The Secret Doctrine

The smallest as the most immense creations, are they not to be distinguished from each other by their quantities, their qualities, their dimensions, their forces and attributes, all begotten by Number? The infinitude of Numbers is a fact proven to our mind, but of which no proof can be physically given. The mathematician will tell us that the infinitude of Numbers exists but is not to be demonstrated. God is a Number endowed with motion, which is felt but not demonstrated. As Unity, it begins the Numbers, with which it has nothing in common.... The existence of Numbers depends on Unity, which without a single Number, begets them all.... What! unable either to measure the first abstraction yielded to you by the Deity, or to get hold of it, you still hope to subject to your measurements the mystery of the Secret Sciences which emanate from that Deity? .... And what would you feel, were I to plunge you into the abysses of Motion, the Force which organizes the Numbers? What would you think, were I to add that Motion and Number(101) are begotten by the Word, the Supreme Reason of the Seers and Prophets, who, in days of old, sensed the mighty Breath of God, a witness to which is the Apocalypse?

(b) “The Radiant Essence curdles and spreads throughout the Depths” of Space. From an astronomical point of view this is easy of explanation: it is the Milky Way, the World‐Stuff, or Primordial Matter in its first form. It is more difficult, however, to explain it in a few words, or even lines, from the standpoint of Occult Science and Symbolism, as it is the most complicated of glyphs. Herein are enshrined more than a dozen symbols. To begin with, it contains the whole pantheon of mysterious objects,(102) every one of them having some definite Occult meaning, extracted from the Hindû allegorical “Churning of the Ocean” by the Gods. Besides Amrita, the water of life or immortality, Surabhi, the “cow of plenty,” called “the fountain of milk and curds,” was extracted from this “sea of milk.” Hence the universal adoration of the cow and bull, one the productive, the other the generative power in Nature: symbols connected with both the solar and the cosmic deities. The specific properties, for Occult purposes, of the “fourteen precious things,” being explained only at the Fourth Initiation, cannot be given here; but the following may be remarked. In the Shatapatha Brâhmana it is stated that the Churning of the Ocean of Milk took place in the Satya Yuga, the first Age which immediately followed the “Deluge.” As, however, neither the Rig Veda nor Manu—both preceding Vaivasvata’s “Deluge,” that of the bulk of the Fourth Race—mention this Deluge, it is evident that it is neither the Great Deluge, nor that which carried away Atlantis, nor even the Deluge of Noah, which is here meant.

This “Churning” relates to a period before the earth’s formation, and is in direct connection with another universal legend, the various and contradictory versions of which culminated in the Christian dogma of the “War in Heaven,” and the “Fall of the Angels.” The Brâhmanas, reproached by the Orientalists with their versions on the same subjects often clashing with each other, are preëminently occult works, hence used purposely as blinds. They are allowed to survive for public use and property only because they were and are absolutely unintelligible to the masses. Otherwise they would have disappeared from circulation as long ago as the days of Akbar.

5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL OEAOHOO IS ONE. “Oeaohoo” is rendered “Father‐Mother of the Gods” in the Commentaries, or the “Six in One,” or the Septenary Root from which all proceeds. All depends upon the accent given to these seven vowels, which may be pronounced as one, three, or even seven syllables, by adding an e after the final o. This mystic name is given out, because without a thorough mastery of the triple pronunciation it remains for ever ineffectual.

“Is One” refers to the Non‐Separateness of all that lives and has its being, whether in an active or passive state. In one sense, Oeaohoo is the Rootless Root of All; hence, one with Parabrahman: in another sense it is a name for the manifested One Life, the eternal living Unity. The “Root” means, as already explained, Pure Knowledge (Sattva),(103) eternal (nitya) unconditioned Reality, or Sat (Satya), whether we call it Parabrahman or Mûlaprakriti, for these are but the two symbols of the One. The “Light” is the same Omnipresent Spiritual Ray, which has entered and now fecundated the Divine Egg, and calls cosmic matter to begin its long series of differentiations. The “Curds” are the first differentiation, and probably also refer to that cosmic matter which is supposed to be the origin of the Milky Way—the matter we know. This “matter,” which, according to the revelation received from the primeval Dhyâni‐Buddhas, is, during the periodical Sleep of the Universe, of the ultimate tenuity conceivable to the eye of the perfect Bodhisattva—this matter, radiant and cool, becomes, at the first reawakening of cosmic motion, scattered through Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth, in clusters and lumps, like curds in thin milk. These are the seeds of the future worlds, the “star‐stuff.”

6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY,(104) AND THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE, AND HEAT, AND MOTION. DARKNESS VANISHED AND WAS NO MORE; IT DISAPPEARED IN ITS OWN ESSENCE, THE BODY OF FIRE AND WATER, OF FATHER AND MOTHER. The Essence of Darkness being Absolute Light, Darkness is taken as the appropriate allegorical representation of the condition of the Universe during Pralaya, or the term of Absolute Rest, or Non‐Being, as it appears to our finite minds. The “Fire, and Heat, and Motion,” here spoken of, are, of course, not the fire, heat, and motion of Physical Science, but the underlying abstractions, the noumena, or the soul, of the essence of these material manifestations—the “things in themselves,” which, as Modern Science confesses, entirely elude the instruments of the laboratory, and which even the mind cannot grasp, although it can equally as little avoid the conclusion that these underlying essences of things must exist. “Fire and Water, or Father and Mother,” may be taken here to mean the divine Ray and Chaos. “Chaos, from this union with Spirit obtaining sense, shone with pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos [the first‐born Light],” says a fragment of Hermas. Damascius calls it Dis, the “disposer of all things.”(105)

According to the Rosicrucian tenets, as handled and explained by the profane for once correctly, if only partially, “Light and Darkness are identical in themselves, being only divisible in the human mind”; and according to Robert Fludd, “Darkness adopted illumination in order to make itself visible.”(106) According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, Darkness is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of Light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is Matter, and Darkness pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute Light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an Illusion, or Mâyâ.

Even in the mind‐baffling and science‐harassing Genesis,(107) light is created out of darkness—“and darkness was upon the face of the deep”—and not vice versâ. “In him [in darkness] was life; and the life was the light of men.”(108) A day may come when the eyes of men will be opened; and then they may comprehend better than they do now the verse in the Gospel of John that says, “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” They will see then that the word “darkness” does not apply to man’s spiritual eyesight, but indeed to Darkness, the Absolute, that comprehendeth not (cannot cognize) transient Light, however transcendent to human eyes. Demon est Deus inversus. The Devil is now called “darkness” by the Church, whereas in the Bible, in the Book of Job, he is called the “Son of God,” the bright star of the early morning, Lucifer. There is a whole philosophy of dogmatic craft in the reason why the first Archangel, who sprang from the depths of Chaos, was called Lux (Lucifer), the luminous “Son of the Morning,” or Manvantaric Dawn. He has been transformed by the Church into Lucifer or Satan, because he is higher and older than Jehovah, and had to be sacrificed to the new dogma.

7. BEHOLD, O LANOO,(109) THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED REFULGENT GLORY—BRIGHT SPACE, SON OF DARK SPACE, WHO EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO, THE YOUNGER, THE —— (110) (a). HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SUN, HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF WISDOM; THE EKA(111) IS CHATUR, AND CHATUR TAKES TO ITSELF TRI, AND THE UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA, IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN, WHICH BECOME THE TRIDASHA,(112) THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES (b). BEHOLD HIM LIFTING THE VEIL, AND UNFURLING IT FROM EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE, AND LEAVES THE BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR THE SHINING ONES,(113) AND TURNS THE UPPER(114) INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF FIRE (c), AND THE ONE MANIFESTED(115) INTO THE GREAT WATERS.

(a) “Bright Space, Son of Dark Space,” corresponds to the Ray dropped at the first thrill of the new Dawn into the great Cosmic Depths, from which it reëmerges differentiated as “Oeaohoo, the Younger” (the “New Life”), to be to the end of the Life‐Cycle the Germ of all things. He is “the Incorporeal Man who contains in himself the Divine Idea,” the generator of Light and Life, to use an expression of Philo Judæus. He is called the “Blazing Dragon of Wisdom,” because, firstly, he is that which the Greek philosophers called the Logos, the Verbum of the Thought Divine; and secondly, because in Esoteric Philosophy this first manifestation, being the synthesis or the aggregate of Universal Wisdom, Oeaohoo, the “Son of the Sun,” contains in himself the Seven Creative Hosts (Sephiroth), and is thus the essence of manifested Wisdom. “He who bathes in the Light of Oeaohoo will never be deceived by the Veil of Mâyâ.”

“Kwan‐Shai‐Yin” is identical with, and an equivalent of the Sanskrit Avalokiteshvara, and as such is an androgynous deity, like the Tetragrammaton and all the Logoi of antiquity. It is only by some sects in China that he is anthropomorphized, and represented with female attributes; under his female aspect becoming Kwan‐Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, called the “Divine Voice.”(116) The latter is the patron deity of Tibet and of the island of Puto in China, where both deities have a number of monasteries.(117) The higher gods of antiquity are all “Sons of the Mother” before they become “Sons of the Father.” The Logoi, like Jupiter or Zeus, son of Cronus‐Saturn, “Infinite Time” (Kâla), in their origin were represented as male‐female. Zeus is said to be the “beautiful virgin,” and Venus is made bearded. Apollo was originally bisexual, so is Brahmâ‐Vâch in Manu and the Purânas. Osiris is interchangeable with Isis, and Horus is of both sexes. Finally in St. John’s vision in Revelation, the Logos, who is now connected with Jesus, is hermaphrodite, for he is described as having female breasts. So also is Tetragrammaton, or Jehovah. But there are two Avalokiteshvaras in Esotericism; the First and the Second Logos.

No religious symbol can escape profanation and even derision in our days of politics and science. In Southern India the writer has seen a converted native making pûjâ with offerings before a statue of Jesus clad in woman’s clothes and with a ring in its nose. On asking the meaning of this masquerade, we were answered that it was Jesu‐Maria blended in one, and that it was done by the permission of the Padre, as the zealous convert had no money to purchase two statues, or “idols” as they, very properly, were called by a witness, another but a non‐converted Hindû. Blasphemous this will appear to a dogmatic Christian, but the Theosophist and the Occultist must award the palm of logic to the converted Hindû. The esoteric Christos in the Gnôsis is, of course, sexless, but in exoteric Theology he is male and female.

(b) The “Dragon of Wisdom” is the One, the “Eka” or Saka. It is curious that Jehovah’s name in Hebrew should also be One, Achad. “His name is Achad,” say the Rabbins. The Philologists ought to decide which of the two is derived from the other, linguistically and symbolically; surely, not the Sanskrit. The “One” and the “Dragon” are expressions used by the ancients in connection with their respective Logoi. Jehovah—esoterically Elohim—is also the Serpent or Dragon that tempted Eve; and the Dragon is an old glyph for the Astral Light (Primordial Principle), “which is the Wisdom of Chaos.” Archaic philosophy, recognizing neither Good nor Evil as a fundamental or independent power, but starting from the Absolute ALL (Universal Perfection eternally), traces both through the course of natural evolution to pure Light condensing gradually into form, and hence becoming Matter or Evil. It was left with the early and ignorant Christian Fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly scientific idea of this emblem into the absurd superstition called the “Devil.” They took this from the later Zoroastrians, who saw Devils or Evil in the Hindû Devas, and the word Evil has become by a double transmutation D’Evil (Diabolos, Diable, Diavolo, Teufel). But the Pagans have always shown a philosophical discrimination in their symbols. The primitive symbol of the serpent symbolized divine Wisdom and Perfection, and has always stood for psychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence, Hermes calling the serpent the most spiritual of all beings;

Moses, initiated into the Wisdom of Hermes, following suit in Genesis; the Gnostic Serpent with the seven vowels over its head, being the emblem of the Seven Hierarchies of the Septenary or Planetary Creators. Hence, also, the Hindû serpent Shesha or Ananta, the Infinite, a name of Vishnu, and his first Vâhana, or Vehicle, on the Primordial Waters. Like the Logoi and the Hierarchies of Powers, however, these serpents have to be distinguished one from the other. Shesha or Ananta, the “Couch of Vishnu,” is an allegorical abstraction, symbolizing infinite Time in Space, which contains the Germ and throws off periodically the efflorescence of this Germ, the Manifested Universe; whereas, the Gnostic Ophis contains the same triple symbolism in its seven vowels as the one, three and seven‐syllabled Oeaohoo of the archaic doctrine; i.e., the First Unmanifested Logos, the Second Manifested, the Triangle concreting into the Quaternary or Tetragrammaton, and the Rays of the latter on the material plane.

