The Secret Doctrine

The Latin Church is not always logical, nor prudent. She declares the Book of Enoch an apocryphon, and has gone so far as to claim, through Cardinal Cajetan and other luminaries of the Church, the rejection from the Canon of even the Book of Jude, who, otherwise, as an inspired apostle, would quote from and thus sanctify the Book of Enoch, which is alleged to be an apocryphal work. Fortunately, some of the dogmatics perceived the peril in time. Had they accepted Cajetan’s resolution, they would have been forced to reject likewise the Fourth Gospel; as St. John borrows literally from Enoch, and places a whole sentence from him, in the mouth of Jesus!(1242)

Ludolph, the “father of Ethiopic literature,” commissioned to investigate the various Enochian MSS. presented by Pereisc, the traveller, to the Mazarine Library, declared that “no Book of Enoch could exist among the Abyssinians”! Further researches and discoveries worsted this too dogmatic assertion, as all know. Bruce and Ruppel did find the Book of Enoch in Abyssinia, and what is more, brought it to Europe some years later, and Bishop Laurence translated it. But Bruce despised it, and scoffed at its contents; as did all the rest of the Scientists. He declared it a Gnostic work, concerning the Age of Giants who devour men—and bearing a strong resemblance to the Apocalypse.(1243) Giants! another fairy‐ tale! Such, however, has not been the opinion of all the best critics. Dr. Hanneberg places the Book of Enoch along with the _Third Book of the Maccabees—at the head of the list of those whose authority stands the nearest to that of the canonical works_.(1244) Verily, “where doctors disagree...”!

As usual, however, they are all right and all wrong. To accept Enoch as a biblical character, a single living person, is like accepting Adam as the first man. Enoch was a generic title, applied to, and borne by, scores of individuals, at all times and ages, and in every race and nation. This may be easily inferred from the fact that the ancient Talmudists and the teachers of Midrashim are not agreed generally in their views about Hanokh, the Son of Yered. Some say Enoch was a great Saint, beloved by God, and “taken alive to heaven,” i.e., one who reached Mukti or Nirvâna, on Earth, as Buddha did and others still do; and others maintain that he was a sorcerer, a wicked magician. This shows only that “Enoch,” or its equivalent, was a term, even during the days of the later Talmudists, which meant “Seer,” “Adept in the Secret Wisdom,” etc., without any specification as to the character of the title‐bearer. Josephus, speaking of Elijah and Enoch,(1245) remarks that: It is written in the sacred books they [Elijah and Enoch] disappeared, but so that nobody knew that they died.

It means simply that they had died in their personalities, as Yogîs die to this day in India, or even some Christian monks—to the world. They disappear from the sight of men and die—on the terrestrial plane—even for themselves. A seemingly figurative way of speaking, yet literally true. “Hanokh transmitted the science of (astronomical) calculation and of computing the seasons to Noah,” says the Midrash Pirkah;(1246) R. Eliezar referring to Enoch that which others did to Hermes Trismegistus, for the two are identical in their Esoteric meaning. “Hanokh” in this case, and his “Wisdom,” belong to the cycle of the Fourth Atlantean Race,(1247) and Noah to that of the Fifth.(1248) In this case both represent the Root‐Races, the present one and the one that preceded it. In another sense, Enoch disappeared, “he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him”; the allegory referring to the disappearance of the Sacred and Secret Knowledge from among men; for “God” (or Java Aleim—the high Hierophants, the Heads of the Colleges of Initiated Priests(1249)) took him; in other words, the Enochs or the Enoïchions, the Seers and their Knowledge and Wisdom, became strictly confined to the Secret Colleges of the Prophets with the Jews, and to the Temples with the Gentiles.

Interpreted with the help of merely the symbolical key, Enoch is the type of the dual nature of man—spiritual and physical. Hence he occupies the centre of the Astronomical Cross, as given by Éliphas Lévi from a secret work, which is a Six‐pointed Star, the “Adonai.” In the upper angle of the upper Triangle is the Eagle; in the left lower angle stands the Lion; in the right, the Bull; while between the Bull and the Lion, over them and under the Eagle, is the face of Enoch or Man.(1250) Now the figures on the upper Triangle represent the Four Races, omitting the First, the Chhâyâs or Shadows, and the “Son of Man,” Enos or Enoch, is in the centre, where he stands between the Fourth and the Fifth Races, for he represents the Secret Wisdom of both. These are the four Animals of Ezekiel and of the Revelation. This Double Triangle which, in Isis Unveiled, is faced by the Hindû Ardhanârî, is by far the best. For in the latter, only the three (for us) historical Races are symbolized; the Third, the Androgynous, by Ardha‐nârî; the Fourth, symbolized by the strong, powerful Lion; and the Fifth, the Âryan, by that which is its most sacred symbol to this day, the Bull (and the Cow).

A man of great erudition, a French savant, M. de Sacy, finds several most singular statements in the Book of Enoch, “worthy of the most serious examination,” he says. For instance: The author [Enoch] makes the solar year consist of 364 days, and seems to know periods of three, of five, and of eight years, followed by four supplementary days, which, in his system, appear to be those of the equinoxes and solstices.(1251) To which he adds, later on: I see but one means to palliate them [these “absurdities”]; it is to suppose that the author expounds some fanciful system which may have existed before the order of Nature had been altered at the period of the Universal Deluge.(1252) Precisely so; and the Secret Doctrine teaches that this “order of nature” has been thus altered, and the series of the Earth’s humanities too. For, as the angel Uriel tells Enoch: Behold, I have showed thee all things, O Enoch; and all things have I revealed to thee. Thou seest the sun, the moon, and those which conduct the stars of heaven, which cause all their operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. In the days of sinners the years shall be shortened.... The moon shall change its laws....(1253)

In those days also, years before the Great Deluge that carried away the Atlanteans and changed the face of the whole Earth (because “the Earth [or its axis] became inclined”), Nature, geologically, astronomically, and cosmically in general, could not have been the same, just because the Earth had inclined. To quote from Enoch: And Noah cried with a bitter voice, Hear me; hear me; hear me; three times. And he said,... The earth labours and is violently shaken. Surely, I shall perish with it.(1254) This, by the way, looks like one of those many “inconsistencies,” if the Bible is read literally. For, to say the least, this is a very strange fear in one who had “found grace in the eyes of the Lord” and been told to build an Ark! But here we find the venerable Patriarch expressing as much fear as if, instead of a “friend” of God, he had been one of the Giants doomed by the wrathful Deity. The Earth had already inclined, and the deluge of waters had become simply a question of time, and yet Noah seems to know nothing of his intended salvation.

A decree had come indeed; the decree of Nature and the Law of Evolution, that the Earth should change its Race, and that the Fourth Race should be destroyed to make room for a better one. The Manvantara had reached its turning point of three and a half Rounds, and gigantic physical Humanity had reached the acme of gross materiality. Hence the apocalyptic verse that speaks of a commandment gone forth that they may be destroyed, “that their end may be”—the end of the Race: For they knew [truly] every secret of the angels, every oppressive and secret power of the Satans, and every power of those who commit sorcery, as well as of those who make molten images in the whole earth.(1255) And now a natural question. Who could have informed the apocryphal author of this powerful vision—no matter to what age he may be assigned before the day of Galileo—that the Earth could occasionally incline her axis? Whence did he derive such astronomical and geological knowledge if the Secret Wisdom, of which the ancient Rishis and Pythagoras had drunk, is but a fancy, an invention of later ages? Has Enoch read prophetically perchance in Fréderic Klée’s work on the Deluge the lines:

The position of the terrestrial globe with reference to the sun has evidently been, in primitive times, different from what it is now; and this difference must have been caused by a displacement of the axis of rotation of the earth. This reminds one of that unscientific statement made by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, namely, that the Sun has not always risen where it rises now, and that in former times the ecliptic had cut the equator at right angles.(1256)

There are many such “dark sayings” scattered throughout the Purânas, Bible and other Mythologies, and to the Occultist they divulge two facts; (a) that the Ancients knew as well as, and perhaps better than, the moderns do, Astronomy, Geognosy and Cosmography in general; and (b) that the behaviour of the Globe has altered more than once since the primitive state of things. Thus, Xenophantes—on the blind faith of his “ignorant” religion, which taught that Phaeton, in his desire to learn the hidden truth, made the Sun deviate from its usual course—asserts somewhere that, “the Sun turned toward another country”; which is a parallel—slightly more scientific, however, if not as bold—of Joshua stopping the course of the Sun altogether. Yet it may explain the teaching of the Northern Mythology that before the actual order of things the Sun arose in the South, and its placing the Frigid Zone (Jeruskoven) in the East, whereas now it is in the North.(1257)

The Book of Enoch, in short, is a résumé, a compound of the main features of the history of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Races; a very few prophecies from the present age of the world; a long retrospective, introspective and prophetic summary of universal and quite historical events—geological, ethnological, astronomical, and psychic—with a touch of Theogony out of the antediluvian records. The Book of this mysterious personage is referred to and quoted copiously in the Pistis Sophia, and also in the Zohar and its most ancient Midrashim. Origen and Clement of Alexandria held it in the highest esteem. To say, therefore, that it is a Post‐Christian forgery is to utter an absurdity and to become guilty of an anachronism, for Origen, among others, who lived in the second century of the Christian era, mentions it as an ancient and venerable work. The secret and sacred Name and its potency are well and clearly though allegorically described in the old volume. From the eighteenth to the fiftieth chapter, the Visions of Enoch are all descriptive of the Mysteries of Initiation, one of which is the Burning Valley of the “Fallen Angels.”

