighth day; these two being distinguished by them.(733)

They were so “distinguished,” but not as Irenæus gives it. The Gnostics had a superior, and an inferior Hebdomad in Heaven; and a third terrestrial Hebdomad, on the plane of matter. Iaô, the Mystery God and the Regent of the Moon, as given in Origen’s Chart, was the chief of these superior “Seven Heavens,”(734) hence identical with the chief of the Lunar Pitris, that name being given by them to the Lunar Dhyân Chohans. “They affirm that these seven heavens are intelligent, and speak of them as being angels,” writes the same Irenæus; and adds that on this account they termed Iaô Hebdomas, while his mother was called Ogdoas, because, as he explains, “she preserved the number of the first begotten and primary Ogdoad of the Plerôma.”(735)

This “first begotten Ogdoad” was in Theogony the Second Logos, the Manifested, because it was born of the Seven‐fold First Logos, hence it is the eighth on this manifested plane; and in Astrolatry, it was the Sun, Mârttânda, the eighth Son of Aditi, whom she rejects while preserving her Seven Sons, the planets. For the Ancients have never regarded the Sun as a planet, but as a central and fixed Star. This, then, is the second Hebdomad born of the Seven‐rayed One, Agni, the Sun and what not, only not the seven planets, which are Sûrya’s Brothers, not his Sons. With the Gnostics, these Astral Gods were the Sons of Ialdabaoth(736) (from ilda, child, and baoth egg), the Son of Sophia Achamôth, the daughter of Sophia or Wisdom, whose region is the Plerôma. Ialdabaoth produces from himself these six stellar Spirits: Iaô (Jehovah), Sabaôth, Adoneus, Eloæus, Oreus, Astaphæus,(737) and it is they who are the second, or inferior Hebdomad. As to the third, it is composed of the seven primeval men, the shadows of the Lunar Gods, projected by the first Hebdomad. In this the Gnostics did not, as seen, differ much from the Esoteric Doctrine, except that they veiled it. As to the charge made by Irenæus, who was evidently ignorant of the true tenets of the “Heretics,” with regard to man being created on the sixth day, and man being created on the eighth, this relates to the mysteries of the inner man. It will become comprehensible to the reader only after he has read Volume II, and understood well the Anthropogenesis of the Esoteric Doctrine.

Ialdabaoth is a copy of Manu, who boasts: O best of twice‐born men! Know that I (Manu) am he, the creator of all this world, whom that male Virâj ... spontaneously produced.(738)

He first creates the ten Lords of Being, the Prajâpatis, who, as verse 36 tells us, “produce seven other Manus.” Ialdabaoth boasts likewise: “I am Father and God, and there is no one above me,” he exclaims. For which his Mother coolly puts him down by saying: “Do not lie, Ialdabaoth, for the Father of all, the First Man (Anthrôpos) is above thee, and so is Anthrôpos, the Son of Anthrôpos.”(739) This is a good proof that there were three Logoi—besides the Seven born of the First—one of these being the Solar Logos. And, again, who was that Anthrôpos himself, so much higher than Ialdabaoth? The Gnostic records alone can solve this riddle. In Pistis‐Sophia the four‐vowelled name Ieou is generally accompanied by the epithet of “the Primal, or First Man.” This shows again that the Gnôsis was but an echo of our Archaic Doctrine. The names answering to Parabrahman, to Brahmâ, and Manu, the first thinking Man, are composed of one‐vowelled, three‐vowelled and seven‐vowelled sounds. Marcus, whose philosophy was certainly more Pythagorean than anything else, speaks of a revelation to him of the seven Heavens sounding each one vowel, as they pronounced the seven names of the seven Angelic Hierarchies.

When Spirit has permeated every minutest atom of the Seven Principles of Kosmos, then the Secondary Creation, after the above‐mentioned period of rest, begins. “The Creators [Elohim] outline in the second ‘Hour’ the shape of man,” says Rabbi Simeon in The Nuchthemeron of the Hebrews. “There are twelve hours in the day,” says the Mishna, “and it is during these that creation is accomplished.” The “twelve hours of the day” are again the dwarfed copy, the faint, yet faithful, echo of primitive Wisdom. They are like the 12,000 Divine Years of the Gods, a cyclic blind. Every Day of Brahmâ has 14 Manus, which the Hebrew Kabalists, following, however, in this the Chaldeans, have disguised into 12 “Hours.”(740) The Nuchthemeron of Apollonius of Tyana is the same thing. “The Dodecahedron lies concealed in the perfect Cube,” say the Kabalists. The mystic meaning of this is, that the twelve great transformations of Spirit into Matter—the 12,000 Divine Years—take place during the four great Ages, or the first Mahâyuga. Beginning with the metaphysical and the supra‐human, it ends in the physical and purely human natures of Kosmos and Man. Eastern Philosophy can give the number of mortal years that run along the line of spiritual and physical evolutions of the seen and the unseen, if Western Science fails to do so.