Yet they all made a difference between the good and the bad Serpent (the Astral Light of the Kabalists)—between the former, the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the region of the Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the plane of Matter. For the Astral Light, or the Ether, of the ancient Pagans—the name Astral Light is quite modern—is Spirit‐Matter. Beginning with the pure spiritual plane, it becomes grosser as it descends, until it becomes Mâyâ, or the tempting and deceitful Serpent on our plane.

Jesus accepted the serpent as a synonym of Wisdom, and this formed part of his teaching: “Be ye wise as serpents,” he says. “In the beginning, before Mother became Father‐Mother, the Fiery Dragon moved in the Infinitudes alone.”(118) The Aitareya Brahmana calls the Earth Sarparâjni, the “Serpent Queen,” and the “Mother of all that moves.” Before our globe became egg‐shaped (and the Universe also), “a long trail of cosmic dust [or fire‐mist] moved and writhed like a serpent in Space.” The “Spirit of God moving on Chaos” was symbolized by every nation in the shape of a fiery serpent breathing fire and light upon the primordial waters, until it had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth—which symbolizes not only eternity and infinitude, but also the globular shape of all the bodies formed within the Universe from that fiery mist. The Universe, as also the Earth and Man, serpent‐like, periodically cast off their old skins, to assume new ones after a time of rest. The serpent is surely not a less graceful or a more unpoetical image than the caterpillar and chrysalis from which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of Psyche, the human soul! The Dragon was also the symbol of the Logos with the Egyptians, as with the Gnostics. In the Book of Hermes, Pymander, the oldest and the most spiritual of the Logoi of the Western Continent, appears to Hermes in the shape of a Fiery Dragon of “Light, Fire, and Flame.” Pymander, the “Thought Divine” personified, says:

The Light is I, I am the Nous [the Mind or Manu], I am thy God, and I am far older than the human principle which escapes from the shadow [Darkness, or the concealed Deity]. I am the germ of thought, the resplendent Word, the Son of God. All that thus sees and hears in thee is the Verbum of the Master; it is the Thought [Mahat] which is God, the Father.(119) The celestial Ocean, the Æther, ... is the Breath of the Father, the life‐giving principle, the Mother, the Holy Spirit, ... for these are not separated, and their union is Life.

Here we find the unmistakable echo of the archaic Secret Doctrine, as now expounded. Only the latter does not place at the head of the Evolution of Life the “Father,” who comes third and is the “Son of the Mother,” but the “Eternal and Ceaseless Breath of the ALL.” Mahat (Understanding, Universal Mind, Thought, etc.), before it manifests itself as Brahmâ or Shiva, appears as Vishnu, says the Sânkhya Sâra.(120) Hence it has several aspects, just as the Logos has. Mahat is called the Lord, in the Primary Creation, and is, in this sense, Universal Cognition or Thought Divine; but, “that Mahat which was first produced is (afterwards) called Ego‐ ism, when it is born as (the feeling itself) ‘I,’ that is said to be the Secondary Creation.”(121) And the translator (an able and learned Brâhman, not a European Orientalist) explains in a foot‐note, “i.e., when Mahat develops into the feeling of Self‐Consciousness—I—then it assumes the name of Egoism,” which, translated into our Esoteric phraseology, means—when Mahat is transformed into the human Manas (or even that of the finite gods), and becomes Aham‐ship. Why it is called the Mahat of the Secondary Creation (or the Ninth, the Kaumâra in Vishnu Purâna), will be explained hereafter.

(c) The “Sea of Fire” is, then, the Super‐Astral (i.e., Noumenal) Light, the first radiation from the Root Mûlaprakriti, Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, which becomes Astral Matter. It is also called the “Fiery Serpent,” as above described. If the student bears in mind that there is but One Universal Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying and that all the rest—as in the world of phenomena—are but so many various differentiated aspects and transformations (correlations, they are now called) of that One, from macrocosmical down to microcosmical effects, from super‐human down to human and sub‐human beings, the totality, in short, of objective existence—then the first and chief difficulty will disappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered. Thus in the Egyptian also as in the Indian Theogony there was a Concealed Deity, the ONE, and a creative, androgynous god; Shoo being the god of creation, and Osiris in his original primary form, the god “whose name is unknown.”(122)

All the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognize (a) the identity of “Father‐Mother” with Primordial Æther, or Âkâsha (Astral Light); and (b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the “Son,” cosmically Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. “Fohat hardens and scatters the Seven Brothers”;(123) which means that the Primordial Electric Entity—for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity—electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. “There exists a universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od, Ob, and Aour,(124) active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is the first light in Creation” (Éliphas Lévi)—the “first light” of the primordial Elohim, the Adam, “male and female,” or (scientifically) Electricity and Life.

The ancients represented it by a serpent, for “Fohat hisses as he glides hither and thither,” in zigzags. The Kabalah figures it with the Hebrew letter Teth, ט, whose symbol is the serpent which played such a prominent part in the Mysteries. Its universal value is nine, for it is the ninth letter of the alphabet, and the ninth door of the fifty portals, or gateways, that lead to the concealed mysteries of being. It is the magical agent par excellence, and designates in Hermetic philosophy “Life infused into Primordial Matter,” the essence that composes all things, and the spirit that determines their form. But there are two secret Hermetical operations, one spiritual, the other material, correlative and for ever united. As Hermes says: Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the solid ... that which ascends from earth to heaven and descends again from heaven to earth. It [the subtile light] is the strong force of every force, for it conquers every subtile thing and penetrates into every solid. Thus was the world formed.

It was not Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, alone, who taught that the Universe evolves, and its primary substance is transformed from the state of fire into that of air, then into that of water, etc. Heraclitus of Ephesus maintained that the one principle that underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The intelligence that moves the Universe is fire, and fire is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years B.C.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all these philosophers, by showing that though each was right, the system of none was complete. 8. WHERE WAS THE GERM, AND WHERE WAS NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, O LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS LIGHT, THE WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE DARK HIDDEN FATHER..

The answer to the first question, suggested by the second, which is the reply of the teacher to the pupil, contains in a single phrase one of the most essential truths of Occult Philosophy. It indicates the existence of things imperceptible to our physical senses which are of far greater importance, more real and more permanent, than those that appeal to these senses themselves. Before the Lanoo can hope to understand the transcendentally metaphysical problem contained in the first question, he must be able to answer the second; while the very answer he gives to the second will furnish him with the clue to the correct reply to the first. In the Sanskrit Commentary on this Stanza, the terms used for the concealed and the unrevealed Principle are many. In the earliest MSS. of Indian literature this Unrevealed Abstract Deity has no name. It is generally called “That” (Tad, in Sanskrit), and means all that is, was, and will be, or that can be so received by the human mind.

Among such appellations given—of course, only in Esoteric Philosophy—as the “Unfathomable Darkness,” the “Whirlwind,” etc., it is also called the “It of the Kâlahansa,” the “Kâla‐ham‐sa,” and even the “Kâli Hamsa” (Black Swan). Here the m and the n are convertible, and both sound like the nasal French an or am. As in the Hebrew so also in the Sanskrit many a mysterious sacred name conveys to the profane ear no more than some ordinary, and often vulgar word, because it is concealed anagrammatically or otherwise. This word Hansa, or Hamsa, is just such a case. Hamsa is equal to “A‐ham‐sa”—three words meaning “I am He”; while divided in still another way it will read “So‐ham,” “He [is] I.” In this single word is contained, for him who understands the language of wisdom, the universal mystery, the doctrine of the identity of man’s essence with god‐essence. Hence the glyph of, and the allegory about, Kâlahansa (or Hamsa), and the name given to Brahman (neuter), later on to the male Brahmâ, of Hamsa‐ vâhana, “he who uses the Hamsa as his vehicle.” The same word may be read “Kâlaham‐sa,” or “I am I, in the eternity of time,” answering to the Biblical, or rather Zoroastrian, “I am that I am.” The same doctrine is found in the Kabalah, as witness the following extract from an unpublished MS. by Mr. S. Liddell McGregor Mathers, the learned Kabalist:

The three pronouns, הוא, אתה, אני, Hua, Ateh, Ani—He, Thou, I—are used to symbolize the ideas of Macroposopus and Microprosopus in the Hebrew Qabalah. Hua, “He,” is applied to the hidden and concealed Macroprosopus; Ateh, “Thou,” to Microprosopus; and Ani, “I,” to the latter when He is represented as speaking. (See Lesser Holy Assembly, 204 et seq.) It is to be noted that each of these names consists of three letters, of which the letter Aleph א, A, forms the conclusion of the first word Hua, and the commencement of Atah and Ani, as if it were the connecting link between them. But א is the symbol of the Unity and consequently of the unvarying Idea of the Divine operating through all these. But behind the א in the name Hua are the letters ו and ה, the symbols of the numbers Six and Five, the Male and the Female, the Hexagram and the Pentagram. And the numbers of these three words, Hua, Ateh, Ani, are 12, 406, and 61, which are resumed in the key numbers of 3, 10, and 7, by the Qabalah of the Nine Chambers which is a form of the exegetical rule of Temura.

It is useless to attempt to explain the mystery in full. Materialists and the men of Modern Science will never understand it, since, in order to obtain clear perception of it, one has first of all to admit the postulate of a universally diffused, omnipresent, eternal Deity in Nature; secondly, to have fathomed the mystery of electricity in its true essence; and thirdly, to credit man with being the septenary symbol, on the terrestrial plane, of the One Great Unit, the Logos, which is Itself the seven‐ vowelled sign, the Breath crystallized into the Word.(125) He who believes in all this, has also to believe in the multiple combination of the seven planets of Occultism and of the Kabalah, with the twelve zodiacal signs; and attribute, as we do, to each planet and to each constellation an influence which, in the words of Mr. Ely Star (a French astrologer), “is proper to it, beneficent or maleficent, and this, after the planetary spirit which rules it, who, in his turn, is capable of influencing men and things which are found in harmony with him and with which he has any affinity.” For these reasons, and since few believe in the foregoing, all that can now be given is that in both cases the symbol of Hansa (whether I, He, Goose or Swan) is an important symbol, representing, among other things, Divine Wisdom, Wisdom in Darkness beyond the reach of men. For all exoteric purposes, Hansa, as every Hindû knows, is a fabulous bird which, when (in the allegory) given milk mixed with water for its food, separated the two, drinking the milk and leaving the water; thus showing inherent wisdom—milk standing symbolically for spirit, and water for matter.