Perhaps St. Augustine was quite right in saying that the Church rejected the Book of Enoch out of her canon owing to its too great antiquity (ob nimiam antiquitatem).(1258) There was no room for the events noticed in it within the limit of the 4004 years B.C. assigned to the world from its “creation”!

their Relation to the Cross and Circle. When the Abbé Louis Constant, better known as Éliphas Lévi, said in his Histoire de la Magie that the Sepher Jetzirah, the Zohar, and the Apocalypse of St. John, are the masterpieces of the Occult Sciences, he ought, if he had wished to be correct and clear, to have added—in Europe. It is quite true that these works contain “more significance than words”; and that their “expression is poetical,” while “in numbers” they are “exact.” Unfortunately, however, before any one can appreciate the poetry of the expressions, or the exactness of the numbers, he will have to learn the real significance and meaning of the terms and symbols employed. But man will never learn this so long as he remains ignorant of the fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether in Oriental Esotericism, or in the kabalistical Symbology—the key, or value, in all their aspects, of the God‐names, Angel‐names, and Patriarch‐names in the Bible, their mathematical or geometrical value, and their relations to manifested Nature.

Therefore, if, on the one hand, the Zohar “astonishes” the mystic, by the profundity of its views and the great simplicity of its images, or the other hand, that work misleads the student by such expressions as those used with respect to Ain Suph and Jehovah, notwithstanding the assurance that: The book is careful to explain that the human form with which it clothes God is but an image of the Word, and that God should not be expressed by any thought, or any form. It is well known that Origen Clement, and the Rabbis confessed that the Kabalah and the Bible were veiled and secret books; but few know that the Esotericism of the kabalistic books in their present reëdited form is simply another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the primitive symbolism of these secret volumes.

The idea of representing the hidden Deity by the circumference of a circle, and the Creative Power—male and female, or the Androgynous Word—by the diameter across it, is one of the oldest symbols. It is upon this conception that every great Cosmogony has been built. With the old Âryans, the Egyptians, and the Chaldæans, the symbol was complete, as it embraced the idea of the eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its absoluteness, separated entirely from the incipient stage of the so‐called “creation,” and comprised psychological and even spiritual evolution, and its mechanical work, or cosmogonical construction. With the Hebrews, however, though the former conception is to be distinctly found in the Zohar, and the Sepher Jetzirah, or what remains of the latter—that which has been subsequently embodied in the Pentateuch proper, and especially in Genesis, is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical law of creation, or rather of construction; while Theogony is hardly, if at all, outlined.

It is only in the first six chapters of Genesis, in the rejected Book of Enoch, and the misunderstood and mistranslated poem of Job, that true echoes of the Archaic Doctrine may now be found. The key to it is lost now, even among the most learned Rabbis, whose predecessors in the early period of the Middle Ages, in their national exclusiveness and pride, and especially in their profound hatred of Christianity, preferred to cast it into the deep sea of oblivion, rather than to share their knowledge with their relentless and fierce persecutors. Jehovah was their own tribal property, inseparable from, and unfit to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn out of his original frame, which he fitted and which fitted him, the “Lord God of Abraham and Jacob” could hardly be crammed without damage and breakage into the new Christian Canon. Being the weaker, the Judeans could not help the desecration. They kept, however, the secret of the origin of their Adam Kadmon, or male‐ female Jehovah, and the new tabernacle proved a complete misfit for the old God. They were, indeed, avenged!

The statement that Jehovah was the tribal God of the Jews and no higher, will be denied like many other things. Yet the Theologians are not in a position to tell us, in that case, the meaning of the verses in Deuteronomy, which say quite plainly: When the Most High [not the “Lord,” or “Jehovah” either] divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds ... according to the number of the children of Israel.... The Lord’s [Jehovah’s] portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.(1259) This settles the question. So impudent have been the modern translators of Bibles and Scriptures, and so damaging are these verses, that, following in the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers, each translator has rendered these lines in his own way. While the above‐cited quotation is taken verbatim from the English Authorized Version, in the French Bible,(1260) we find the “Most High” translated by “Souverain” (Sovereign!!), the “sons of Adam” rendered by “the children of men,” and the “Lord” changed into the “Eternal.” For impudent sleight‐of‐hand, the French Protestant Church seems thus to have surpassed even English ecclesiasticism.

Nevertheless, one thing is patent: the “Lord’s [Jehovah’s] portion” is his “chosen people” and none else, for, Jacob alone is the lot of his inheritance. What, then, have other nations, who call themselves Âryans, to do with this Semitic Deity, the tribal God of Israel? Astronomically, the “Most High” is the Sun, and the “Lord” is one of his seven planets, whether it be Iao, the Genius of the Moon, or Ildabaoth‐Jehovah, the Genius of Saturn, according to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.(1261) Let the “Angel Gabriel,” the “Lord” of Iran, watch over his people, and Michael‐Jehovah, over his Hebrews. These are not the Gods of other nations, nor were they ever those of Jesus. As each Persian Dev is chained to his planet,(1262) so each Hindû Deva (a “Lord”) has its allotted portion, a world, a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of worlds implies plurality of Gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize, but will never worship the latter.(1263)

It has been repeatedly stated in this work that every religious and philosophical symbol had seven meanings attached to it, each pertaining to its legitimate plane of thought, i.e., either purely metaphysical or astronomical; psychic or physiological, etc. These seven meanings and their applications are difficult enough to learn when taken by themselves; but the interpretation and the right comprehension of them become tenfold more puzzling, when, instead of being correlated, or made to flow consecutively out of, and to follow, each other, each, or any one of these meanings, is accepted as the one and sole explanation of the whole symbolical idea. An instance may be given, as it admirably illustrates the statement. Here are two interpretations, given by two learned Kabalists and scholars, of one and the same verse in Exodus. Moses beseeches the Lord to show him his “glory.” Evidently it is not the crude dead‐letter phraseology as found in the Bible that is to be accepted. There are seven meanings in the Kabalah, of which we may give two as interpreted by the said two scholars. One of them translates while explaining:

“Thou canst not see My face;... I will put thee in a cleft of the rock and I will cover thee with My hand while I pass by. And then I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My a’hoor,” i.e., My back.(1264) And then the translator adds in a gloss: That is, I will show you “My back,” i.e., My visible universe, My lower manifestations, but, as a man still in the flesh, thou canst not see My invisible nature. So proceeds the Qabbalah.(1265) This is correct, and is the cosmo‐metaphysical explanation. And now speaks the other Kabalist, giving the numerical meaning. As it involves a good many suggestive ideas, and is far more fully given, we may allow it more space. This synopsis is from an unpublished MS., and explains more fully what was given in Section III, on the “Holy of Holies.”(1266) The numbers of the name “Moses” are those of “I am that I am,” so that the names Moses and Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony. The word Moses is משה (5 + 300 + 40), and the sum of the values of its letters is 345; Jehovah—the Genius par excellence of the Lunar Year—assumes the value of 543, or the reverse of 345.

In the third chapter of Exodus, in the 13th and 14th verses, it is said: And Moses said, ... Behold I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them. The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am. The Hebrew words for this expression are âhiyé asher âhiyé, and in the value of the sums of their letters stand thus: אהיה אשר אהיה 21 501 21 ... This being his [God’s] name, the sum of the values composing it, 21, 501, 21 is 543, or simply a use of the simple digit numbers in the name of Moses, ... but now so ordered that the name of 345 is reversed, and reads 543. So that when Moses asks, “Let me see Thy face or glory,” the other rightly and truly replies, “Thou canst not see my face ... but thou shalt see me behind”—the true sense, though not the precise words; for the corner and the behind of 543 is the face of 345. This is

For check and to keep a strict use of a set of numbers to develop certain grand results, for the object of which they are specifically employed. As the learned Kabalist adds: In other uses of the numbers, they saw each other face to face. It is strange that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the Gnostic Cabbalistic value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or Joshua. And so also the division of the 24 hours of the day gives three eights as quotient.... The chief end of all this system of Number Checks was to preserve in perpetuity the exact value of the Lunar Year in the Natural measure of Days. These are the astronomical and numerical meanings in the secret Theogony of sidereo‐cosmical Gods invented by the Chaldæo‐Hebrews,—two meanings out of seven. The other five would astonish the Christians still more.