Primary Creation is called the Creation of Light (Spirit); and the Secondary, that of Darkness (Matter).(741) Both are found in Genesis.(742) The first is the emanation of self‐born Gods (Elohim); the second of physical Nature. This is why it is said in the Zohar: Oh, companions, companions, man as emanation was both man and woman; as well on the side of the Father as on the side of the Mother. And this is the sense of the words: And Elohim spake: “Let there be Light and it was Light!” ... And this is the “two‐fold Man”! Light, however, on our plane, is Darkness in the higher spheres. “Man and woman ... on the side of the FATHER” (Spirit) refers to Primary Creation; and on the side of the Mother (Matter), to the Secondary. The two‐fold Man is Adam Kadmon, the male and female abstract prototype and the differentiated Elohim. Man proceeds from the Dhyân Chohan, and is a “Fallen Angel,” a God in exile, as will be shown. In India these creations were described as follows:(743) (I) The First Creation: Mahattattva Creation, so‐called because it was the primordial self‐evolution of that which had to become Mahat, the “Divine Mind, conscious and intelligent”; esoterically, the “Spirit of the Universal Soul.”

Worthiest of ascetics, through its potency (the potency of that cause), every produced cause comes by its proper nature. And again: Seeing that the potencies of all beings are understood only through the knowledge of That (Brahma), which is beyond reasoning, creation, and the like, such potencies are referable to Brahma. THAT, then precedes the manifestation. “The first was Mahat,” says Linga Purâna; for the One (the That) is neither first nor last, but all. Exoterically, however, this manifestation is the work of the “Supreme One”—a natural effect, rather, of an Eternal Cause; or, as the Commentator says, it might have been understood to mean that Brahmâ was then created (?), being identified with Mahat, active intelligence, or the operating will of the Supreme. Esoteric Philosophy renders it the “operating Law.”

It is on the right comprehension of this tenet in the Brâhmanas and Purânas that hangs, we believe, the apple of discord between the three Vedântin Sects: the Advaita, Dvaita, and the Vishishthâdvaita. The first argues rightly that Parabrahman, having no relation, as the absolute ALL, to the manifested World, the Infinite having no connection with the Finite, can neither will nor create; that, therefore, Brahmâ, Mahat, Îshvara, or whatever name the Creative Power may be known by, Creative Gods and all, are simply an illusive aspect of Parabrahman in the conception of the conceivers; while the other sects identify the Impersonal Cause with the Creator, or Îshvara. Mahat, or Mahâ‐Buddhi, is, with the Vaishnavas, however, Divine Mind, in active operation, or, as Anaxagoras has it, “an ordering and disposing Mind, which was the cause of all things”—Νοῦς ὁ διακοσμῶν τε καὶ πάντων ἀίτιος. Wilson saw at a glance the suggestive connection between Mahat and the Phœnician Môt, or Mut, who was female with the Egyptians, the Goddess Moot, the Mother, “which, like Mahat,” he says, “was the first product of the mixture(?) of Spirit and Matter, and the first rudiment of Creation.” “Ex connexione autem ejus Spiritus prodidit Môt.... Hinc ... seminium omnis creaturæ et omnium rerum creatio,” says Brucker,(744) giving it a still more materialistic and anthropomorphic colouring.

Nevertheless, the esoteric sense of the doctrine is seen, through every exoteric sentence, on the very face of the old Sanskrit texts that treat of primordial Creation. The Supreme Soul, the All‐permeant (Sarvaga) Substance of the World, having entered [been drawn] into Matter [Prakriti] and Spirit [Purusha], agitated the mutable and the immutable principles, the season of Creation [Manvantara] being arrived. The Nous of the Greeks, which is (spiritual or divine) Mind, or Mens, Mahat, operates upon Matter in the same way; it “enters into” and “agitates” it: Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus, Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.