That this allegory is very ancient and dates from the very earliest archaic period, is shown by the mention, in the Bhâgavata Purâna, of a certain caste named Hamsa or Hansa, which was the “one caste” par excellence; when far back in the mists of a forgotten past there was among the Hindûs only “One Veda, One Deity, One Caste.” There is also a range in the Himâlayas, described in the old books as being situated north of Mount Meru, called Hamsa, and connected with episodes pertaining to the history of religious mysteries and initiations. As to Kâlahansa being the supposed Vehicle of Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, in the exoteric texts and translations of the Orientalists, it is quite a mistake. Brahman, the neuter, is called by them Kâla‐hansa, and Brahmâ, the male, Hansa‐vâhana, because, forsooth, “his vehicle is a swan or goose.”(126) This is a purely exoteric gloss. Esoterically and logically, if Brahman, the infinite, is all that is described by the Orientalists, and, agreeably with the Vedântic texts, is an abstract deity, in no way characterized by the ascription of any human attributes, and at the same time it is maintained that he or it is called Kâlahansa—then how can it ever become the Vâhan of Brahmâ, the manifested finite god? It is quite the reverse. The “Swan or Goose” (Hansa) is the symbol of the male or temporary deity, Brahmâ, the emanation of the primordial Ray, which is made to serve as a Vâhan or Vehicle for the Divine Ray, which otherwise could not manifest itself in the Universe, being, antiphrastically, itself an emanation of Darkness—for our human intellect, at any rate. It is Brahmâ, then, who is Kâlahansa, and the Ray, Hansa‐vâhana.

As to the strange symbol thus chosen, it is equally suggestive; the true mystic significance being the idea of a Universal Matrix, figured by the Primordial Waters of the Deep, or the opening for the reception, and subsequently for the issuing, of that One Ray (the Logos) which contains in itself the other Seven Procreative Rays or Powers (the Logoi or Builders). Hence the choice by the Rosecroix of the aquatic fowl—whether swan or pelican(127)—with seven young ones, for a symbol, modified and adapted to the religion of every country. Ain Suph is called the “Fiery Soul of the Pelican” in the Book of Numbers.(128) Appearing with every Manvantara as Nârâyana, or Svâyambhuva, the Self‐Existent, and penetrating into the Mundane Egg, it emerges from it at the end of the divine incubation as Brahmâ, or Prajâpati, the progenitor of the future Universe, into which he expands. He is Purusha (Spirit), but he is also Prakriti (Matter). Therefore it is only after separating itself into two halves—Brahmâ‐Vâch (the female) and Brahmâ‐Virâj (the male)—that the Prajâpati becomes the male Brahmâ. 9. LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS FIRE, AND FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH YIELDS WATER—THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE GREAT MOTHER.(129)

It must be remembered that the words “Light,” “Flame” and “Fire,” have been adopted by the translators from the vocabulary of the old “Fire Philosophers,”(130) in order to render more clearly the meaning of the archaic terms and symbols employed in the original. Otherwise they would have remained entirely unintelligible to a European reader. To a student of the Occult, however, the above terms will be sufficiently clear. All these—“Light,” “Flame,” “Cold,” “Fire,” “Heat,” “Water,” and “Water of Life”—are, on our plane, the progeny, or, as a modern Physicist would say, the correlations of Electricity. Mighty word, and a still mightier symbol! Sacred generator of a no less sacred progeny; of Fire—the creator, the preserver and the destroyer; of Light—the essence of our divine ancestors; of Flame—the soul of things. Electricity, the One Life at the upper rung of Being, and Astral Fluid, the Athanor of the Alchemists, at the lower; God and Devil, Good and Evil.

Now, why is Light called “Cold Flame”? In the order of Cosmic Evolution (as taught by the Occultist), the energy that actuates matter, after its first formation into atoms, is generated on our plane by Cosmic Heat; and before that period Cosmos, in the sense of dissociated matter, was not. The first Primordial Matter, eternal and coëval with Space, “which has neither a beginning nor an end, [is] neither hot nor cold, but is of its own special nature,” says the Commentary. Heat and cold are relative qualities and pertain to the realms of the manifested worlds, which all proceed from the manifested Hyle, which, in its absolutely latent aspect, is referred to as the “Cold Virgin,” and when awakened to life, as the “Mother.” The ancient Western cosmogonic myths state that at first there was only cold mist (the Father) and the prolific slime (the Mother, Ilus or Hyle), from which crept forth the Mundane Snake (Matter).(131) Primordial Matter, then, before it emerges from the plane of the never‐ manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of Fohat, is but “a cool radiance, colourless, formless, tasteless, and devoid of every quality and aspect.” Even such are her First‐born, the “Four Sons,” who “are One, and become Seven,”—the Entities, by whose qualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists called the four of the seven primal “Centres of Force,” or Atoms, that develop later into the great Cosmic “Elements,” now divided into the seventy or so sub‐elements, known to Science.

The four “Primal Natures” of the first Dhyân Chohans are the so‐called (for want of better terms) Âkâshic, Ethereal, Watery and Fiery. They answer, in the terminology of practical Occultism, to the scientific definitions of gases, which—to convey a clear idea to both Occultists and laymen—may be defined as parahydrogenic,(132) paraoxygenic, oxyhydrogenic, and ozonic, or perhaps nitrozonic; the latter forces, or gases (in Occultism, supersensuous, yet atomic substances), being the most effective and active when energizing on the plane of more grossly differentiated matter. These elements are both electro‐positive and electro‐negative. These and many more are probably the missing links of Chemistry. They are known by other names in Alchemy and to Occultists who practise phenomenal powers. It is by combining and recombining, or dissociating, the “Elements” in a certain way, by means of Astral Fire, that the greatest phenomena are produced.

10. FATHER‐MOTHER SPIN A WEB, WHOSE UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT,(133) THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS, AND THE LOWER ONE TO ITS SHADOWY END, MATTER;(134) AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUBSTANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SVABHÂVAT. In the Mândukya Upanishad(135) it is written, “As a spider throws out and retracts its web, as herbs spring up in the ground ... so is the Universe derived from the undecaying one,” Brahmâ, for the “Germ of unknown Darkness,” is the material from which all evolves and develops, “as the web from the spider, as foam from the water,” etc. This is only graphic and true, if the term Brahmâ, the “Creator,” is derived from the root brih, to increase or expand. Brahmâ “expands,” and becomes the Universe woven out of his own substance. The same idea has been beautifully expressed by Goethe, who says: Thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the garment thou see’st Him by.

11. IT(136) EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE(137) IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER(138) TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS(139) DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER’S BOSOM, AT THE END OF THE GREAT DAY, AND RE‐BECOME ONE WITH HER. WHEN IT(140) IS COOLING, IT BECOMES RADIANT. ITS SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE. The expanding of the Universe, under the “Breath of Fire,” is very suggestive in the light of the fire‐mist period, of which Modern Science speaks so much, and knows in reality so little. Great heat breaks up the compound elements and resolves the heavenly bodies into their Primeval One Element, explains the Commentary. “_Once disintegrated into its primal constituent, by getting within the attraction and reach of a focus, or centre of heat [energy], of which many are carried about to and fro in space, a body, whether alive or dead, will be vapourized, and held in the __‘__Bosom of the Mother,__’__ until Fohat, gathering a few of the clusters of Cosmic Matter [nebulæ], will, by giving it an impulse, set it in motion anew, develop the required heat, and then leave it to follow its own new growth._”

The expanding and contracting of the “Web” i.e., the world‐stuff, or atoms—express here the pulsatory movement; for it is the regular contraction and expansion of the infinite and shoreless Ocean, of that which we may call the noumenon of Matter, emanated by Svabhâvat, which causes the universal vibration of atoms. But it is also suggestive of something else. It shows that the ancients were acquainted with that which is now the puzzle of many Scientists and especially of Astronomers—the cause of the first ignition of matter, or world‐stuff, the paradox of the heat produced by refrigerative contraction, and other such cosmic riddles—for it points unmistakably to a knowledge by the ancients of such phenomena. “There is heat internal and heat external in every atom,” say the MSS. Commentaries, to which the writer has had access, “the Breath of the Father [Spirit], and the Breath [or Heat] of the Mother [Matter]”; and they give explanations which show that the modern theory of the extinction of the solar fires, by loss of heat through radiation, is erroneous. The assumption is false even on the Scientists’ own admission. For, as Professor Newcomb(141) points out, “by losing heat a gaseous body contracts, and the heat generated by the contraction exceeds that which it had to lose in order to produce the contraction.” This paradox, that a body gets hotter, as the shrinking produced by its getting colder is greater, has led to long disputes.

The surplus of heat, it is argued, is lost by radiation, and to assume that the temperature is not lowered pari passu with a decrease of volume under a constant pressure, is to set at naught the law of Charles. Contraction develops heat, it is true; but contraction (from cooling) is incapable of developing the whole amount of heat at any time existing in the mass, or even of maintaining a body at a constant temperature, etc. Professor Winchell tries to reconcile the paradox—only a seeming one in fact, as J. Homer Lane(142) proved—by suggesting “something besides heat.” “May it not be,” he asks, “simply a repulsion among the molecules, which varies according to some law of the distance”?(143) But even this will be found irreconcilable, unless this “something besides heat” is ticketed “Causeless Heat,” the “Breath of Fire,” the all‐creative Force plus Absolute Intelligence, which Physical Science is not likely to accept.

However it may be, the reading of this Stanza, notwithstanding its archaic phraseology, shows it to be more scientific than even Modern Science. 12. THEN SVABHÂVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH(144) IS A PART OF THE WEB.(145) REFLECTING THE “SELF‐EXISTENT LORD,”(146) LIKE A MIRROR, EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.(147) Fohat hardens the Atoms; i.e., by infusing energy into them, he scatters the “Atoms,” or Primordial Matter. “He scatters himself while scattering Matter into Atoms.” It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon Matter. Some faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from the appellation “Cosmic Electricity,” sometimes applied to it; but, in this case, to the commonly known properties of electricity, must be added others, including intelligence. It is of interest to note that Modern Science has come to the conclusion, that all cerebration and brain‐ activity are attended by electrical phenomena.

1. ... LISTEN, YE SONS OF THE EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS—THE SONS OF THE FIRE (a). LEARN THERE IS NEITHER FIRST NOR LAST; FOR ALL IS ONE NUMBER, ISSUED FROM NO‐NUMBER (b). (a) The terms, the “Sons of the Fire,” the “Sons of the Fire‐Mist,” and the like, require explanation. They are connected with a great primordial and universal mystery, and it is not easy to make it clear. There is a passage in the Bhagavadgîtâ, wherein Krishna, speaking symbolically and esoterically, says: I will state the times [conditions] ... at which devotees departing [from this life] do so never to return [be reborn], or to return [to incarnate again]. The fire, the flame, the day, the bright [lucky] fortnight, the six months of the northern solstice, departing [dying] ... in these, those who know the Brahman [Yogîs] go to the Brahman. Smoke, night, the dark [unlucky] fortnight, the six months of the southern solstice, (dying) in these, the devotee goes to the lunar light [or mansion, the Astral Light also] and returns [is reborn]. These two paths, bright and dark, are said to be eternal in this world [or Great Kalpa (Age)]. By the one (a man) goes never to return, by the other he comes back.(148)