The series of Œdipuses who have endeavoured to interpret the riddle of the Sphinx, is long indeed. For many ages she has been devouring the brightest and the noblest intellects of Christendom; but now the Sphinx is conquered. In the great intellectual struggle which has ended in the complete victory of the Œdipuses of Symbolism, it is, however, not the Sphinx, who, burning with the shame of defeat, has had to bury herself in the sea, but verily the many‐sided symbol, named Jehovah, whom Christians—the civilized nations—have accepted for their God. The Jehovah symbol has collapsed under the too close analysis, and is—drowned. Symbologists have discovered with dismay that their adopted Deity was only a mask for many other Gods, a euhemerized extinct planet, at best, the Genius of the Moon and Saturn with the Jews, of the Sun and Jupiter with early Christians; that the Trinity—unless they accepted the more abstract and metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles—was, in truth, only an astronomical triad, composed of the Sun (the Father), and the two planets Mercury (the Son) and Venus (the Holy Ghost), Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the “bright and morning star.”(1267) For, if the Father is the Sun (the “Elder Brother,” in the Eastern Inner Philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercury (Hermes, Budha, Thoth), the name of whose Mother on Earth was Maia. Now this planet receives seven times more light than any other;

a fact which led the Gnostics to call their Christos, and the Kabalists their Hermes (in the astronomical meaning), the “Seven‐fold Light.” Finally, this God was Bel—the Sun being Bel with the Gauls; Helios, with the Greeks; Baal, with the Phœnicians; El, in Chaldæan, hence El‐ohim, Emanu‐el, and El, “God,” in Hebrew. But even the kabalistic God has vanished in the rabbinical workmanship, and one has now to turn to the innermost metaphysical sense of the Zohar to find in it anything like Ain Suph, the Nameless Deity and the Absolute, so authoritatively and loudly claimed by the Christians. But it is certainly not to be found in the Mosaic books, at any rate by those who try to read without a key to them. Ever since this key was lost, Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two conceptions, but in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the Universal Deity of Its majestic character and primitive meaning.

As was said in Isis Unveiled: It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between the mystery‐god Ιαω, adopted from the highest antiquity by all who participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests, and his phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics.(1268)

In the Ophite gems of King,(1269) we find the name of Iao repeated, and often confounded with that of Ievo, while the latter simply represents one of the Genii antagonistic to Abraxas.... But the name Iao neither originated with, nor was it the sole property of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelary “Spirit,” the alleged protector and national deity of the “chosen people of Israel,” there is yet no possible reason why other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One‐ living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides, there is the fact that Iaho or Iao was a “mystery name” from the beginning, for יהיה and יה never came into use before the time of king David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were compounded with Iah or Jah. It looks rather as though David, being a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines,(1270) brought thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high priest, from whom came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at Hebron (חברון), Habir‐on or Kabeir‐town, where the rites of the four (mystery‐gods) were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. They aspired to build a temple to יהוה, like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.

Says Fürst: “The very ancient name of God, Yâho, written in the Greek Ιαω, appears, apart from its derivation, to have been an old mystic name of the Supreme Deity of the Shemites. Hence it was told to Moses when he was initiated at Hor‐eb—the Cave—under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite (or Cainite) priest of Midian. In an old religion of the Chaldæans, whose remains are to be found among the Neo‐Platonists, the highest Divinity, enthroned above the seven Heavens, representing the Spiritual Light‐Principle, ... and also conceived of as Demiurgus,(1271) was called Ιαω (יהו), who was, like the Hebrew Yâho, mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the Initiated. The Phœnicians had a Supreme God, whose name was triliteral and secret, and he was Ιαω.”(1272) The cross, say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occultists, is one of the most ancient—nay, perhaps, the most ancient of symbols. This has been demonstrated at the very beginning of the Proem in Volume I. The Eastern Initiates show it coëval with the circle of Deific Infinitude and the first differentiation of the Essence, the union of Spirit and Matter. This interpretation has been rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone has been accepted and made to fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial events.

Let us demonstrate this statement. In Astronomy, as said, Mercury is the son of Cœlus and Lux—of the Sky and Light, or the Sun; in Mythology he is the progeny of Jupiter and Maia. He is the “Messenger” of his Father Jupiter, the Messiah of the Sun; in Greek, his name Hermes means, among other things, the “Interpreter”—the Word, the Logos, or Verbum. Now Mercury is born on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, and is the patron of the latter. As a psychopompic Genius, he conducted the Souls of the Dead to Hades and brought them back again, an office attributed to Jesus after his Death and Resurrection. The symbols of Hermes‐Mercury (Dii Termini) were placed along, and at the turning points of, highways, as crosses are now placed in Italy, and they were cruciform.(1273) Every seventh day the priests anointed these Termini with oil, and once a year hung them with garlands, hence they were the anointed. Mercury, when speaking through his oracles, says: I am he whom you call the Son of the Father [Jupiter] and Maia. Leaving the King of Heaven [the Sun] I come to help you, mortals.

Mercury heals the blind and restores sight, mental and physical.(1274) He was often represented as three‐headed and called Tricephalus, Triplex, as one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cornutus(1275) shows, was sometimes figured under a cubic form, without arms, because “the power of speech and eloquence can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet.” It is this cubic form which connects the Termini directly with the cross, and it is the eloquence or the power of speech of Mercury which made the crafty Eusebius say, “Hermes is the emblem of the Word which creates and interprets all,” for it is the Creative Word; and he shows Porphyry teaching that the Speech of Hermes—now interpreted “Word of God” (!) in Pymander—a Creative Speech (Verbum), is the Seminal Principle scattered throughout the Universe.(1276) In Alchemy “Mercury” is the radical “Moyst” Principle, Primitive or Elementary Water, containing the Seed of the Universe, fecundated by the Solar Fires. To express this fecundating principle, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or the vertical and the horizontal united) by the Egyptians. The cruciform Termini also represented this dual idea, which was found in Egypt in the cubic Hermes. The author of Source of Measures tells us why.(1277)

As shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross of the Tau, or the Egyptian, form; or again, “the circle attached to the Tau gives the ansated cross” of the old Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests and their “King‐Initiates” for ages, and also what was meant by “the attachment of a man to the cross,” which idea “was made to coördinate with that of the origin of human life, and hence the phallic form.” Only the latter came into action æons and ages after the idea of the Carpenter and Artificer of the Gods, Vishva‐karmâ, crucifying the “Sun‐Initiate” on the cruciform lathe. As the same author writes: The attachment of a man to the cross ... was made use of in this form of display by the Hindûs.(1278) But, it was made “to coördinate” with the idea of the new rebirth of man by spiritual, not physical regeneration. The Candidate for Initiation was attached to the Tau or astronomical cross with a far grander and nobler idea than that of the origin of mere terrestrial life.

On the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Thus, geometrically, and according to the reading of the Bible by means of the numerical method, the author of The Source of Measures is quite correct. The entire [Jewish] system seems to have been anciently regarded as one resting in nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or God, as the basis or law of the exertion practically of creative power—i.e., it was the creative design, of which creation was practically the application. This seems to be established by the fact that, under the system set forth, measures of planetary times serve coördinately as measures of the size of planets, and of the peculiarity of their shapes—i.e., in the extension of their equatorial and polar diameters.... This system [that of creative design] seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure, as a foundation for its ritualism and for its display of the works of the Deity in the way of architecture, by use of the sacred unit of measure in the Garden of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon.(1279)

Thus, on the very showing of the defenders of this system, the Jewish Deity is proved to be, at best, only the manifested Duad, never the One Absolute All. Geometrically demonstrated, he is a number; symbolically, a euhemerized Priapus; and this can hardly satisfy a mankind thirsting after the demonstration of real spiritual truths, and the possession of a God with a divine, not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the most learned of modern Kabalists can see in the cross and circle nothing but a symbol of the manifested creative and androgyne Deity in its relation to, and interference with, this phenomenal world.(1280) One author believes that: However man [read, the Jew and Rabbi] obtained knowledge of the practical measure, ... by which nature was thought to adjust the planets in size to harmonize with the notation of their movements, it seems he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the means of his realization of the Deity—that is, he approached so nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his own, only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize a law of creation established by that Being, which must have existed prior to any creation (kabalistically called the Word).(1281)