In the Phœnician Cosmogony also, “Spirit mixing with its own principles gives rise to creation”;(745) the Orphic Triad shows an identical doctrine; for there Phanes, or Erôs, Chaos, containing crude undifferentiated Cosmic Matter, and Chronos, Time, are the three co‐ operating principles, emanating from the Concealed and Unknowable Point, which produce the work of “Creation.” And they are the Hindû Purusha (Phanes), Pradhâna (Chaos) and Kâla (Chronos). The good Professor Wilson does not like the idea, as no Christian clergyman, however liberal, would. He remarks that: “the mixture [of the Supreme Spirit or Soul with its own principles] is not mechanical; it is an influence or effect exerted upon intermediate agents which produce effects.” The sentence in Vishnu Purâna, “as fragrance affects the mind from its proximity merely, and not from any immediate operation upon mind itself, so the Supreme influenced the elements of creation,” the reverend and erudite Sanskritist correctly explains by: “as perfumes do not delight the mind by actual contact, but by the impression they make upon the sense of smelling, which communicates it to the mind”; adding, “the entrance of the Supreme ... into Spirit, as well as Matter, is less intelligible than the view elsewhere taken of it, as the infusion of Spirit, identified with the Supreme, into Prakriti or Matter alone.” He prefers the verse in Pâdma Purâna: “He who is called the male (spirit) of Prakriti ... that same divine Vishnu entered into Prakriti.” This view is certainly more akin to the plastic character of certain verses in the Bible concerning the Patriarchs, such as Lot and even Adam,(746) and others of a still more anthropomorphic nature. But it is just that which led Humanity to Phallicism; the Christian religion being honeycombed with it, from the first chapter of Genesis down to the Revelation.

The Esoteric Doctrine teaches that the Dhyân Chohans are the collective aggregate of Divine Intelligence or Primordial Mind, and that the first Manus, the seven “mind‐born” Spiritual Intelligences, are identical with the former. Hence the Kwan‐Shi‐Yin, the “Golden Dragon in whom are the Seven,” of Stanza III, is the Primordial Logos, or Brahmâ, the first manifested Creative Power; and the Dhyânic Energies are the Manus, or Manu Svâyambhuva collectively. The direct connection, moreover, between the Manus and Mahat is easy to see. Manu is from the root man, to think; and thinking proceeds from the mind. It is, in Cosmogony, the Pre‐nebular Period.

(II) The Second Creation, Bhûta, was of the Rudimental Principles or Tanmâtras; thence termed the Elemental Creation or Bhûtasarga. It is the period of the first breath of the differentiation of the Pre‐cosmic Elements, or Matter. Bhûtâdi means the “origin of the Elements,” and precedes Bhûtasarga, the “creation,” or differentiation, of those Elements in Primordial Âkâsha, Chaos or Vacuity.(747) In the Vishnu Purâna it is said to proceed along, and belong to, the triple aspect of Ahankâra, translated Egotism, but meaning rather that untranslatable term “I‐am‐ ness,” that which first issues from Mahat, or Divine Mind; the first shadowy outline of Self‐hood, for “pure” Ahankâra becomes “passionate” and finally “rudimental” or initial: it is “the origin of conscious as of all unconscious being,” though the Esoteric school rejects the idea of anything being “unconscious,” save on our plane of illusion and ignorance. At this stage of the Second Creation, the Second Hierarchy of the Manus appear, the Dhyân Chohans or Devas, who are the origin of Form (Rûpa), the Chitrashikhandinas, “Bright‐crested,” or Rikshas; those Rishis who have become the informing Souls of the Seven Stars (of the Great Bear).(748) In astronomical and cosmogonical language, this Creation relates to the Fire‐ Mist Period, the first stage of Cosmic Life, after its Chaotic state,(749) when Atoms issue from Laya.