Now these terms “fire,” “flame,” “day,” the “bright fortnight,” etc., “smoke,” “night,” and so on, leading only to the end of the Lunar Path, are incomprehensible without a knowledge of Esotericism. These are all names of various deities which preside over the cosmo‐psychic Powers. We often speak of the Hierarchy of “Flames,” of the “Sons of Fire,” etc. Shankarâchârya, the greatest of the Esoteric Masters of India, says that Fire means a deity which presides over Time (Kâla). The able translator of the Bhagavadgîtâ, Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A., of Bombay, confesses he has “no clear notion of the meaning of these verses.” It seems quite clear, on the contrary, to him who knows the Occult doctrine. With these verses the mystic sense of the solar and lunar symbols are connected. The Pitris are Lunar Deities and our Ancestors, because they created the physical man. The Agnishvatta, the Kumâras (the Seven Mystic Sages), are Solar Deities, though they are Pitris also; and these are the “Fashioners of the Inner Man.” They are “The Sons of Fire,” because they are the first Beings, called “Minds,” in the Secret Doctrine, evolved from Primordial Fire. “The Lord ... is a consuming fire.”(149) “The Lord shall be revealed ... with his mighty angels in flaming fire.”(150) The Holy Ghost descended on the Apostles as “cloven

tongues like as of fire”;(151) Vishnu will return on Kalkî, the White Horse, as the last Avatâra, amid fire and flames; and Sosiosh will also descend on a White Horse in a “tornado of fire.” “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him ... and his name is called the Word of God,”(152) amid flaming Fire. Fire is Æther in its purest form, and hence is not regarded as matter, but is the unity of Æther—the second, manifested deity—in its universality. But there are two “Fires,” and a distinction is made between them in the Occult teachings. The first, or the purely formless and invisible Fire, concealed in the Central Spiritual Sun, is spoken of as Triple (metaphysically); while the Fire of the Manifested Cosmos is Septenary, throughout both the Universe and our Solar System. “The fire of knowledge burns up all action on the plane of illusion,” says the Commentary. “_Therefore, those who have acquired it and are emancipated, are called __‘__Fires__’__._” Speaking of the seven senses, symbolized as Hotris, or Priests, Nârada says in Anugitâ: “Thus these seven [senses, smell and taste, and colour, and sound, etc.,] are the causes of emancipation”; and the translator adds: “It is from these seven from which the Self is to be emancipated. ‘I’

[in the sentence, ‘I am ... devoid of qualities’] must mean the Self, not the Brâhmana who speaks.”(153)

(b) The expression, “all is One Number, issued from No‐Number,” relates again to that universal and philosophical tenet just explained in the commentary on Shloka 4 of Stanza III. That which is absolute, is of course No‐Number; but in its later significance it has an application both in Space and in Time. It means that not only every increment of time is part of a larger increment, up to the most indefinitely prolonged duration conceivable by the human intellect, but also that no manifested thing can be thought of except as part of a whole: the total aggregate being the One Manifested Universe that issues from the Unmanifested or Absolute—called Non‐Being, or “No‐Number,” to distinguish it from Being, or the “One Number.” 2. LEARN WHAT WE, WHO DESCEND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE, WHO ARE BORN FROM THE PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNT FROM OUR FATHERS.... This is explained in Book II, and the term, “Primordial Flame,” corroborates what is said in the first paragraph of the preceding commentary on Stanza IV.

The distinction between the “Primordial” and the subsequent Seven Builders is that the former are the Ray and direct emanation of the first “Sacred Four,” the Tetraktys, that is, the eternally Self‐Existent One—eternal in essence note well, not in manifestation, and distinct from the Universal One. Latent, during Pralaya, and active, during Manvantara, the “Primordial” proceed from “Father‐Mother” (Spirit‐Hyle, or Ilus); whereas the other Manifested Quaternary and the Seven proceed from the Mother alone. It is the latter who is the immaculate Virgin‐Mother, who is overshadowed, not impregnated, by the Universal Mystery—when she emerges from her state of Laya, or undifferentiated condition. In reality, they are, of course, all one; but their aspects on the various planes of Being are different. The first Primordial are the highest Beings on the Scale of Existence. They are the Archangels of Christianity, those who refuse to create or rather to multiply—as did Michael in the latter system, and as did the eldest “Mind‐born Sons” of Brahmâ (Vedhâs).

3. FROM THE EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT—THE RAY OF THE EVER‐DARKNESS—SPRANG IN SPACE THE REÄWAKENED ENERGIES;(154) THE ONE FROM THE EGG, THE SIX, AND THE FIVE (a). THEN THE THREE, THE ONE, THE FOUR, THE ONE, THE FIVE—THE TWICE SEVEN, THE SUM TOTAL (b). AND THESE ARE THE ESSENCES, THE FLAMES, THE ELEMENTS, THE BUILDERS, THE NUMBERS (c), THE ARÛPA,(155) THE RÛPA,(156) AND THE FORCE, OR DIVINE MAN—THE SUM TOTAL. AND FROM THE DIVINE MAN EMANATED THE FORMS, THE SPARKS, THE SACRED ANIMALS (d), AND THE MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS(157) WITHIN THE HOLY FOUR.(158) (a) This relates to the Sacred Science of the Numerals; so sacred, indeed, and so important in the study of Occultism that the subject can hardly be skimmed, even in such a large work as the present. It is on the Hierarchies and the correct numbers of these Beings—invisible (to us) except upon very rare occasions—that the mystery of the whole Universe is built. The Kumâras, for instance, are called the “Four”—though in reality seven in number—because Sanaka, Sananda, Sanâtana and Sanatkumâra are the chief Vaidhâtra (their patronymic name), who sprang from the “four‐fold mystery.” To make the whole clearer, we have to turn for our illustrations to tenets more familiar to some of our readers, namely the Brâhmanical.

According to Manu, Hiranyagarbha is Brahmâ, the first male, formed by the undiscernible Causeless Cause, in a “Golden Egg resplendent as the Sun,” as states the Hindû Classical Dictionary; Hiranyagarbha meaning the Golden, or rather the Effulgent, Womb or Egg. The meaning tallies awkwardly with the epithet “male.” Surely the esoteric meaning of the sentence is clear enough! In the Rig Veda it is said—“THAT, the one Lord of all beings ... the one animating principle of gods and men,” arose, in the beginning, in the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha—which is the Mundane Egg, or Sphere of our Universe. That Being is surely androgynous, and the allegory of Brahmâ separating into two, and creating in one of his halves (the female Vâch) himself as Virâj, is a proof of it.

“The One from the Egg, the Six and the Five,” give the number 1065, the value of the First‐born (later on the male and female Brahmâ‐Prajâpati), who answers to the numbers 7, and 14, and 21 respectively. The Prajâpati, like the Sephiroth are only seven, including the synthetic Sephira of the Triad from which they spring. Thus from Hiranyagarbha, or Prajâpati, the Triune (the primeval Vedic Trimûrti, Agni, Vâyu, and Sûrya), emanate the other seven, or again ten, if we separate the first three which exist in one, and one in three; all, moreover, being comprehended within that one “Supreme,” Parama, called Guhya or “Secret,” and Sarvâtman, the “Super‐ Soul.” “The seven Lords of Being lie concealed in Sarvâtman like thoughts in one brain.” So with the Sephiroth. They are either seven when counting from the upper Triad, headed by Kether, or ten—exoterically. In the Mahâbhârata, the Prajâpati are 21 in number, or ten, six, and five (1065), thrice seven.(159)

(b) “The Three, the One, the Four, the One, the Five,” in their total—Twice Seven, represent 31415—the numerical Hierarchy of the Dhyân Chohans of various orders, and of the inner or circumscribed world.(160) Placed on the boundary of the great Circle, “Pass Not”—called also the Dhyânipâsha, the “Rope of the Angels,” the “Rope” that hedges off the phenomenal from the noumenal Cosmos, which does not fall within the range of our present objective consciousness—this number, when not enlarged by permutation and expansion, is ever 31415, anagrammatically and Kabalistically, being both the number of the Circle and the mystic Svastika, the “Twice Seven” once more; for whatever way the two sets of figures are counted, when added separately, one figure after another, whether crossways from right, or from left, they will always yield fourteen. Mathematically they represent the well‐known mathematical formula, that the ratio of the diameter of a circle to the circumference is as 1 to 3.1415, or the value of π (pi), as it is called. This set of figures must have the same meaning, since the 1:314,159 and again 1:3.1415927 are worked out in the secret calculations to express the various cycles and ages of the “First‐born,” or 311,040,000,000,000 with fractions, and yield the same 1.3415 by a process we are not concerned with at present. And it may be shown that Mr. Ralston Skinner, the author of The Source of Measures, reads the Hebrew word Alhim in the same number values—by omitting, as said, the ciphers, and by permutation—13514: since א (a) is 1; ל (l) is 3 (30); ה (h) is 5; י (i) is 1 (10); and מ (m) is 4 (40); and anagrammatically—31415, as explained by him.

Thus, while in the metaphysical world, the Circle with the one central Point in it has no number, and is called Anupâdaka—parentless and numberless, for it can fall under no calculation; in the manifested world, the Mundane Egg or Circle is circumscribed within the groups called the Line, the Triangle, the Pentagram, the second Line and the Square (or 13514); and when the Point has generated a Line, and thus becomes a diameter which stands for the androgynous Logos, then the figures become 31415, or a triangle, a line, a square, a second line, and a pentagram. “When the Son separates from the Mother he becomes the Father,” the diameter standing for Nature, or the feminine principle. Therefore it is said: “_In the World of Being, the One Point fructifies the Line, the Virgin Matrix of Kosmos [the egg‐shaped zero], and the immaculate Mother gives birth to the Form that combines all forms_.” Prajâpati is called the first procreating male, and “his mother’s husband.”(161) This gives the key‐note to all the later “Divine Sons” from “Immaculate Mothers.” It is strongly corroborated by the significant fact that Anna, the name of the Mother of the Virgin Mary, now represented by the Roman Catholic Church as having given birth to her daughter in an immaculate way (“Mary conceived without sin”), is derived from the Chaldean Ana, Heaven, or Astral Light, Anima Mundi; whence Anaitia, Devî‐Durgâ, the wife of Shiva, is also called Annapurna, and Kanyâ, the Virgin; Umâ‐Kanyâ being her esoteric name, and meaning the “Virgin of Light,” Astral Light in one of its multitudinous aspects.

(c) The Devas, Pitris, Rishis; the Suras and the Asuras; the Daityas and Âdityas; the Dânavas and Gandharvas, etc., etc., have all their synonyms in our Secret Doctrine, as well as in the Kabalah and Hebrew Angelology; but it is useless to give their ancient names, as it would only create confusion. Many of these may be now also found even in the Christian Hierarchy of divine and celestial Powers. All those Thrones and Dominions, Virtues and Principalities, Cherubs, Seraphs and Demons, the various denizens of the Sidereal World, are the modern copies of archaic prototypes. The very symbolism in their names, when transliterated and arranged, in Greek and Latin, are sufficient to show it, as will be proved in several cases further on. (d) The “Sacred Animals” are found in the Bible as well as in the Kabalah, and they have their meaning—a very profound one, too—on the page of the origins of Life. In the Sepher Jetzirah it is stated that: “God engraved in the Holy Four the Throne of his Glory, the Auphanim [the Wheels or World‐Spheres], the Seraphim, and the Sacred Animals, as Ministering Angels, and from these [Air, Water, and Fire or Ether] he formed his habitation.” The following is the literal translation from the IXth and Xth Sections:

Ten numbers without what? One: the Spirit of the living God ... who liveth in eternities! Voice and Spirit and Word, and this is the Holy Spirit. Two: Air out of Spirit. He designed and hewed therewith twenty‐two letters of foundation, three mothers, and seven double and twelve single, and one Spirit out of them. Three: Water out of Spirit; he designed and hewed with them the barren and the void, mud and earth. He designed them as a flower‐bed, hewed them as a wall, covered them as a paving. Four: Fire out of Water. He designed and hewed therewith the throne of glory and the wheels, and the seraphim and the holy animals as ministering angels, and of the three He founded his dwelling, as it is said, He makes his angels spirits, and his servants fiery flames! The words “founded his dwelling” show clearly that in the Kabalah, as in India, the Deity was considered as the Universe, and was not, in his origin, the extra‐cosmic God he now is. Thus was the world made “through Three Seraphim—Sepher, Saphar, and Sipur,” or “through Number, Numbers, and Numbered.” With the astronomical key, these “Sacred Animals” become the signs of the Zodiac.

4. THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE, THE DIVINE MOTHER OF THE SEVEN. THE SPARKS OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE SERVANTS OF, THE FIRST, THE SECOND, THE THIRD, THE FOURTH, THE FIFTH, THE SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF THE SEVEN (a). THESE(162) ARE CALLED SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS THE ETERNAL NIDÂNA—THE OI‐HA‐HOU (b).(163) (a) This Shloka gives again a brief analysis of the Hierarchies of the Dhyân Chohans, called Devas (Gods) in India, or the Conscious Intelligent Powers in Nature. To this Hierarchy correspond the actual types into which Humanity may be divided; for Humanity, as a whole, is in reality a materialized, though as yet imperfect, expression thereof. The “Army of the Voice” is a term closely connected with the mystery of Sound and Speech, as an effect and corollary of the Cause—Divine Thought. As beautifully expressed by P. Christian, the learned author of Histoire de la Magie and L’Homme Rouge des Tuileries, the words spoken by, as well as the name of, every individual largely determine his future fate. Why? Because: When our soul [mind] creates or evokes a thought, the representative sign of that thought is self‐engraved upon the astral fluid, which is the receptacle and, so to say, the mirror of all the manifestations of being.

The sign expresses the thing: the thing is the [hidden or occult] virtue of the sign. To pronounce a word is to evoke a thought, and make it present: the magnetic potency of human speech is the commencement of every manifestation in the Occult World. To utter a Name is not only to define a Being [an Entity], but to place it under, and condemn it through the emission of the Word [Verbum] to the influence of, one or more Occult potencies. Things are, for every one of us, that which it [the Word] makes them while naming them. The Word [Verbum] or the speech of every man is, quite unconsciously to himself, a blessing or a curse; this is why our present ignorance about the properties and attributes of the idea, as well as about the attributes and properties of matter, is often fatal to us. Yes, names [and words] are either beneficent or maleficent; they are, in a certain sense, either venomous or health‐giving, according to the hidden influences attached by Supreme Wisdom to their elements, that is to say, to the letters which compose them, and the numbers correlative to these letters.

This is strictly true as an esoteric teaching accepted by all the Eastern Schools of Occultism. In the Sanskrit, as also in the Hebrew and all other alphabets, every letter has its occult meaning and its rationale: it is a cause and an effect of a preceding cause, and a combination of these very often produces the most magical effect. The vowels, especially, contain the most occult and formidable potencies. The Mantras (magical rather than religious invocations, esoterically) are chanted by the Brâhmans, and so are the rest of the Vedas and other Scriptures. The “Army of the Voice” is the prototype of the “Host of the Logos,” or the “Word,” of the Sepher Jetzirah, called in the Secret Doctrine the “One Number issued from No‐Number”—the One Eternal Principle. The Esoteric Theogony begins with the One Manifested (therefore not eternal in its presence and being, if eternal in its essence), the Number of the Numbers and Numbered—the latter proceeding from the Voice, the feminine Vâch, “of the hundred forms,” Shatarûpâ, or Nature. It is from this Number, 10, or Creative Nature, the Mother (the Occult cypher, or “0,” ever procreating and multiplying in union with the unit “1,” or the Spirit of Life), that the whole Universe proceeds.

In the Anugîtâ,(164) a conversation is given between a Brâhmana and his wife on the origin of Speech and its Occult properties. The wife asks how Speech came into existence, and which was prior to the other, Speech or Mind. The Brâhmana tells her that the Apâna (_inspirational __ breath_) becoming lord, changes that intelligence, which does not understand Speech or Words, into the state of Apâna, and thus opens the Mind. Thereupon he tells her a story, a dialogue between Speech and Mind. Both went to the Self of Being (i.e., to the individual Higher Self, as Nîlakantha thinks; to Prajâpati, according to the commentator Arjuna Mishra), and asked him to destroy their doubts, and decide which of them preceded and was superior to the other. To this the Lord said: “Mind (is superior).” But Speech answered the Self of Being, by saying: “I verily yield (you) your desires,” meaning that by Speech he acquired what he desired. Thereupon again, the Self told her that there are two Minds, the “movable” and the “immovable.” “The immovable is with me,” he said, “the movable is in your dominion” (i.e. of Speech), on the plane of matter. “To that you are superior.”

But inasmuch, O beautiful one, as you came personally to speak to me (in the way you did, i.e. proudly), therefore, O Sarasvatî! you shall never speak after (hard) exhalation. The goddess Speech [Sarasvatî, a later form or aspect of Vâch, the goddess also of secret learning, or Esoteric Wisdom], verily, dwelt always between the Prâna and the Apâna. But, O noble one! going with the Apâna wind [vital air], though impelled, ... without the Prâna [expirational breath], she ran up to Prajâpati [Brahmâ], saying, “Be pleased, O venerable sir!” Then the Prâna appeared again nourishing Speech. And, therefore, Speech never speaks after (hard) exhalation. It is always noisy or noiseless. Of these two, the noiseless is the superior to the noisy (Speech).... The (Speech) which is produced in the body by means of the Prâna, and which then goes [is transformed] into Apâna and then becoming assimilated with the Udâna [physical organs of Speech] ... then finally dwells in the Samâna [“at the navel in the form of sound, as the material cause of all words,” says Arjuna Mishra]. So Speech formerly spoke. Hence the Mind is distinguished by reason of its being immovable, and the Goddess (Speech) by reason of her being movable.

The above allegory is at the root of the Occult law, which prescribes silence upon the knowledge of certain secret and invisible things, perceptible only to the spiritual mind (the sixth sense), and which cannot be expressed by “noisy” or uttered speech. This chapter of Anugîtâ explains, says Arjuna Mishra, Prânâyâma, or regulation of the breath in Yoga practices. This mode, however, without the previous acquisition of, or at least full understanding of, the two higher senses (of which there are seven, as will be shown), pertains rather to the lower Yoga. The Hatha so called was and still is discountenanced by the Arhats. It is injurious to the health, and alone can never develop into Râja Yoga. This story is quoted to show how inseparably connected in the metaphysics of old, are intelligent beings, or rather “intelligences,” with every sense or function, whether physical or mental. The Occult claim that there are seven senses in man, and in nature, as there are seven states of consciousness, is corroborated in the same work, Chapter vii, on Pratyâhâra (the restraint and regulation of the senses, Prânâyâma being that of the “vital winds” or breath). The Brâhmana, speaking of the institution of the seven sacrificial Priests (Hotris), says: “The nose and the eye, and the tongue, and the skin and the ear as the fifth [or smell, sight, taste, touch, and hearing], mind and understanding are the seven sacrificial priests separately stationed,” which “dwelling in a minute space (still) do not perceive each other,” on this sensuous plane, none of them except mind.

For mind says: “The nose smells not without me, the eye does not take in colour, etc., etc. I am the eternal chief among all elements [i.e., senses]. Without me, the senses never shine, like an empty dwelling, or like fires the flames of which are extinct. Without me, all beings, like fuel half dried and half moist, fail to apprehend qualities or objects even with the senses exerting themselves.”(165)

This, of course, only with regard to mind on the sensuous plane. Spiritual Mind, the upper portion or aspect of the impersonal Manas, takes no cognizance of the senses in physical man. How well the ancients were acquainted with the correlation of forces, and all the recently discovered phenomena of mental and physical faculties and functions, and with many more mysteries also—may be found in reading Chapters vii and viii of this priceless work in philosophy and mystic learning. See the quarrel of the senses about their respective superiority and their taking the Brahman, the Lord of all creatures, for their arbiter. “You are all greatest and not greatest [or superior to objects, as Arjuna Mishra says, none being independent of the other]. You are all possessed of one another’s qualities. All are greatest in their own spheres and all support one another. There is one unmoving [life‐wind or breath, the yoga‐ inhalation, so called, which is the breath of the One or Higher Self]. That one is my own Self, accumulated in numerous (forms).” This Breath, Voice, Self or Wind (Pneuma?), is the Synthesis of the Seven Senses, noumenally all minor deities, and esoterically—the Septenary and the “Army of the Voice.”

(b) Next we see Cosmic Matter scattering and forming itself into Elements; grouped into the mystic Four within the fifth Element—Ether, the “lining” of Âkâsha, the Anima Mundi, or Mother of Cosmos. “Dots, Lines, Triangles, Cubes, Circles” and finally “Spheres”—why or how? Because, says the Commentary, such is the first law of Nature, and because Nature geometrizes universally in all her manifestations. There is an inherent law—not only in the primordial, but also in the manifested matter of our phenomenal plane—by which Nature correlates her geometrical forms, and later, also, her compound elements, and in which also there is no place for accident or chance. It is a fundamental law in Occultism, that there is no rest or cessation of motion in Nature.(166) That which seems rest is only the change of one form into another, the change of substance going hand in hand with that of form—so at least we are taught in Occult physics, which thus seem to have anticipated the discovery of the “conservation of matter” by a considerable time. Says the ancient Commentary(167) to Stanza IV:

_The Mother is the fiery Fish of Life. She scatters her Spawn and the Breath [Motion] heats and quickens it. The Grains [of Spawn] are soon attracted to each other and form the Curds in the Ocean [of Space]. The larger lumps coalesce and receive new Spawn—in fiery Dots, Triangles and Cubes, which ripen, and at the appointed time some of the lumps detach themselves and assume spheroidal form, a process which they effect only when not interfered with by the others. After which, Law No. —— comes into operation. Motion [the Breath] becomes the Whirlwind and sets them into rotation._(168) 5. THE OI‐HA‐HOU, WHICH IS DARKNESS, THE BOUNDLESS, OR THE NO‐NUMBER, ÂDI‐ NIDÂNA SVABHÂVAT, THE [circle]:(169) I. THE ÂDI‐SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE IS ONE (a). II. THE VOICE OF THE WORD, SVABHÂVAT, THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE AND NINE.(170) III. THE “FORMLESS SQUARE”.(171) AND THESE THREE, ENCLOSED WITHIN THE [CIRCLE],(172) ARE THE SACRED FOUR; AND THE TEN ARE THE ARÛPA (173) UNIVERSE (b). THEN COME THE SONS, THE SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS BREATH WHICH IS THE LIGHT‐MAKER (c).(174)

(a) “Âdi‐Sanat,” translated literally, is the First or “Primeval Ancient,” a name which identifies the Kabalistic “Ancient of Days” and the “Holy Aged” (Sephira and Adam Kadmon) with Brahmâ, the Creator, called also Sanat among his other names and titles. “Svabhâvat” is the mystic Essence, the plastic Root of physical Nature—“Numbers” when manifested; the “Number,” in its Unity of Substance, on the highest plane. The name is of Buddhist use and a synonym for the four‐fold Anima Mundi, the Kabalistic Archetypal World, from whence proceed the Creative, Formative, and Material Worlds; and the Scintillæ or Sparks—the various other worlds contained in the last three. The Worlds are all subject to Rulers or Regents—Rishis and Pitris with the Hindûs, Angels with the Jews and Christians, Gods with the Ancients in general.

(b) “[circle].” This means that the “Boundless Circle,” the zero, becomes a number, only when one of the other nine figures precedes it, and thus manifests its value and potency; the “Word” or Logos, in union with “Voice” and Spirit(175) (the expression and source of Consciousness), standing for the nine figures, and thus forming, with the cypher, the Decad which contains in itself all the Universe. The Triad forms the Tetraktys, or “Sacred Four,” within the Circle, the Square within the Circle being the most potent of all the magical figures.