This may have satisfied the practical Semite mind, but the Eastern Occultist has to decline the offer of such a God; indeed, a Deity, a Being, “having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful,” is no God that has any room beyond the cycle of creation. He has nought to do with the ideal conception of the Eternal Universe. He is, at best, one of the subordinate creative powers, the Totality of which is called the Sephiroth, the Heavenly Man, and Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos of the Platonists. This very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest definitions of the Kabalah and its mysteries, e.g., by John A. Parker, as quoted in the same work:

The key of the Kabala is thought to be the geometrical relation of the area of the circle inscribed in the square, or of the cube to the sphere, giving rise to the relation of diameter to circumference of a circle, with the numerical value of this relation expressed in integrals. The relation of diameter to circumference, being a supreme one connected with the god‐names Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically of these relations, respectively—the first being of circumference, the latter of diameter), embraces all other subordinations under it. Two expressions of circumference to diameter in integrals are used in the Bible: (1) The perfect, and (2) The imperfect. One of the relations between these is such that (2) subtracted from (1) will leave a unit of a diameter value in terms, or in the denomination of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or a unit straight line having a perfect circular value, or a factor of circular value.(1282)

Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries of the third stage of Evolution, or the “Third Creation of Brahmâ.” The initiated Hindûs know how to “square the circle” far better than any European. But of this more anon. The fact is that the Western Mystics commence their speculation only at that stage when the Universe “falls into matter,” as the Occultists say. Throughout the whole series of kabalistic books we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the remotest way at the psychological and spiritual, as well as at the mechanical and physiological secrets of “creation.” Shall we, then, regard the evolution of the Universe as simply a prototype, on a gigantic scale, of the act of procreation; as “divine” phallicism, and rhapsodize on it as the evilly‐inspired author of a late work of this name has done? The writer does not think so. And she feels justified in saying so, since the most careful reading of the Old Testament—esoterically, as well as exoterically—seems to have carried the most enthusiastic enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds that from the first to the last chapter of the Pentateuch every scene, every character or event are shown connected, directly or indirectly, with the origin of birth in its crudest and most brutal form. Thus, however interesting and ingenious the rabbinical methods, the writer, in common with other Eastern Occultists, must prefer those of the Pagans.

It is not, then, in the Bible that we have to search for the origin of the cross and circle, but beyond the Flood. Therefore, returning to Éliphas Lévi and the Zohar, we answer for the Eastern Occultists and say that, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely with Pascal, who says that: God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Whereas the Kabalists say the reverse, and maintain it, solely out of their desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of Deity by the circle is not Pascal’s at all, as Éliphas Lévi thought. It was borrowed by the French Philosopher from either Mercury Trismegistus or Cardinal Cusa’s Latin work, De Doctâ Ignorantiâ, in which he makes use of it. It is, moreover, disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words “Cosmic Circle,” which stand symbolically in the original inscription, by the word Theos. With the Ancients both words were synonymous. A. Cross And Circle.

In the minds of the ancient Philosophers something of the divine and the mysterious has ever been ascribed to the shape of the circle. The old world, consistent in its symbolism and with its Pantheistic intuitions, uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes into one, represented Deity and its outward Veil alike—by a circle. This merging of the two into a unity, and the name Theos being given indifferently to both, is explained, and becomes thereby still more scientific and philosophical. Plato’s etymological definition of the word theos (θεός) has, been given elsewhere. In his Cratylus, he derives it from the verb the‐ein (θέειν), “to move,” as suggested by the motion of the heavenly bodies which he connects with Deity. According to the Esoteric Philosophy, this Deity, during its “Nights” and its “Days,” or Cycles of Rest and Activity, is the “Eternal Perpetual Motion,” the “Ever‐Becoming, as well as the ever universally Present, and the Ever‐Existing.” The latter is the root‐ abstraction; the former is the only possible conception in the human mind, if it disconnects this Deity from any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never‐ceasing evolution, circling back in its incessant progress through æons of duration into its original status—Absolute Unity.

It was only the minor Gods who were made to carry the symbolical attributes of the higher ones. Thus, the God Shoo, the personification of Ra, who appears as the “Great Cat of the Basin of Persæa in An”(1283) was often represented in the Egyptian monuments seated and holding a cross, symbol of the four Quarters, or the Elements, attached to a circle. In that very learned work, The Natural Genesis, by Gerald Massey, under the heading, “Typology of the Cross,” there is more information to be had on the cross and circle than in any other work we know of. He who would fain have proofs of the antiquity of the cross is referred to these two volumes. The author says:

The circle and cross are inseparable.... The Crux Ansata unites the circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin the circle and the cross came to be interchangeable at times. For example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The name denotes the circling, wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like manner, Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four‐ footed cross [Svastika], and a type of the four quarters. Thus the cross is equivalent to the circle of the year. The wheel emblem unites the cross and circle in one, as does the hieroglyphic cake and the Ankh‐tie ☥.(1284) Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with the Initiates. For Raoul Rochette shows that:(1285) The sign ♀ occurs as the reverse of a Phœnician coin, with a Ram as the obverse.... The same sign, sometimes called Venus’ Looking‐ Glass, because it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the hind‐quarters of valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other beautiful breeds of horses. This proves that so far back as those early days the cross had already become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of the divine origin of cross and circle had begun.

Another form of the cross is given from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society:(1286) At each of the four corners is placed a quarter arc of an oviform curve, and when the four are put together they form an oval; thus the figure combines the cross with the circle round it in four parts, corresponding to the four corners of the cross. The four segments answer to the four feet of the Swastica cross and the Fylfot of Thor. The four‐leaved lotus flower of Buddha, is likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being an Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter arcs, if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse is also figured on each arm of the cross. This ellipse therefore denotes the path of the earth.... Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the following specimen, [Symbol: Oval, with large letter “Z” inside, with horizontal crossbar] which is here presented, as the cross of the two equinoxes and the two solstices placed within the figure of the earth’s path. The same ovoid or boat‐shaped figure appears at times in the Hindu drawings with seven steps at each end as a form or a mode of Meru.

This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are six more aspects, however, and an attempt may be made to interpret a few of these. The subject is so vast that it would require in itself alone many volumes. But the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of cross and circle, spoken of in the above cited work, is one which receives its full explanation and final colour from Âryan symbols of the same nature. Says the author:

The four‐armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but the cross‐sign is not always simple.(1287) This is a type that was developed from an identifiable beginning, which was adapted to the expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred cross of Egypt that was carried in the hands of the Gods, the Pharaohs, and the mummied dead, is the Ankh ☥ the sign of life, the living, an oath, the covenant.... The top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru [Symbol: Horizontal oval] set upright on the Tau‐cross. The Ru is the door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet. This denotes the birthplace in the northern quarter of the heavens, from which the Sun is reborn. Hence the Ru of the Ankh‐sign is the feminine type of the birthplace, representing the north. It was in the northern quarter that the Goddess of the Seven Stars, called the “Mother of the Revolutions,” gave birth to time in the earliest cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh‐cross [Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right], a mere loop which contains both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop or noose is carried in front of the oldest genitrix, Typhon of the Great Bear; as her Ark, the ideograph of a period, an ending, a time, shown to mean one revolution. This, then, represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great Bear which constituted the earliest year of time, from which fact we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents that quarter, the birthplace of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh symbol.

Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an Ark or Rek type of reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh‐cross was continued in the Cypriote R, [Symbol: Circle with horizontal line beneath], and the Coptic Ro, [Symbol: Figure like a Rho].(1288) The Ro was carried into the Greek cross [Symbol: Large Greek Rho with letter Chi beneath it], which is formed of the Ro and Chi or R‐k.... The Rek, or Ark, was the sign of all beginning (Arche) on this account, and the Ark‐tie is the cross of the North, the hind part of heaven.(1289)

Now this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Paurânic version in India gives the whole matter another colour. Without destroying the above interpretation, it is made to reveal a portion of its mysteries with the help of the astronomical key, and thus offers a more metaphysical rendering. The Ankh‐tie [Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right] does not belong to Egypt alone. It exists under the name of Pâsha, a cord which the four‐armed Shiva holds in the hand of his right back arm.(1290) The Mahâdeva is represented in the posture of an ascetic, as Mahâyogî, with his third eye [Symbol: Vertical oval with dot in the middle], which is “the Ru [Symbol: Horizontal oval with dot in the middle], set upright on the Tau‐cross” in another form. The Pâsha is held in the hand in such a way that the first finger and hand near the thumb make the cross, or loop and crossing. Our Orientalists would have it to represent a cord to bind refractory offenders with, because, forsooth, Kâlî, Shiva’s consort, has the same as an attribute!