(III) The Third Creation: the Third or Indriya Creation was the modified form of Ahankâra, the conception of “I” (from Aham, “I”), termed the Organic Creation, or Creation of the Senses, Aindriyaka. “These three were the Prâkrita Creation, the [discrete] developments of indiscrete nature preceded by the indiscrete principle.” “Preceded by,” ought to be replaced here with “beginning with Buddhi”; for the latter is neither a discrete nor an indiscrete quantity, but partakes of the nature of both, in man as in Kosmos. A unit or human Monad on the plane of illusion, when once freed from the three forms of Ahankâra and liberated from its terrestrial Manas, Buddhi indeed becomes a continued quantity, both in duration and extension, for it is eternal and immortal. Earlier it is stated, that the Third Creation “abounding with the quality of goodness,” is termed Ûrdhvasrotas; and a page or two further the Ûrdhvasrotas Creation is referred to as “the sixth creation ... or that of the divinities.” This shows plainly that earlier as well as later Manvantaras have been purposely confused, to prevent the profane from perceiving the truth. This is called “incongruity” and “contradictions” by the Orientalists. “The three creations beginning with Intelligence are elemental, but the six creations which proceed from the series of which Intellect is the first, are the work of Brahmâ.”(750) Here “creations” mean everywhere stages of evolution. Mahat, “Intellect” or Mind, which corresponds with Manas, the former being on the cosmic, and the latter on the human plane, stands here, too, lower than Buddhi or supra‐divine Intelligence. Therefore, when we read in Linga Purâna that “the first Creation was that of Mahat, Intellect being the first in manifestation,” we must refer that (specified) creation to the first evolution of our System or even our Earth, none of the preceding ones being discussed in the Purânas, but only occasionally hinted at.

This Creation of the first Immortals, or Devasarga, is the last of the series, and has a universal meaning; it refers, namely, to Evolution in general, and not specifically to our Manvantara, which begins with the same over and over again, thus showing that it refers to several distinct Kalpas. For it is said “at the close of the past [Pâdma] Kalpa the divine Brahmâ awoke from his night of sleep and beheld the Universe void.” Then Brahmâ is shown going once more over the “Seven Creations,” in the secondary stage of evolution, repeating the first three on the objective plane.

(IV) The Fourth Creation: the Mukhya or Primary, as it begins the series of four. Neither the term “inanimate” bodies nor “immovable things,” as translated by Wilson, gives a correct idea of the Sanskrit words used. Esoteric Philosophy is not alone in rejecting the idea of any atom being “inorganic,” for it is found also in orthodox Hindûism. Moreover, Wilson himself says: “All the Hindû systems consider vegetable bodies as endowed with life.”(751) Charâchara, or the synonymous sthâvara and jangama, is, therefore, inaccurately rendered by “animate and inanimate,” “sentient beings” and “unconscious,” or “conscious and unconscious beings,” etc. “Locomotive and fixed” would be better, “since trees are considered to possess souls.” The Mukhya is the “creation,” or rather organic evolution, of the vegetable kingdom. In this Secondary Period, the three degrees of the elemental or rudimental kingdoms are evolved in this World, corresponding, inversely in order, to the three Prâkritic Creations, during the Primary Period of Brahmâ’s activity. As in that Period, in the words of Vishnu Purâna, “the first creation was that of Mahat or Intellect.... The second was that of the Rudimental Principles (Tanmâtras).... The third was ... the creation of the senses (Aindriyaka)”; so in this one, the order of the Elemental Forces stands thus: (1) the nascent Centres of Force, intellectual and physical; (2) the Rudimentary Principles, nerve force, so to say; and (3) nascent Apperception, which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms, and is especially developed in the third order of Elementals; these are succeeded by the objective kingdom of minerals, in which this “apperception” is entirely latent, to re‐develop only in the plants. The Mukhya Creation, then, is the middle point between the three lower and the three higher kingdoms, which represent the seven esoteric kingdoms of Kosmos, and of Earth.

(V) The Fifth Creation: the Tiryaksrotas or Tairyagyonya Creation,(752) that of the “(sacred) animals,” corresponding on Earth only to the dumb animal creation. That which is meant by “animals,” in the Primary Creation, is the germ of awakening consciousness, or of “apperception,” that which is faintly traceable in some sensitive plants on Earth and more distinctly in the protistic Monera.(753) On our Globe, during the First Round, animal “creation” precedes that of man, while the mammalian animals evolve from man in our Fourth Round, on the physical plane. In the First Round, the animal atoms are drawn into a cohesion of human physical form; while in the Fourth, the reverse occurs according to magnetic conditions developed during life. And this is “metempsychosis.”(754) This fifth Stage of Evolution, called exoterically “Creation,” may be viewed in both the Primary and Secondary Periods, one as the spiritual and cosmic, the other as the material and terrestrial. It is archebiosis, or life‐origination; “origination,” so far, of course, as the manifestation of life on all the seven planes is concerned. It is at this period of evolution that the absolutely eternal universal motion, or vibration, that which is called in Esoteric language the “Great Breath,” differentiates into the primordial, first manifested Atom. More and more, as chemical and physical sciences progress, does this Occult axiom find its corroboration in the world of knowledge; the scientific hypothesis, that even the simplest elements of matter are identical in their nature, and differ from each other only in consequence of the various distributions of atoms in the molecule or speck of substance, or of the modes of its atomic vibration, gains more ground every day.