(c) The “One Rejected” is the Sun of our system. The exoteric version may be found in the oldest Sanskrit Scriptures. In the Rig Veda, Aditi, the “Boundless” or Infinite Space—translated by Prof. Max Müller, “the visible infinite, visible by the naked eye (!!); the endless expanse beyond the earth, beyond the clouds, beyond the sky”—is the equivalent of “Mother‐Space,” coëval with “Darkness.” She is very properly called the “Mother of the Gods,” Deva‐Mâtri, as it is from her cosmic matrix that all the heavenly bodies of our system were born—sun and planets. Thus she is described, allegorically, in this wise: “Eight sons were born from the body of Aditi; she approached the gods with seven, but cast away the eighth, Mârttânda,” our sun. The seven sons called the Adityas are, cosmically or astronomically, the seven planets; and the sun being excluded from their number shows plainly that the Hindûs may have known, and in fact knew, of a seventh planet, without calling it Uranus.(176) But esoterically and theologically, so to say, the Adityas, in their primitive most ancient meanings, are the eight, and twelve great gods of the Hindû Pantheon. “The Seven allow the mortals to see their dwellings, but show themselves only to the Arhats,” says an old proverb; “their dwellings” standing here for the planets. The ancient Commentary gives the following allegory and explains it:

_Eight houses were built by Mother: eight houses for her eight Divine Sons; four large and four small ones. Eight brilliant Suns, according to their age and merits. Bal‐i‐lu [Mârttânda] was not satisfied, though his house was the largest. He began [to work] as the huge elephants do. He breathed [drew in] into his stomach the vital airs of his brothers. He sought to devour them. The larger four were far away; far, on the margin __ of their kingdom._(177)_ They were not robbed [affected], and laughed. Do your worst, Sir, you cannot reach us, they said. But the smaller wept. They complained to the Mother. She exiled Bal‐i‐lu to the centre of her kingdom, from whence he could not move. [Since then] he [only] watches and threatens. He pursues them, turning slowly round himself; they turning swiftly from him, and he following from afar the direction in which his brothers move on the path that encircles their houses._(178)_ From that day he feeds on the sweat of the Mother’s body. He fills himself with her breath and refuse. Therefore, she rejected him_.

Thus the “Rejected Son” being our Sun, evidently, as shown above, the “Son‐Suns” refer not only to our planets but to the heavenly bodies in general. Sûrya, himself only a reflection of the Central Spiritual Sun, is the prototype of all those bodies that evolved after him. In the Vedas he is called Loka‐Chakshuh, the “Eye of the World” (our planetary world), and he is one of the three chief deities. He is called indifferently the Son of Dyaus or of Aditi, because no distinction is made with reference to, or scope allowed for, the esoteric meaning. Thus he is depicted as drawn by seven horses, and by one horse with seven heads; the former referring to his seven planets, the latter to their one common origin from the One Cosmic Element. This “One Element” is called figuratively “Fire.” The Vedas teach that “fire verily is all the deities.”(179)

The meaning of the allegory is plain, for we have both the Dzyan Commentary and Modern Science to explain it, though the two differ in more than one particular. The Occult Doctrine rejects the hypothesis born of the Nebular Theory, that the (seven) great planets have evolved from the Sun’s central mass, of this our visible Sun, at any rate. The first condensation of cosmic matter of course took place about a central nucleus, its parent Sun; but our Sun, it is taught, merely detached itself earlier than all the others, as the rotating mass contracted, and is their elder, bigger “brother” therefore, not their “father.” The eight Adityas, the “gods,” are all formed from the eternal substance (cometary matter(180)—the Mother), or the “world‐stuff,” which is both the fifth and the sixth Cosmic Principle, the Upâdhi, or Basis, of the Universal Soul, just as in man, the Microcosm, Manas(181) is the Upâdhi of Buddhi.(182)

There is a whole poem on the pregenetic battles fought by the growing planets before the final formation of Cosmos, thus accounting for the seemingly disturbed position of the systems of several planets; the plane of the satellites of some (of Neptune and Uranus, for instance, of which the ancients knew nothing, it is said) being tilted over, thus giving them an appearance of retrograde motion. These planets are called the Warriors, the Architects, and are accepted by the Roman Church as the leaders of the heavenly Hosts, thus showing the same traditions. Having evolved from Cosmic Space, the Sun, we are taught—before the final formation of the primaries and the annulation of the planetary nebulæ—drew into the depths of his mass all the cosmic vitality he could, threatening to engulf his weaker “Brothers,” before the law of attraction and repulsion was finally adjusted; after which, he began feeding on “the Mother’s refuse and sweat”; in other words, on those portions of Æther (the “Breath of the Universal Soul”), of the existence and constitution of which Science is as yet absolutely ignorant. As a theory of this kind has been propounded by Sir William Grove,(183) who theorizes that the systems “are gradually changing by atmospheric additions or subtractions, or by accretions and diminutions arising from nebular substance,” and again that “the sun may condense gaseous matter as it travels in space, and so heat may be produced”—the archaic teaching seems scientific enough, even in this age.(184) Mr.

W. Mattieu Williams suggested that the diffused matter or Ether, which is the recipient of the heat radiations of the Universe, is thereby drawn into the depths of the solar mass; expelling thence the previously condensed and thermally exhausted Ether, it becomes compressed and gives up its heat, to be in turn itself driven out in a rarefied and cooled state, to absorb a fresh supply of heat, which he supposes to be in this way taken up by the Ether, and again concentrated and redistributed by the Suns of the Universe.

This is about as close an approximation to the Occult teachings as Science ever imagined; for Occultism explains it by the “dead breath,” given back by Mârttânda, and his feeding on the “sweat and refuse” of “Mother Space.” What could affect Neptune,(185) Saturn and Jupiter, but little, would have killed such comparatively small “Houses” as Mercury, Venus and Mars. As Uranus was not known before the end of the eighteenth century, the name of the fourth planet mentioned in the allegory must remain to us, so far, a mystery.

The “Breath” of all the “Seven” is said to be Bhâskara, the Light‐Maker, because they (the planets) were all comets and suns in their origin. They evolve into manvantaric life from Primeval Chaos (now the noumenon of irresolvable nebulæ), by aggregation and accumulation of the primary differentiations of eternal Matter, according to the beautiful expression in the Commentary, “Thus the Sons of Light clothed themselves in the fabric of Darkness.” They are called allegorically the “Heavenly Snails,” on account of their (to us) formless Intelligences inhabiting unseen their starry and planetary homes, and so to speak, carrying them, as the snails do, along with themselves in their revolution. The doctrine of a common origin for all the heavenly bodies and planets was, as we see, inculcated by the archaic astronomers, before Kepler, Newton, Leibnitz, Kant, Herschel and Laplace. Heat (the “Breath”), Attraction and Repulsion—the three great factors of Motion—are the conditions under which all the members of this primitive family are born, develop, and die; to be reborn after a Night of Brahmâ, during which eternal Matter relapses periodically into its primary undifferentiated state. The most attenuated gases can give no idea of its nature to the modern Physicist. Centres of Forces at first, the invisible Sparks, or primordial Atoms, differentiate into Molecules, and become Suns—passing gradually into objectivity—gaseous, radiant, cosmic, the one “Whirlwind” (or Motion) finally giving the impulse to the form, and the initial motion, regulated and sustained by the never‐resting “Breaths”—the Dhyân Chohans.

6. ... THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE THREE.(186) THE REJECTED SON IS ONE. THE “SON‐SUNS” ARE COUNTLESS. The “Lipika,” from the word lipi, “writing,” means literally the “Scribes.”(187) Mystically, these Divine Beings are connected with Karma, the Law of Retribution, for they are the Recorders, or Annalists, who impress on the (to us) invisible tablets of the Astral Light, “the great picture‐gallery of eternity”—a faithful record of every act, and even thought, of man; of all that was, is, or ever will be, in the phenomenal Universe. As said in Isis Unveiled, this divine and unseen canvas is the Book of Life. As it is the Lipika who project into objectivity from the passive Universal Mind the ideal plan of the Universe, upon which the “Builders” reconstruct the Kosmos after every Pralaya, it is they who stand parallel to the Seven Angels of the Presence, whom the Christians recognize in the Seven “Planetary Spirits,” or the “Spirits of the Stars”; and thus it is they who are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal Ideation—or, as Plato calls it, the “Divine Thought.” The Eternal Record is no fantastic dream, for we meet with the same records in the world of gross matter. As Dr. Draper says:

A shadow never falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace which might be made visible by resorting to proper processes.... The portraits of our friends or landscape‐views may be hidden on the sensitive surface from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance as soon as proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is concealed on a silver or a glassy surface, until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth into the visible world. Upon the walls of our most private apartments, where we think the eye of intrusion is altogether shut out, and our retirement can never be profaned, there exist the vestiges of our acts, silhouettes of whatever we have done.(188) Drs. Jevons and Babbage believe that every thought displaces the particles of the brain and, setting them in motion, scatters them throughout the universe: they also think that “each particle of the existing matter must be a register of all that has happened.”(189) Thus the ancient doctrine has begun to acquire rights of citizenship in the speculations of the scientific world.

The forty “Assessors,” who stand in the region of Amenti as the accusers of the Soul before Osiris, belong to the same class of deities as the Lipika, and might stand as parallels, were not the Egyptian gods so little understood in their esoteric meaning. The Hindû Chitragupta who reads out the account of every Soul’s life from his register, called Agra‐Sandhânî; the Assessors who read theirs from the Heart of the Defunct, which becomes an open book before either Yama, Minos, Osiris, or Karma—are all so many copies of, and variants from, the Lipika and their Astral Records. Nevertheless, the Lipika are not deities connected with Death, but with Life Eternal. Connected as the Lipika are with the destiny of every man, and the birth of every child, whose life is already traced in the Astral Light—not fatalistically, but only because the Future, like the Past, is ever alive in the Present—they may also be said to exercise an influence on the Science of Horoscopy. We must admit the truth of the latter whether we will or not. For, as observed by one of the modern professors of Astrology:

Now that photography has revealed to us the chemical influence of the sidereal system, by fixing on the sensitized plate of the apparatus milliards of stars and planets that had hitherto baffled the efforts of the most powerful telescopes to discover, it becomes easier to understand how our solar system can, at the birth of a child, influence his brain—virgin of any impression—in a definite manner and according to the presence on the zenith of such or another zodiacal constellation.(190)

1. THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM, PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY WHIRLWIND. This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all the Stanzas to explain. Its language is comprehensible only to him who is thoroughly versed in Eastern allegory, and its purposely obscure phraseology. The question will surely be asked: Do the Occultists believe in all these “Builders,” “Lipika,” and “Sons of Light,” as Entities, or are they merely imagery? To this the answer is given as plainly: After due allowance for the imagery of personified Powers, we must admit the existence of these Entities, if we would not reject the existence of Spiritual Humanity within physical mankind. For the hosts of these Sons of Light, the Mind‐born Sons of the first manifested Ray of the Unknown All, are the very root of Spiritual Man. Unless we want to believe the unphilosophical dogma of a specially created soul for every human birth—a fresh supply of these pouring in daily, since “Adam”—we have to admit the Occult teachings. This will be explained in its place. Let us see, now, what may be the meaning of this Occult Stanza.

The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious God—aye, even the highest—the Spiritual Primeval Intelligences must pass through the human stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals that inhabit any world, i.e., to those Intelligences that have reached the appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now, ever since the middle point of the Fourth Root Race of the Fourth Round was passed. Each Entity must have won for itself the right of becoming divine, through self‐experience. Hegel, the great German thinker, must have known or sensed intuitionally this truth, when he said, that the Unconscious evolved the Universe only “in the hope of attaining clear self‐ consciousness,” in other words, of becoming Man; for this is also the secret meaning of the oft recurring Purânic phrase, of Brahmâ being constantly “moved by the desire to create.” This explains also the hidden Kabalistic meaning of the saying: “The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.” The Mind‐born Sons, the Rishis, the Builders, etc., were all Men—of whatever forms and shapes—in other worlds and in preceding Manvantaras.