The Pâsha has here a double significance, as also has Shiva’s Trisûla and every other divine attribute. This dual significance lies in Shiva, for Rudra has certainly the same meaning as the Egyptian Ansated Cross in its cosmic and mystic meaning. In the hand of Shiva, the Pâsha becomes lingyonic. Shiva, as said before, is a name unknown to the Vedas. It is in the White Yajur Veda that Rudra appears for the first time as the Great God, Mahâdeva, whose symbol is the Lingam. In the Rig Veda he is called Rudra, the “howler,” the beneficent and the maleficent Deity at the same time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the Vishnu Purâna, he is the God who springs from the forehead of Brahmâ, who separates into male and female, and he is the parent of the Rudras or Maruts, half of whom are brilliant and gentle, others, black and ferocious. In the Vedas, he is the Divine Ego aspiring to return to its pure, deific state, and at the same time that Divine Ego imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce passions make of him the “roarer,” the “terrible.” This is well shown in the Brihadâranyaka Upanishad, wherein the Rudras, the progeny of Rudra, God of Fire, are called the “ten vital breaths (prâna, life), with the heart (manas), as eleventh,”(1291) whereas as Shiva, he is the destroyer of that life. Brahmâ calls him Rudra, and gives him, besides, seven other names, signifying seven forms of manifestation, and also the seven powers of nature which destroy but to recreate or regenerate.

Hence the cruciform noose, or Pâsha, in the hand of Shiva, when he is represented as an ascetic, the Mahâyogin, has no phallic signification, and, indeed, it requires an imagination strongly bent in this direction to find such a signification even in an astronomical symbol. As an emblem of “door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet” it signifies the “strait gate” that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven, far more than the “birthplace” in a physiological sense. It is a cross in a circle and Crux Ansata, truly; but it is a cross on which all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogî passes through the “strait gate,” the narrow circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the Inner Man has passed the threshold. As to the mysterious seven Rishis in the constellation of the Great Bear; if Egypt made them sacred to “the oldest genitrix, Typhon,” India has connected these symbols ages ago with Time or Yuga‐revolutions, and the Saptarshis are intimately connected with our present age‐the dark Kali Yuga.(1292) The great Circle of Time, on the face of which, Indian fancy has represented the Porpoise, or Shishumâra, has the cross placed on it by nature in its division and localization of stars, planets and constellations. In Bhâgavata Purâna,(1293) it is said:

At the extremity of the tail of that animal, whose head is directed toward the south, and whose body is in the shape of a ring [circle], Dhruva [the ex‐pole star] is placed; along its tail are Prajâpati, Agni, Indra, Dharma, etc.; across its loins the seven Rishis.(1294) This is then the first and earliest cross and circle, formed by the Deity, symbolized by Vishnu, the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time, Kâla, on whose plane lie crossways all the Gods, creatures, and creations born in Space and Time‐who, as the Philosophy has it, all die at the Mahâpralaya.

Meanwhile it is the seven Rishis who mark the time and the duration of events in our septenary Life‐cycle. They are as mysterious as their supposed wives, the Pleiades, of whom only one‐she who hides‐has proven virtuous. The Pleiades, or Krittikâs, are the nurses of Kârttikeya, the God of War (the Mars of the Western Pagans), who is called the Commander of the Celestial Armies, or rather of the Siddhas—Siddha‐sena (translated Yogîs in Heaven, and holy Sages on the Earth)—which would make Kârttikeya identical with Michael, the “Leader of the Celestial Hosts” and, like himself, a virgin Kumâra.(1295) Verily he is the Guha, the “Mysterious One,” as much so as are the Saptarshis and the Krittikâs, the seven Rishis and the Pleiades, for the interpretation of all these combined reveal to the Adept the greatest mysteries of Occult Nature. One point is worth mention in this question of cross and circle, as it bears strongly upon the elements of Fire and Water, which play such an important part in the circle and cross symbolism. Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to have been born of his mother Juno alone, without the participation of a father, or like the Avatâras (Krishna, for instance)—in the West as in the East—Kârttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner, begotten by neither father nor mother, but out of a seed of Rudra‐Shiva, which was cast into the Fire (Agni) and then received by the Water (Ganges). Thus he is born from Fire and Water—a “boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the Moon.” Hence he is called Agnibhû (son of Agni) and Gangâputra (son of Ganges). Add to this the fact that the Krittikâ, his nurses, as the Matsya Purâna shows, are presided over by Agni, or, in the authentic words, “the seven Rishis are on a line with the brilliant Agni,” and hence “Krittika has Âgneya as a synonym”(1296)—and the connection is easy to follow.

It is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali Yuga, the age of sin and sorrow. As the Bhâgavata Purâna tells us: When the splendour of Vishnu, named Krishna, departed for heaven, then did the Kali age, during which men delight in sin, invade the world.... When the seven Rishis were in Maghâ, the Kali age, comprising 1,200 [divine] years [432,000 common years] began; and, when, from Maghâ, they shall reach Pûrvâshâdhâ, then will this Kali age attain its growth, under Nanda and his successors.(1297) This is the revolution of the Rishis— When the two first stars of the seven Rishis (the Great Bear) rise in the heavens, and some lunar asterism is seen at night, at an equal distance between them, then the seven Rishis continue stationary in that conjunction for a hundred years, —as a hater of Nanda makes Parâshara say. According to Bentley, it was in order to show the quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this notion originated among the Astronomers.

This was by assuming an imaginary line, or great circle, passing through the poles of the ecliptic and the beginning of the fixed Maghâ, which circle was supposed to cut some of the stars in the Great Bear.... The seven stars in the Great Bear being called the Rishis, the circle so assumed was called the line of the Rishis; and, being invariably fixed to the beginning of the lunar asterism Maghâ, the precession would be noted by stating the degree, etc., of any movable lunar mansion cut by that line or circle, as an index.(1298)

There has been, and there still exists, a seemingly endless controversy about the chronology of the Hindûs. Here is, however, a point that could help to determine—approximately at least—the age when the symbolism of the seven Rishis and their connection with the Pleiades began. When Kârttikeya was delivered to the Krittikâ by the Gods to be nursed, they were only six, whence Kârttikeya is represented with six heads; but when the poetical fancy of the early Âryan Symbologists made of them the consorts of the seven Rishis, they were seven. Their names are given, and these are Amba, Dulâ, Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghâyanti, Varshayanti, and Chupunika. There are other sets of names which differ, however. Anyhow, the seven Rishis were made to marry the seven Krittikâ before the disappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could the Hindû astronomers speak of a star which no one can see without the help of the strongest telescopes? This is why, perhaps, in every such case the majority of the events described in the Hindû allegories is fixed upon as “a very recent invention, certainly within the Christian era.”

The oldest Sanskrit MSS. on Astronomy begin their series of Nakshatras, the twenty‐seven lunar asterisms, with the sign of Krittikâ, and this can hardly make them earlier than 2,780 B.C. This is according to the “Vedic Calendar,” which is accepted even by the Orientalists, though they get out of the difficulty by saying that the said Calendar does not prove that the Hindûs knew anything of Astronomy at that date, and assure their readers that, Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian Pandits may have acquired their knowledge of the lunar mansions headed by Krittikâ from the Phœnicians, etc. However that may be, the Pleiades are the central group of the system of sidereal symbology. They are situated in the neck of the constellation Taurus, regarded by Mädler and others, in Astronomy, as the central group of the system of the Milky Way, and in the Kabalah and Eastern Esotericism, as the sidereal septenate born from the first manifested side of the upper triangle, the concealed [triangle]. This manifested side is Taurus, the symbol of One (the figure 1), or of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (א) “bull” or “ox,” whose synthesis is Ten (10), or Yod (י), the perfect letter and number. The Pleiades (Alcyone, especially), are thus considered, even in Astronomy, as the central point around which our universe of fixed stars revolves, the focus from which, and into which, the Divine Breath, Motion, works incessantly during the Manvantara. Hence, in the sidereal symbols of the Occult Philosophy, it is this circle with the starry cross on its face which plays the most prominent part.