Thus, as the differentiation of the primordial germ of life has to precede the evolution of the Dhyân Chohan of the Third Group or Hierarchy of Being in Primary Creation, before those Gods can become embodied in their first ethereal form (rûpa), so animal creation has for the same reason to precede “divine man” on Earth. And this is why we find in the Purânas, “the fifth, the Tairyagyonya Creation, was that of animals.” (VI) The Sixth Creation: the Ûrdhvasrotas Creation, or that of Divinities. But these Divinities are simply the Prototypes of the First Race, the Fathers of their “mind‐born” progeny with the “soft bones.” It is these who became the Evolvers of the “Sweat‐born”—an expression explained in Volume II. “Created beings,” explains the Vishnu Purâna, “although they are destroyed [in their individual forms] at the periods of dissolution, yet being affected by the good or evil acts of former existences, are never exempted from their consequences. And when Brahmâ produces the world anew, they are the progeny of his will.”

“Collecting his mind into itself [yoga‐willing], Brahmâ creates the four Orders of Beings, termed Gods, Demons, Progenitors, and Men”; Progenitors here meaning the Prototypes and Evolvers of the first Root‐Race of men. The Progenitors are the Pitris, and are of Seven Classes. They are said, in exoteric mythology, to be born of “Brahmâ’s side,” like Eve from the rib of Adam. Finally, the Sixth Creation is followed, and “Creation” in general closed by: (VII) The Seventh Creation: the evolution of the Arvâksrotas Beings, “which was ... that of man.”

The “Eighth Creation” mentioned is no Creation at all: it is a “blind,” for it refers to a purely mental process, the cognition of the “Ninth Creation,” which, in its turn, is an effect, manifesting in the Secondary, of that which was a “Creation” in the Primary (Prâkrita) Creation.(755) The Eighth, then, called Anugraha, the Pratyayasarga or Intellectual Creation of the Sânkhyas,(756) is “the creation of which we have a notion [in its esoteric aspect], or to which we give intellectual assent (Anugraha), in contradistinction to organic creation.” It is the correct perception of our relations to the whole range of “Gods,” and especially of those we bear to the Kumâras, the so‐called “Ninth Creation,” which is in reality an aspect, or reflection, of the Sixth in our Manvantara (the Vaivasvata). “There is a ninth, the Kaumâra Creation, which is both primary and secondary,” says the Vishnu Purâna, the oldest of such texts.(757) As an Esoteric text explains: _The Kumâras, are the Dhyânis, derived immediately from the Supreme Principle, who reäppear in the Vaivasvata Manu period, for the progress of mankind._(758)

The translator of the Vishnu Purâna corroborates it, by remarking that “these sages ... live as long as Brahmâ; and they are only created by him in the First Kalpa, although their generation is very commonly, but inconsistently, introduced in the [Secondary] Vârâha, or Pâdma Kalpa.” Thus, the Kumâras are, exoterically, “the creation of Rudra or Nîlalohita, a form of Shiva, by Brahmâ ... and of certain other mind‐born sons of Brahmâ.” But, in the Esoteric teaching, they are the Progenitors of the true spiritual Self in the physical man, the higher Prajâpatis, while the Pitris, or lower Prajâpatis, are no more than the Fathers of the model, or type of his physical form, made “in their image.” Four (and occasionally five) are mentioned freely in the exoteric texts, three of the Kumâras being secret.

“The four Kumâras [are] the mind‐born Sons of Brahmâ. Some specify seven.”(759) All these seven Vaidhâtra, the patronymic of the Kumâras, the “Maker’s Sons,” are mentioned and described in Îshvara Krishna’s Sânkhya Kârikâ with the Commentary of Gaudapâdâchârya (Shankarâchvrya’s Paraguru) attached to it. It discusses the nature of the Kumâras, though it refrains from mentioning by name all the seven Kumâras, but calls them instead the “seven sons of Brahmâ,” which they are, as they are created by Brahmâ in Rudra. The list of names it gives us is: Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanâtana, Kapila, Ribhu, and Panchashikha. But these again are all aliases. The exoteric four are Sanatkumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana; and the esoteric three Sana, Kapila, and Sanatsujâta. Special attention is once more drawn to this class of Dhyân Chohans, for herein lies the mystery of generation and heredity hinted at in the Commentary on Stanza VII, in treating of the Four Orders of Angelic Beings. Volume II explains their position in the Divine Hierarchy. Meanwhile, let us see what the exoteric texts say about them.