This subject being so very mystical, it is most difficult to explain it in all its details and bearings; for the whole mystery of evolutionary creation is contained therein. A sentence or two in the Shloka vividly recalls to mind similar sentences in the Kabalah and the phraseology of the King Psalmist.(191) Both, when speaking of God, show him making the wind his messenger and his “ministers a flaming fire.” But in the Esoteric Doctrine it is used figuratively. The “Fiery Whirl‐wind” is the incandescent cosmic dust which only follows magnetically, as the iron filings follow the magnet, the directing thought of the “Creative Forces.” Yet, this cosmic dust is something more; for every atom in the Universe has the potentiality of self‐consciousness in it, and is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It is an atom and an angel.

In this connection it should be noted that one of the luminaries of the modern Evolutionist School, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the inadequacy of “natural selection” as the sole factor in the development of physical man, practically concedes the whole point here discussed. He holds that the evolution of man was directed and furthered by superior Intelligences, whose agency is a necessary factor in the scheme of Nature. But once the operation of these Intelligences is admitted in one place, it is only a logical deduction to extend it still further. No hard and fast line can be drawn. 2. THEY MAKE OF HIM THE MESSENGER OF THEIR WILL (a). THE DZYU BECOMES FOHAT: THE SWIFT SON OF THE DIVINE SONS, WHOSE SONS ARE THE LIPIKA,(192) RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. FOHAT IS THE STEED, AND THE THOUGHT IS THE RIDER.(193) HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY CLOUDS(194) (b); TAKES THREE, AND FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE, AND THE SEVEN BELOW.(195) HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE SPARKS,(196) AND JOINS THEM TOGETHER (c). (a) This shows the “Primordial Seven” using for their Vehicle, (Vâhana, or the manifested subject which becomes the symbol of the Power directing it) Fohat, called in consequence, the “Messenger of their Will”—the “Fiery Whirlwind.”

(b) “Dzyu becomes Fohat”—the expression itself shows it. Dzyu is the one Real (Magical) Knowledge, or Occult Wisdom; which, dealing with eternal truths and primal causes, becomes almost omnipotence when applied in the right direction. Its antithesis is Dzyu‐mi, that which deals with illusions and false appearances only, as in our exoteric modern sciences. In this case, Dzyu is the expression of the collective Wisdom of the Dhyâni‐Buddhas.

As the reader is supposed not to be acquainted with the Dhyâni‐Buddhas, it is as well to say at once that, according to the Orientalists, there are five Dhyânis who are the Celestial Buddhas, of whom the Human Buddhas are the manifestations in the world of form and matter. Esoterically, however, the Dhyâni‐Buddhas are seven, of whom five only have hitherto manifested,(197) and two are to come in the Sixth and Seventh Root‐Races. They are, so to speak, the eternal prototypes of the Buddhas who appear on this earth, each of whom has his particular divine prototype. So, for instance, Amitâbha is the Dhyâni‐Buddha of Gautama Shâkyamuni, manifesting through him whenever this great Soul incarnates on earth as He did in Tzonkha‐pa.(198) As the synthesis of the seven Dhyâni‐Buddhas, Avalokiteshvara was the first Buddha (the Logos), and Amitâbha is the inner “God” of Gautama, who, in China, is called Amida (Buddha). They are, as Prof. Rhys Davids correctly states, “the glorious counterparts in the mystic world, free from the debasing conditions of this material life,” of every earthly mortal Buddha—the liberated Mânushi‐Buddhas appointed to govern the Earth in this Round. They are the “Buddhas of Contemplation,” and are all Anupâdaka (parentless), i.e., self‐born of the divine essence. The exoteric teaching—which says that every Dhyâni‐Buddha has the faculty of creating from himself an equally celestial son, a Dhyâni‐ Bodhisattva, who, after the decease of the Mânushi‐Buddha, has to carry out the work of the latter—rests on the fact that, owing to the highest Initiation performed by one overshadowed by the “Spirit of Buddha”—who is credited by the Orientalists with having created the five Dhyâni‐ Buddhas!—a candidate becomes virtually a Bodhisattva, created such by the High Initiator.

(c) Fohat, being one of the most, if not the most important character in Esoteric cosmogony, should be minutely described. As in the oldest Grecian cosmogony, which differed widely from the later mythology, Eros is the third person in the primeval trinity, Chaos, Gæa, Eros—answering to the Kabalistic Trinity, Ain Suph, the Boundless All (for Chaos is Space, from χαίνω, to open wide, to be void), Shekinah and the Ancient of Days, or the Holy Ghost—so Fohat is one thing in the yet Unmanifested Universe, and another in the phenomenal and Cosmic World. In the latter, he is that occult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first impulse, which in time becomes law. But in the Unmanifested Universe, Fohat is no more this, than Eros is the later brilliant winged Cupid, or Love. Fohat has naught to do with Cosmos yet, since Cosmos is not born, and the Gods still sleep in the bosom of “Father‐Mother.” He is an abstract philosophical idea. He produces nothing yet by himself; he is simply that potential creative Power, in virtue of whose action the Noumenon of all future phenomena divides, so to speak, but to reunite in a mystic supersensuous act, and emit the creative Ray. When the “Divine Son” breaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active Power which causes the One to become Two and Three—on the cosmic plane of manifestation.

The triple One differentiates into the Many, and then Fohat is transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms, and makes them aggregate and combine. We find an echo of this primeval teaching in early Greek mythology. Erebus and Nux are born out of Chaos, and, under the action of Eros, give birth in their turn to Æther and Hemera, the light of the superior and the light of the inferior, or terrestrial, regions. Darkness generates light. Compare in the Purânas Brahmâ’s Will or “Desire” to create; and in the Phœnician cosmogony of Sanchuniathon the doctrine that Desire, πόθος, is the principle of creation.

Fohat is closely related to the “One Life.” From the Unknown One, the Infinite Totality, the Manifested One, or the periodical, Manvantaric Deity, emanates; and this is the Universal Mind, which, separated from its Fountain‐Source, is the Demiurge or the Creative Logos of the Western Kabalists, and the Four‐faced Brahmâ of the Hindû religion. In its totality, viewed, in the Esoteric doctrine, from the standpoint of manifested Divine Thought, it represents the Hosts of the higher Creative Dhyân Chohans. Simultaneously with the evolution of the Universal Mind, the Concealed Wisdom of Adi‐Buddha—the One Supreme and Eternal—manifests itself as Avalokiteshvara (or Manifested Îshvara), which is the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ahura‐Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of the Hermetic philosophers, the Logos of the Platonists, and the Âtman of the Vedântins.(199) By the action of the Manifested Wisdom, or Mahat—represented by these innumerable centres of spiritual energy in the Kosmos—the Reflection of the Universal Mind, which is Cosmic Ideation and the Intellectual Force accompanying such Ideation, becomes objectively the Fohat of the Buddhist esoteric philosopher. Fohat, running along the seven principles of Âkâsha, acts upon manifested Substance, or the One Element, as declared above, and, by differentiating it into various centres of energy, sets in motion the law of Cosmic Evolution, which, in obedience to the Ideation of the Universal Mind, brings into existence all the various states of being in the manifested Solar System.

The Solar System, brought into existence by these agencies, consists of Seven Principles, like everything else within these centres. Such is the teaching of the Trans‐Himâlayan Esotericism. Every philosophy, however, has its own way of dividing these principles.

Fohat, then, is the personified electric vital power, the transcendental binding unity of all cosmic energies, on the unseen as on the manifested planes, the action of which resembles—on an immense scale—that of a living Force created by Will, in those phenomena where the seemingly subjective acts on the seemingly objective, and propels it to action. Fohat is not only the living Symbol and Container of that Force, but is looked upon by the Occultists as an Entity; the forces it acts upon being cosmic, human and terrestrial, and exercising their influence on all these planes respectively. On the earthly plane, its influence is felt in the magnetic and active force generated by the strong desire of the magnetizer. On the cosmic, it is present in the constructive power that, in the formation of things—from the planetary system down to the glow‐worm and simple daisy—carries out the plan in the mind of Nature, or in the Divine Thought, with regard to the development and growth of a particular thing. It is, metaphysically, the objectivized Thought of the Gods, the “Word made flesh” on a lower scale, and the messenger of cosmic and human Ideation; the active force in Universal Life. In its secondary aspect, Fohat is the Solar Energy, the electric vital fluid, and the preserving Fourth Principle, the Animal Soul of Nature, so to say, or—Electricity.

In 1882, the President of the Theosophical Society, Col. Olcott, was taken to task for asserting in one of his lectures that Electricity is matter. Such, nevertheless, is the teaching of the Occult Doctrine. “Force,” “Energy,” may be better names for it, so long as European Science knows so little about its true nature; yet matter it is, as much as Ether is matter, since it is as atomic, though indeed several removes from Ether. It seems ridiculous to argue that because a thing is imponderable to Science, therefore it cannot be called matter. Electricity is “immaterial,” in the sense that its molecules are not subject to perception and experiment; yet it may be—and Occultism says it is—atomic; therefore it is matter. But even supposing it were unscientific to speak of it in such terms, once Electricity is called in Science a source of Energy, Energy simply, and a Force—where is that Force or that Energy which can be thought of without thinking of matter? Maxwell, a mathematician and one of the greatest authorities upon Electricity and its phenomena, said, years ago, that Electricity was matter, not motion merely. “If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity.”(200) We will go further than this, and assert that Electricity is not only Substance, but that it is an emanation from an Entity, which is neither God nor Devil, but one of the numberless Entities that rule and guide our world, according to the eternal Law of Karma.

To return to Fohat, it is connected with Vishnu and Sûrya in the early character of the former God; for Vishnu is not a high God in the Rig Veda. The name Vishnu is from the root vish, “to pervade,” and Fohat is called the “Pervader” and the Manufacturer, because he shapes the atoms from crude material.(201) In the sacred texts of the Rig Veda, Vishnu is also “a manifestation of the Solar Energy, and is described as striding through the seven regions of the Universe in three steps,” the Vedic God having little in common with the Vishnu of later times. Therefore the two are identical in this particular feature, and one is the copy of the other.

The Three and Seven “Strides” refer to the seven spheres inhabited by man, in the Esoteric Doctrine, as well as to the seven regions of the Earth. Notwithstanding the frequent objections made by would‐be Orientalists, the Seven Worlds, or Spheres, of our Planetary Chain are distinctly referred to in the exoteric Hindû scriptures. But how strangely all these numbers are connected with like numbers in other cosmogonies and with their symbols, can be seen from the comparisons and parallelisms made by students of old religions. The “three strides of Vishnu,” through the “seven regions of the Universe,” of the Rig Veda, have been variously explained by commentators as meaning fire, lightning and the sun, cosmically, and as having been taken in the earth, the atmosphere, and the sky; more philosophically—and in the astronomical sense, very correctly—they are explained by Aurnavâbha as being the various positions of the sun, rising, noon, and setting. Esoteric Philosophy alone explains it clearly, though the Zohar has laid it down very philosophically and comprehensively. It is plainly demonstrated therein that in the beginning the Elohim (Alhim) were called Achad, “One,” or the “Deity, One in Many,” a very simple idea in a pantheistic conception—pantheistic in its philosophical sense, of course. Then came the change, “Jehovah is Elohim,” thus unifying the multiplicity and taking the first step towards Monotheism. Now to the query, “How is Jehovah Elohim?” the answer is, “By Three Steps” from below. The meaning is plain.

The Steps are symbols, and emblematic, mutually and correlatively, of Spirit, Soul and Body (Man); of the Circle, transformed into Spirit, the Soul of the World and its Body (or Earth). Stepping out of the Circle of Infinity, that no man comprehendeth, Ain Suph—the Kabalistic synonym for Parabrahman, for the Zeroâna Akerne, of the Mazdeans, or for any other “Unknowable”—becomes “One” (the Achad, the Eka, the Ahu); then he (or it) is transformed by evolution into the “One in Many,” the Dhyâni‐Buddhas or the Elohim, or again the Amshaspends, his third Step being taken into the generation of the flesh, or Man. And from Man, or Jah‐Hovah, “male‐female,” the inner divine entity becomes, on the metaphysical plane, once more the Elohim.