The Secret Doctrine teaches us that everything in the Universe, as well as the Universe itself, is formed (“created”) during its periodical manifestations—by accelerated Motion set into activity by the Breath of the Ever‐to‐be‐unknown Power—unknown to present mankind, at any rate—within the phenomenal world. The Spirit of Life and Immortality was everywhere symbolized by a circle; hence the serpent biting its tail, represents the Circle of Wisdom in Infinity; as does the astronomical cross—the cross within a circle—and the globe, with two wings added to it, which then became the sacred Scarabæus of the Egyptians, its very name being suggestive of the secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabæus is called in the Egyptian papyri, Khopirron and Khopri from the verb khopron, “to become,” and has thus been made a symbol and an emblem of human life and of the successive “becomings” of man, through the various peregrinations and metempsychoses, or reïncarnations, of the liberated soul. This mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in reïncarnation and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal Entity. As this, however, was an Esoteric Doctrine, revealed only during the Mysteries, by the Priest‐hierophants and the King‐initiates to the Candidates, it was kept secret. The Incorporeal Intelligences (the Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always represented under the form of circles. In the primitive Philosophy of the Hierophants these invisible circles were the prototypic causes and builders of all the heavenly orbs, which were their visible bodies or coverings, and of which they were the souls. It was certainly a universal teaching in antiquity.(1299) As Proclus says:

Before the mathematical numbers, there are the self‐moving numbers; before the figures apparent—the vital figures, and before producing the material worlds which move in a circle, the Creative Power produced the invisible circles.(1300) “Deus enim et circulus est,” says Pherecydes, in his Hymn to Jupiter. This was a Hermetic axiom, and Pythagoras prescribed such a circular prostration and posture during the hours of contemplation. “The devotee must approach as much as possible the form of a perfect circle,” prescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried to spread the same custom among the people, Pierius tells his readers; and Pliny says: During our worship, we roll up, so to say, our body in a ring—totum corpus circumagimur.(1301) The Vision of the prophet Ezekiel reminds one forcibly of this mysticism of the circle, when he beheld a “whirlwind” from which came out “one wheel upon the earth” whose work “was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel”—“for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.”(1302)

“[Spirit] whirleth about continually, and ... returneth again according to his circuits”—says Solomon,(1303) who is made in the English translation to speak of the “wind,” and in the original text to refer both to the spirit and the sun. But the Zohar, the only true gloss of the Kabalistic Preacher—in explanation of this verse, which is, perhaps, rather hazy and difficult to comprehend—says: It seems to say that the sun moves in circuits, whereas it refers to the Spirit under the sun, called the Holy Spirit, that moves circularly, toward both sides, that they [It and the sun] should be united in the same Essence.(1304)

The Brâhmanical “Golden Egg,” from within which emerges Brahmâ, the Creative Deity, is the “Circle with the Central Point” of Pythagoras, and its fitting symbol. In the Secret Doctrine the concealed Unity—whether representing Parabrahman, or the “Great Extreme” of Confucius, or the Deity concealed by Phtah, the Eternal Light, or again the Jewish Ain Suph, is always found to be symbolized by a circle or the “nought” (absolute No‐ Thing and Nothing, because it is Infinite and the All); while the God‐ manifested (by its works) is referred to as the Diameter of that Circle. The symbolism of the underlying idea is thus made evident: the right line passing through the centre of a circle has, in the geometrical sense, length, but neither breadth nor thickness; it is an imaginary and feminine symbol, crossing eternity, and made to rest on the plane of existence of the phenomenal world. It is dimensional, whereas its circle is dimensionless, or, to use an algebraical term, it is the dimension of an equation. Another way of symbolizing the idea is found in the Pythagorean sacred Decad which synthesizes, in the dual numeral Ten (the one and a circle or cipher), the Absolute All manifesting itself in the Word or Generative Power of Creation. B. The Fall Of The Cross Into Matter.

Those who would feel inclined to argue upon this Pythagorean symbol by objecting that it is not yet ascertained, so far, at what period of antiquity the nought or cipher occurs for the first time—especially in India—are referred to Isis Unveiled.(1305)

Admitting for argument’s sake that the ancient world was not acquainted with our modes of calculation or Arabic figures—though in reality we know it was—yet the circle and diameter idea is there to show that it was the first symbol in Cosmogony. Before the Trigrams of Fo‐hi, Yang, the unity, and Yin, the binary, explained cunningly enough by Éliphas Lévi,(1306) China had her Confucius, and her Tao‐ists. The former circumscribes the “Great Extreme” within a circle with a horizontal line across; the latter place three concentric circles beneath the great circle, while the Sung Sages showed the “Great Extreme” in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth in two lower and smaller circles. The Yangs and the Yins are a far later invention. Plato and his school never understood the Deity otherwise, notwithstanding the many epithets applied by him to the “God over all” (ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεός). Plato, having been initiated, could not believe in a personal God—a gigantic shadow of man. His epithets of “Monarch” and “Law‐ giver of the Universe” bear an abstract meaning well understood by every Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law that governs the Universe, and recognizes it at the same time as immutable. As Plato says:

Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas and principles, there is an Intelligence or Mind (νοῦς), the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded, ... the ultimate substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the First and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty and excellency, and goodness, which pervade the Universe.

This Mind is called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme Good,(1307) “The God” (ὁ θεός), and the “God over all.” These words apply, as Plato himself shows, neither to the “Creator” nor to the “Father” of our modern Monotheist, but to the Ideal and Abstract Cause. For, as he says: “This θεός, the God over all, is not the truth or the intelligence, but the Father of it,” and its Primal Cause. Is it Plato, the greatest pupil of the archaic Sages, a Sage himself, for whom there was but a single object of attainment in this life—Real Knowledge—who would have ever believed in a Deity that curses and damns men for ever, on the slightest provocation?(1308) Surely not he who considered only those to be genuine Philosophers and students of truth who possessed the knowledge of the really‐existing in opposition to mere seeming; of the always‐existing in opposition to the transitory: and of that which exists permanently in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately.(1309) Speusippus and Xenocrates followed in his footsteps. The One, the original, had no existence, in the sense applied to it by mortal men. The τίμιον (the honoured) dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity—the World Soul(1310)—the plane of the surface of the circle. The cross and circle are a universal conception—as old as the human mind itself. They stand foremost on the list of the long series of, so to say, international symbols, which expressed very often great scientific truths, besides their direct bearing upon psychological, and even physiological mysteries.

It is no explanation to say, as does Éliphas Lévi, that God, the universal Love, having caused the male Unit to dig an abyss in the female Binary, or Chaos, thereby produced the world. In addition to the grossness of the conception, it does not remove the difficulty of conceiving it without losing one’s veneration for the rather too human‐like ways of the Deity. It is to avoid such anthropomorphic conceptions that the Initiates never used the epithet “God” to designate the One and Secondless Principle in the Universe; and that—faithful in this to the oldest traditions of the Secret Doctrine the world over—they deny that such imperfect and often not very clean work could ever be produced by Absolute Perfection. There is no need to mention here other still greater metaphysical difficulties. Between speculative Atheism and idiotic Anthropomorphism there must be a philosophical mean, and a reconciliation. The Presence of the Unseen Principle throughout all Nature, and the highest manifestation of it on Earth—Man, can alone help to solve the problem, which is that of the mathematician whose x must ever elude the grasp of our terrestrial algebra. The Hindûs have tried to solve it by their Avatâras, the Christians think they have done so—by their one divine Incarnation. Exoterically—both are wrong; Esoterically both of them are very near the truth. Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion, Paul seems to have fathomed—if not actually revealed—the archaic mystery of the cross.

As for the rest of those who, by unifying and individualizing the Universal Presence, have synthesized it into one symbol—the central point in the crucifix—they show thereby that they have never seized the true spirit of the teaching of Christ, but rather that they have degraded it in more than one way by their erroneous interpretations. They have forgotten the spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it—as though the Boundless and the Infinite could ever be limited and conditioned to one manifestation individualized in one man, or even in a nation!

The four arms of the [Symbol: cross like the letter “X”], or decussated cross, and of the Hermetic cross, pointing to the four cardinal points—were well understood by the mystical minds of the Hindûs, Brâhmans and Buddhists, hundreds of years before it was heard of in Europe, for that symbol was and is found all over the world. They bent the ends of the cross and made of it their Svastika, 卐 now the Wan of the Mongolian Buddhist.(1311) It implies that the “central point” is not limited to one individual, however perfect; that The Principle (God) is in Humanity, and Humanity, as all the rest, is in It, like drops of water are in the ocean, the four ends being toward the four cardinal points, hence losing themselves in infinity. Isarim, an Initiate, is said to have found at Hebron, on the dead body of Hermes, the well known Smaragdine Tablet, which, it is said, contained the essence of Hermetic Wisdom. Upon it were traced, among others, the sentences: Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross.... Ascend ... from the earth to heaven and then descend again to earth. The riddle of the cross is contained in these words, and its double mystery is solved—to the Occultist.