They say little; and to him who fails to read between the lines—nothing. “We must have recourse, here, to other Purânas for the elucidation of this term,” remarks Wilson, who does not suspect for one moment that he is in the presence of the “Angels of Darkness,” the mythical “great enemy” of his Church. Therefore, he contrives to “elucidate” no more than that “these [Divinities] declining to create progeny, [and thus rebelling against Brahmâ], remained, as the name of the first [Sanatkumâra] implies, ever boys, Kumâras; that is, ever pure and innocent, whence their creation is called the Kaumâra.” The Purânas, however, may afford a little more light. “Being ever as he was born, he is here called a youth; and hence his name is well known as Sanatkumâra.”(760) In the Shaiva Purânas, the Kumâras are always described as Yogins. The Kurma Purâna, after enumerating them, says: “These five, O Brâhmans, were Yogins, who acquired entire exemption from passion.” They are five, because two of the Kumâras fell.

So untrustworthy are some translations of the Orientalists that in the French translation of the Hari Vamsha, it is said: “The seven Prajâpati, Rudra, Skanda (his son) and Sanatkumâra proceeded to create beings.” Whereas, as Wilson shows, the original is: “These seven ... created progeny; and so did Rudra, but Skanda and Sanatkumâra, restraining their power, abstained (from creation).” The “four orders of beings” are referred to sometimes as Ambhâmsi, which Wilson renders as “literally Waters” and believes it “a mystic term.” It is one, no doubt; but he evidently failed to catch the real Esoteric meaning. “Waters” and “Water” stand as the symbol for Âkâsha, the “Primordial Ocean of Space,” on which Nârâyana, the self‐born Spirit, moves, reclining on that which is its progeny.(761) “Water is the body of Nara; thus we have heard the name of Water explained. Since Brahmâ rests on the Water, therefore he is termed Nârâyana.”(762) “Pure, Purusha created the Waters pure.” At the same time Water is the Third Principle in material Kosmos, and the third in the realm of the Spiritual: Spirit of Fire, Flame, Âkâsha, Ether, Water, Air, Earth, are the cosmic, sidereal, psychic, spiritual and mystic principles, preëminently occult, on every plane of being. “Gods, Demons, Pitris and Men,” are the four orders of beings to whom the term Ambhâmsi is applied, because they are all the product of Waters (mystically), of the Âkâshic Ocean, and of the Third principle in Nature.

In the Vedas it is a synonym of Gods. Pitris and Men on Earth are the transformations or rebirths of Gods and Demons (Spirits) on a higher plane. Water is, in another sense, the feminine principle. Venus Aphrodite is the personified Sea, and the Mother of the God of Love, the Generatrix of all the Gods, as much as the Christian Virgin Mary is Mare, the Sea, the Mother of the Western God of Love, Mercy and Charity. If the student of Esoteric Philosophy thinks deeply over the subject, he is sure to find out all the suggestiveness of the term Ambhâmsi, in its manifold relations to the Virgin in Heaven, to the Celestial Virgin of the Alchemists, and even to the “Waters of Grace” of the modern Baptist.

Of all the seven great divisions of Dhyân Chohans, or Devas, there is none with which humanity is more concerned than with the Kumâras. Imprudent are the Christian Theologians who have degraded them into Fallen Angels, and now call them Satan and Demons; as among these heavenly denizens who “refuse to create,” the Archangel Michael, the greatest patron Saint of the Western and Eastern Churches, under his double name of St. Michael and his supposed copy on earth, St. George conquering the Dragon, has to be given one of the most prominent places. The Kumâras, the Mind‐born Sons of Brahmâ‐Rudra, or Shiva, mystically the howling and terrific destroyer of human passions and physical senses, which are ever in the way of the development of the higher spiritual perceptions and the growth of the inner eternal man, are the progeny of Shiva, the Mahâyogî, the great patron of all the Yogîs and Mystics of India.