The numbers 3, 5, and 7 are prominent in speculative Masonry, as shown in Isis Unveiled. A Mason writes: There are the 3, 5, and 7 steps to show a circular walk. The three faces of 3, 3; 5, 3; and 7, 3; etc., etc. Sometimes it comes in this form: 753/2 = 376.5, and 7535/2 = 3817.5, and the ratio of 20612/6561 feet for cubit measure gives the Great Pyramid measures. Three, five and seven are mystical numbers, and the last and the first are as greatly honoured by Masons as by Parsis—the Triangle being a symbol of Deity everywhere.(202) As a matter of course, Doctors of Divinity—Cassel, for instance—show the Zohar explaining and supporting the Christian Trinity(!). It is the latter, however, that had its origin from the [triangle], in the archaic Occultism and Symbology of the Heathen. The Three Strides relate metaphysically to the descent of Spirit into Matter, of the Logos falling as a ray into the spirit, then into the soul, and finally into the human physical form of man, in which it becomes Life.

The Kabalistic idea is identical with the Esotericism of the archaic period. This Esotericism is the common property of all, and belongs neither to the Âryan Fifth Race, nor to any of its numerous sub‐races. It cannot be claimed by the Turanians, so‐called, the Egyptians, Chinese, Chaldeans, or by any of the seven divisions of the Fifth Root Race, but really belongs to the Third and Fourth Root Races, whose descendants we find in the Seed of the Fifth, the earliest Âryans. The Circle was with every nation the symbol of the Unknown—“Boundless Space,” the abstract garb of an ever present abstraction—the Incognizable Deity. It represents limitless Time in Eternity. The Zeroâna Akerne is also the “Boundless Circle of Unknown Time,” from which Circle issues the radiant Light—the Universal Sun, or Ormazd(203)—and the latter is identical with Cronus, in his Æolian form, that of a Circle. For the Circle is Sar and Saros, or Cycle. It was the Babylonian God whose circular horizon was the visible symbol of the invisible, while the Sun was the One Circle from which proceeded the cosmic orbs, of which he was considered the leader. Zeroâna, is the Chakra, or Circle, of Vishnu, the mysterious emblem which is, according to the definition of a Mystic, “a curve of such a nature that as to any, the least possible, part thereof, if the curve be protracted either way, it will proceed and finally reënter upon itself, and form one and the same curve—or that which we call the circle.” No better definition could thus be given of the natural symbol and the evident nature of Deity, which having its circumference everywhere (the boundless) has, therefore, its central point also everywhere; in other words, is in every point of the Universe. The invisible Deity is thus also the Dhyân Chohans, or the Rishis, the primitive seven, and the nine, without, and ten, including, their synthetical unit, from which IT steps into Man.

Returning to Commentary 4 of Stanza IV, the reader now will understand why, while the Trans‐Himâlayan Chakra has inscribed within it [triangle] [square] [5‐point star with middle dot]—triangle, first line, square, second line, and a pentacle with a point in the centre, either thus [5‐point star with middle dot] or some other variation—the Kabalistic Circle of the Elohim reveals, when the letters of the word אלהים (Alhim or Elohim) are read numerically, the famous numerals 13514, or anagrammatically 31415—the astronomical π (pi), or the hidden meaning of the Dhyâni‐Buddhas, of the Gebers, the Giburim, the Kabeiri, and the Elohim, all signifying “Great Men,” “Titans,” “Heavenly Men,” and, on earth, “Giants.”

The Seven was a Sacred Number with every nation; but none applied it to more physiologically materialistic uses than the Hebrews. With them 7 was preëminently the generative number, and 9 the male causative one, forming as shown by the Kabalists the otz, עצ (90, 70), or “the Tree of the Garden of Eden,” the “double hermaphrodite rod” of the Fourth Race. This was the symbol of the “Holy of Holies,” the 3 and the 4 of sexual separation. Nearly every one of the 22 Hebrew letters are merely phallic symbols. Of the two letters—as shown above—one, the ayin, is a negative female letter, symbolically an eye; the the other a male letter, tzâ, a fish‐hook or dart. Whereas with the Hindûs and Âryans generally, the significance was manifold, and related almost entirely to purely metaphysical and astronomical truths. Their Rishis and Gods, their Demons and Heroes, have historical and ethical meanings. Yet we are told by a Kabalist, who, in a work not yet published, contrasts the Kabalah and Zohar with Âryan Esotericism, that:

The Hebrew clear, short, terse and exact, modes far and beyond measure surpass the toddling word‐talk of the Hindûs—just as by parallelisms the Psalmist says, “My mouth speaks with my tongue, I know not thy numbers” (lxxi., 15).... The Hindû glyph shows by its insufficiency in the large admixture of adventitious sides the same borrowed plumage that the Greeks (the lying Greeks) had, and that Masonry has: which, in the rough monosyllabic (and apparent) poverty of the Hebrew, shows the latter to have come down from a far more remote antiquity than any of these, and to have been the source [! ?], or nearer the old original source than any of them.

This is entirely erroneous. Our learned brother and correspondent judges the Hindû religious systems apparently by their Shâstras and Purânas, probably the latter, and in their modern translations moreover, which disfigure them out of all recognition. It is to their philosophical systems that we have to turn, to their esoteric teaching, if we would make a point of comparison. No doubt the symbology of the Pentateuch, and even of the New Testament, comes from the same source. But surely the Pyramid of Cheops, whose measurements are all found, by Professor Piazzi Smyth, repeated in Solomon’s alleged and mythical Temple, is not of a later date than the Mosaic books? Hence, if there is any such great identity as is claimed, it must be due to servile copying on the part of the Jews, not on that of the Egyptians. The glyphs of the Jews—and even their language, the Hebrew—are not original. They are borrowed from the Egyptians, from whom Moses got his Wisdom; from the Coptic, the probable kinsman, if not parent, of the old Phœnician and from the Hyksos, their (alleged) ancestors, as Josephus shows.(204) Aye; but who are the Hyksos shepherds? And who the Egyptians? History knows nothing of the question, and speculates and theorizes out of the depths of the respective consciousnesses of her historians.(205) “Khamism, or old Coptic, is from Western Asia, and contains some germ of the Semitic, thus bearing witness to the primitive cognate unity of the Âryan and Semitic races,” says Bunsen, who places the great events in Egypt 9,000 years B.C. The fact is that in archaic Esotericism and Âryan thought we find a grand philosophy, whereas in the Hebrew records we find only the most surprising ingenuity in inventing apotheoses for phallic worship and sexual theogony.

That the Âryans never made their religion rest solely on physiological symbols, as the old Hebrews have done, may be seen in the exoteric Hindû Scriptures. That these accounts, also, are blinds is shown by their contradicting each other, a different explanation being found in almost every Purâna and epic poem. Read esoterically, however, they will all yield the same meaning. Thus one account enumerates seven worlds, exclusive of the nether worlds, also seven in number; these fourteen upper and nether worlds have nothing to do with the classification of the Septenary Chain and belong to the purely ethereal, invisible worlds. These will be noticed elsewhere. Suffice it for the present to show that they are purposely referred to as though they belonged to the Chain. “Another enumeration calls the seven worlds earth, sky, heaven, middle region, place of birth, mansion of the blest, and abode of truth; placing the Sons of Brahmâ in the sixth division, and stating the fifth, or Jana‐loka, to be that where animals destroyed in the general conflagration are born again.”(206) Some real Esoteric teaching is given in the subsequent chapters on Symbolism. He who is prepared for it will understand the hidden meaning.

3. HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE SEPARATES THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM,(207) THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH JOY IN THEIR RADIANT DWELLINGS,(208) AND FORMS THEREWITH THE GERMS OF WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE—THE CENTRAL WHEEL.

“Wheels,” as already explained, are the centres of force, around which primordial cosmic matter expands, and, passing through all the six stages of consolidation, becomes spheroidal and ends by being transformed into globes or spheres. It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric cosmogony, that during the Kalpas (or Æons) of Life, Motion, which, during the periods of Rest, “pulsates and thrills through every slumbering atom”—assumes an evergrowing tendency, from the first awakening of Kosmos to a new “Day,” to circular movement. “The Deity becomes a Whirlwind.” It may be asked, as the writer has not failed to ask: Who is there to ascertain the difference in that Motion, since all Nature is reduced to its primal essence, and there can be no one—not even one of the Dhyâni‐ Chohans, who are all in Nirvâna—to see it? The answer to this is: Everything in Nature has to be judged by analogy. Though the highest Deities (Archangels or Dhyâni‐Buddhas) are unable to penetrate the mysteries which lie too far beyond our Planetary System and the visible Cosmos, yet there were great seers and prophets in olden times who were enabled to perceive the mystery of Breath and Motion retrospectively, when the systems of Worlds were at rest and plunged in their periodic sleep.

The Wheels are also called Rotæ—the moving wheels of the celestial orbs participating in the world’s creation—when the meaning refers to the animating principle of the stars and planets; for, in the Kabalah, they are represented by the Auphanim, the Angels of the Spheres and Stars, of which they are the informing Souls.(209)

This law of vortical movement in primordial matter is one of the oldest conceptions of Greek philosophy, whose first historical sages were nearly all Initiates of the Mysteries. The Greeks had it from the Egyptians, and the latter from the Chaldeans, who had been the pupils of Brâhmans of the Esoteric school. Leucippus, and Democritus of Abdera—the pupil of the Magi—taught that this gyratory movement of the atoms and spheres existed from eternity.(210) Hicetas, Heraclides, Ecphantus, Pythagoras, and all his pupils, taught the rotation of the earth; and Âryabhata of India, Aristarchus, Seleucus, and Archimedes calculated its revolution as scientifically as the Astronomers do now; while the theory of Elemental Vortices was known to Anaxagoras, and maintained by him 500 years B.C., or nearly 2,000 before it was taken up by Galileo, Descartes, Swedenborg, and finally, with slight modifications, by Sir W. Thomson.(211) All such knowledge, if justice be only done, is an echo of the archaic doctrine, an attempt to explain which is now being made. How men of the last few centuries have come to the same ideas and conclusions that were taught as axiomatic truths in the secrecy of the Adyta, dozens of millenniums ago, is a question that is treated separately. Some were led to it by the natural progress in Physical Science and by independent observation; others—such as Copernicus, Swedenborg, and a few more—their great learning notwithstanding, owed their knowledge far more to intuitive than to acquired ideas, developed in the usual way by a course of study. That Swedenborg, who could not possibly have known anything of the esoteric ideas of Buddhism, independently came near the Occult teaching in his general conceptions, is shown by his essay on the Vortical Theory. In Clissold’s translation of it, quoted by Prof. Winchell,(212) we find the following résumé:

The first cause is the infinite or unlimited. This gives existence to the first finite or limited. [The Logos in its manifestation and the Universe.] That which produces a limit is analogous to motion. [See Stanza I supra.] The limit produced is a point, the essence of which is motion; but being without parts, this essence is not actual motion, but only a conatus to it. [In our doctrine it is not a “conatus,” but a change from Eternal Vibration, in the unmanifested, to Vortical Motion, in the phenomenal or manifested World.] From this first proceed extension, space, figure, and succession, or time. As in geometry a point generates a line, a line a surface, and a surface a solid, so here the conatus of the point tends towards lines, surfaces and solids. In other words, the Universe is contained in ovo in the first natural point. The Motion toward which the conatus tends is circular, since the circle is the most perfect of all figures.... “The most perfect figure of the motion above described must be the perpetually circular; that is to say, it must proceed from the centre to the periphery and from the periphery to the centre.”(213) This is Occultism pure and simple.