The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite directions, the horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and breadth, which the geometrizing Deity divides at the intersecting point, and which forms the magical as well as the scientific quaternary, when it is inscribed within the perfect square, is the basis of the Occultist. Within its mystical precinct lies the master‐key which opens the door of every science, physical as well as spiritual. It symbolizes our human existence, for the circle of life circumscribes the four points of the cross, which represent in succession, birth, life, death, and immortality.(1312) “Attach thyself,” says the Alchemist, “to the four letters of the tetragram disposed in the following manner. The letters of the ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained therein, and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the masters.”(1313) Again:

The Tau, Τ, and the astronomical cross of Egypt, [Symbol: Circle with cross within] are conspicuous in several apertures of the remains of Palenque. In one of the basso‐relievos of the Palace of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured as a hieroglyphic right under the seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure, which leans over the first one, is in the act of covering its head with the left hand with the veil of initiation; while it extends its right with the index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The position is precisely that of a Christian bishop giving his blessing, or the one in which Jesus is often represented while at the Last Supper.(1314)

The Egyptian Hierophant had a square head‐dress which he had to wear always during his functions. These square hats are worn unto this day by the Armenian priests. The perfect Tau—formed of the perpendicular (descending male ray) and the horizontal line (Matter, female principle)—and the mundane circle were attributes of Isis, and it was only at death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of the mummy. The claim that the cross is purely a Christian symbol introduced after our era, is strange indeed, when we find Ezekiel stamping the foreheads of the men of Judah who feared the Lord,(1315) with the signum Thau, as it is translated in the Vulgate. In the ancient Hebrew this sign was formed thus [Symbol: Cross, tilted towards the northeast], but in the original Egyptian hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross ☦ (Tat, the emblem of stability). In the Revelation, also, the “Alpha and Omega”—Spirit and Matter—the first and the last, stamps the name of his Father on the foreheads of the elect. Moses(1316) orders his people to mark their door‐posts and lintels with blood, lest the “Lord God” should make a mistake and smite some of his chosen people, instead of the doomed Egyptians. And this mark is a Tau!—the identical Egyptian handled cross, with the half of which talisman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruin at Philæ.

Enough has been said in the text about the Svastika and the Tau. Verily may the cross be traced back into the very depths of the unfathomable archaic ages! Its mystery deepens rather than clears, as we find it on the statues of Easter Island, in old Egypt, in Central Asia, engraved on rocks as the Tau and Svastika, in Pre‐Christian Scandinavia, everywhere! The author of the Source of Measures stands perplexed before the endless shadow it throws back into antiquity, and is unable to trace it to any particular nation or man. He shows the Targums handed down by the Hebrews, obscured by translation. In Joshua(1317) read in Arabic, and in the Targum of Jonathan, it is said: “The king of Ai he crucified upon a tree.” The Septuagint rendering is of suspension from a double word or cross. (Wordsworth on Joshua.) ... The strangest expression of this kind is in Numbers (xxv. 4) where, by Onkelos (?) it is read: “Crucify them before the Lord (Jehovah) against the sun.” The word here is יקע, to nail to, rendered properly (Fuerst) by the Vulgate, to crucify. The very construction of this sentence is mystic.(1318)

So it is, but the spirit of it has been ever misunderstood. “To crucify before (not against) the Sun” is a phrase used of Initiation. It comes from Egypt, and primarily from India. The enigma can be unriddled only by searching for its key in the Mysteries of Initiation. The Initiated Adept, who had successfully passed through all the trials, was attached, not nailed, but simply tied on a couch in the form of a Tau, Τ, in Egypt, of a Svastika without the four additional prolongations (☩ not 卐) in India, plunged in a deep sleep—the “Sleep of Siloam,” as it is called to this day among the Initiates in Asia Minor, in Syria, and even higher Egypt. He was allowed to remain in this state for three days and three nights, during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to “confabulate” with the “Gods,” descend into Hades, Amenti, or Pâtâla—according to the country—and do works of charity to the invisible Beings, whether Souls of men or Elemental Spirits; his body remaining all the time in a temple crypt or subterranean cave. In Egypt it was placed in the Sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber of the Pyramid of Cheops, and carried during the night of the approaching third day to the entrance of a gallery, where at a certain hour the beams of the rising Sun struck full on the face of the entranced Candidate, who awoke to be initiated by Osiris and Thoth, the God of Wisdom.

Let the reader who doubts the statement consult the Hebrew originals before he denies. Let him turn to some most suggestive Egyptian bas reliefs. One especially from the temple of Philæ, represents a scene of initiation. Two God‐Hierophants, one with the head of a hawk (the Sun), the other ibis‐headed (Mercury, Thoth, the God of Wisdom and Secret Learning, the assessor of Osiris‐Sun), are standing over the body of a Candidate just initiated. They are in the act of pouring on his head a double stream of “water” (the Water of Life and of New‐birth), the streams being interlaced in the shape of a cross and full of small ansated crosses. This is allegorical of the awakening of the Candidate who is now an Initiate, when the beams of the morning Sun, Osiris, strike the crown of his head; his entranced body being placed on its wooden Tau so as to receive the rays. Then appeared the Hierophant‐Initiators, and the sacramental words were pronounced, ostensibly to the Sun‐Osiris, in reality to the Spirit‐Sun within, enlightening the newly‐born man.

Let the reader meditate on the connection of the Sun with the cross from the highest antiquity, in both its generative and spiritually regenerative capacities. Let him examine the tomb of Bait‐Oxly, in the reign of Ramses II, where he will find the crosses in every shape and position; as also on the throne of that sovereign, and finally on a fragment representing the adoration of Bakhan‐Alearé, from the Hall of the ancestors of Totmes III, now preserved in the National Library of Paris. In this extraordinary sculpture and painting one sees the disk of the Sun beaming upon an ansated cross placed upon a cross of which those of the Calvary are perfect copies. The ancient MSS. mention these as the “hard couches of those who were in [spiritual] travail, the act of giving birth to themselves.” A quantity of such cruciform “couches,” on which the Candidate, thrown into a dead trance at the end of his supreme Initiation, was placed and secured, were found in the underground halls of the Egyptian Temples after their destruction. The worthy and holy Fathers of the Cyril and Theophilus types used them freely, believing they had been brought and concealed there by some new converts. Alone Origen, and after him Clemens Alexandrinus and other ex‐initiates, knew better. But they preferred to keep silent.

Again, let the reader read the Hindû “fables,” as the Orientalists call them, and remember the allegory of Vishvakarmâ, the Creative Power, the Great Architect of the World, called in the Rig Veda the “All‐seeing God,” who “sacrifices himself to himself.” The Spiritual Egos of mortals are his own essence, one with him, therefore. Remember that he is called Deva‐vardhika, the “Builder of the Gods,” and that it is he who ties the Sun, Sûrya, his son‐in‐law, on his lathe—in the exoteric allegory, but on the Svastika, in Esoteric tradition, for on Earth he is the Hierophant‐ Initiator—and cuts away a portion of his brightness. Vishvakarmâ, remember again, is the son of Yoga‐siddhâ, i.e., the holy power of Yoga, and the fabricator of the “fiery weapon,” the magic Agneyastra.(1319) The narrative is given more fully elsewhere. The author of the kabalistic work so often quoted from, asks:

The theoretical use of crucifixion then, must have been somehow connected with the personification of this symbol [the structure of the Garden of Paradise symbolized by a crucified man]. But how? And as showing what? The symbol was of the origin of measures, shadowing forth creative law or design. What, practically, as regards humanity, could actual crucifixion betoken? Yet, that it was held as the effigy of some mysterious working of the same system, is shown from the very fact of the use. There seems to be deep below deep as to the mysterious workings of these number values—[the symbolization of the connection of 113: 355, with 20612: 6561, by a crucified man]. Not only are they shown to work in the cosmos but, ... by sympathy, they seem to work out conditions relating to an unseen and spiritual world, and the prophets seem to have held knowledge of the connecting links. Reflection becomes more involved when it is considered that, the power of expression of the law, exactly, by numbers clearly defining a system, was not the accident of the language, but was its very essence, and of its primary organic construction; therefore, neither the language, nor the mathematical system attaching to it, could be of man’s invention, unless both were founded upon a prior language which afterwards became obsolete.(1320)

The author proves these points by further elucidation, and reveals the secret meaning of more than one dead‐letter narrative, by showing that probably, איש, man, was the primordial word: The very first word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were, to carry the idea, by sound, of a man. The essential of this word was 113 [the numerical value of that word] from the beginning, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system displayed.(1321) This is demonstrated by the Hindû Vittoba, a form of Vishnu, as has already been stated. The figure of Vittoba, even to the nail‐marks on the feet,(1322) is that of Jesus crucified, in all its details save the cross. That man was meant is proved to us further by the fact of the Initiate being reborn after his crucifixion on the Tree of Life. This “Tree” has now become exoterically—through its use by the Romans as an instrument of torture and the ignorance of the early Christian schemers—the tree of death!

Thus, one of the seven Esoteric meanings intended by this mystery of crucifixion by the mystic inventors of the system—the original elaboration and adoption of which dates back to the very establishment of the Mysteries—is discovered in the geometrical symbols containing the history of the evolution of man. The Hebrews—whose prophet Moses was so learned in the Esoteric Wisdom of Egypt, and who adopted their numerical system from the Phœnicians, and later from the Gentiles, from whom also they borrowed most of their Kabalistic Mysticism—most ingeniously adapted the cosmic and anthropological symbols of the “Heathen” nations to their peculiar secret records. If Christian sacerdotalism has lost the key of this to‐ day, the early compilers of the Christian Mysteries were well versed in Esoteric Philosophy and the Hebrew Occult Metrology, and used it dexterously. Thus they took the word Aish, one of the Hebrew word‐forms for man, and used it in conjunction with that of Shânâh or lunar year, so mystically connected with the name of Jehovah, the supposed “Father” of Jesus, and embosomed the mystic idea in an astronomical value and formula.

The original idea of the “man crucified” in space certainly belongs to the ancient Hindûs. Moor shows this in his Hindû Pantheon in the engraving that represents Vittoba. Plato adopted it in his decussated cross in space, the [Symbol: cross like the letter “X”], the “second God who impressed himself on the universe in the form of the cross”; Krishna is likewise shown “crucified.”(1323) Again it is repeated in the Old Testament in the queer injunction to crucify men before the Lord, the Sun—which is no prophecy at all, but has a direct phallic significance. In that same most suggestive work on the kabalistic meanings, we read again:

In symbol, the nails of the cross have for the shape of the heads thereof a solid pyramid, and a tapering square obeliscal shaft, or phallic emblem, for the nail. Taking the position of the three nails in the man’s extremities and on the cross, they form or mark a triangle in shape, one nail being at each corner of the triangle. The wounds, or stigmata, in the extremities are necessarily four, designative of the square.... The three nails with the three wounds are in number 6, which denotes the 6 faces of the cube unfolded [which make the cross or man‐form, or 7, counting three horizontal and four vertical squares], on which the man is placed; and this in turn points to the circular measure transferred on to the edges of the cube. The one wound of the feet separates into two when the feet are separated, making three together for all, and four when separated, or 7 in all—another and most holy [with the Jews] feminine base number.(1324)

Thus, while the phallic or sexual meaning of the “crucifixion nails” is proven by the geometrical and numerical reading, its mystical meaning is indicated by the short remarks upon it, as given above, in its connection with, and bearing upon, Prometheus. He is another victim, for he is crucified on the Cross of Love, on the rock of human passions, a sacrifice to his devotion to the cause of the spiritual element in Humanity. Now, the primordial system, the double glyph that underlies the idea of the cross, is not of “human invention,” for Cosmic Ideation and the spiritual representation of the Divine Ego‐man are at its basis. Later, it expanded into the beautiful idea adopted by, and represented in, the Mysteries, that of regenerated man, the mortal, who, by crucifying the man of flesh and his passions on the Procrustean bed of torture, became reborn as an Immortal. Leaving the body, the animal‐man, behind him, tied on the Cross of Initiation like an empty chrysalis, the Ego‐Soul became as free as a butterfly. Still later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the cross became in Cosmogony and Anthropology no higher than a phallic symbol.

With the Esotericists from the remotest times, the Universal Soul or Anima Mundi, the material reflection of the Immaterial Ideal, was the Source of Life of all beings and of the Life‐Principle of the three kingdoms. This was septenary with the Hermetic Philosophers, as with all Ancients. For it is represented as a sevenfold cross, whose branches are respectively, light, heat, electricity, terrestrial magnetism, astral radiation, motion, and intelligence, or what some call self‐ consciousness. As we have said elsewhere, long before the cross or its sign were adopted as symbols of Christianity, the sign of the cross was used as a mark of recognition among Adepts and Neophytes, the latter being called Chrests—from Chrestos, the man of tribulation and sorrow. Says Éliphas Lévi:

The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong to them exclusively. It is also kabalistic, and represents the opposition and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the Paternoster ... that there were originally two ways of doing it, or, at least two very different formulas to express its meaning: one reserved for the priests and initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said, To thee; then he added, belong; and continued, carrying his hand to the breast, the kingdom; then to the left shoulder, justice; to the right shoulder, and mercy. Then he joined the two hands, adding, throughout the generating cycles—Tibi sunt Malchut et Geburah et Chesed per Æonas—an absolutely and magnificently kabalistic sign of the cross, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely lose.(1325)

The “militant and official Church” did more: having helped herself to what had never belonged to her, she took only that which the “Profane” had—the kabalistic meaning of the male and female Sephiroth. She never lost the inner and higher meaning since she never had it—Éliphas Lévi’s pandering to Rome notwithstanding. The sign of the cross adopted by the Latin Church was phallic from the beginning, while that of the Greeks was the cross of the Neophytes, the Chrestoi.

We are reminded in King’s Gnostics and their Remains that the Greek language had but one word for vowel and voice. This has led the uninitiated to many erroneous interpretations. On the simple knowledge, however, of this well‐known fact a comparison may be attempted, and a flood of light thrown upon several mystic meanings. Thus the words, so often used in the Upanishads and the Purânas, “Sound” and “Speech,” may be collated with the Gnostic “Vowels” and the “Voices” of the Thunders and Angels in Revelation. The same will be found in Pistis Sophia, and other ancient Fragments and MSS. This was remarked even by the matter‐of‐ fact author of the above mentioned work. Through Hippolytus, an early Church Father, we learn what Marcus—a Pythagorean rather than a Christian Gnostic, and a Kabalist most certainly—had received in mystic revelation. It is said that Marcus had it revealed unto him that: The seven heavens(1326) ... sounded each one vowel, which, all combined together, formed a single doxology, “the sound whereof being carried down [from these seven heavens] to earth, becomes the creator and parent of all things that be on earth.”(1327)

Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer language this would read: The Sevenfold Logos having differentiated into seven Logoi, or Creative Potencies (Vowels), these (the Second Logos, or “Sound”) created all on Earth. Assuredly one who is acquainted with Gnostic literature can hardly help seeing in St. John’s Apocalypse, a work of the same school of thought. For we find John saying: Seven thunders uttered their voices ... [and] I was about to write ... [but] I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.(1328) The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same to all other semi and full Initiates. The very sameness of the expressions used, and of the underlying ideas, always betrays a portion of the Mysteries. We must always seek for more than one meaning in every mystery allegorically revealed, especially in those in which the number seven and its multiplication seven by seven, or forty‐nine, appear. Now when, in Pistis Sophia, the Rabbi Jesus is requested by his disciples to reveal to them the “Mysteries of the Light of his Father”—i.e., of the Higher Self enlightened by Initiation and Divine Knowledge—Jesus answers:

Do ye seek after these mysteries? No mystery is more excellent than they; which shall bring your souls unto the Light of Lights, unto the place of Truth and Goodness, unto the place where there is neither male nor female, neither form in that place but Light, everlasting, not to be uttered. Nothing therefore is more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, saving only the mystery of the seven Vowels and their forty and nine Powers, and their numbers thereof. And no name is more excellent than all these (Vowels).(1329) As says the Commentary, speaking of the “Fires”: _The Seven Fathers and the Forty‐nine Sons blaze in Darkness, but they are the Life and Light and the continuation thereof through the Great Age._ Now it becomes evident that, in every Esoteric interpretation of exoteric beliefs expressed in allegorical forms, there is the same underlying idea—the basic number seven, the compound of three and four, preceded by the divine three ([triangle]) making the perfect number ten.

Also, these numbers apply equally to divisions of time, to cosmography, metaphysical and physical, as well as to man and everything else in visible Nature. Thus these seven Vowels with their forty‐nine Powers are identical with the three and the seven Fires of the Hindûs and their forty‐nine Fires; identical with the numerical mysteries of the Persian Simorgh; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, dwarfing the numbers (their mode of “blinds”), made the duration of each successive Renewal, or what we call in Esoteric parlance Round, 1,000 years only or of the seven Renewals of the Globe 7,000 years, instead of, as is more likely, 7,000,000,000, and assigned to the total duration of the Universe 49,000 years only.(1330) Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on the Indisputable grounds of comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical and monstrous half‐man and half‐bird—the Vâhana or vehicle on which Vishnu, as Kâla or “Time,” is shown to ride—is the origin of all such allegories. He is the Indian Phœnix, the emblem of cyclic and periodical time, the “Man‐lion” (Sinha), of whose representations the so‐called Gnostic gems are so full.(1331)

Over the seven rays of the lion’s crown, and corresponding to their points, stand often the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet, ΑΕΗΙΟΥΩ, testifying to the Seven Heavens.(1332) This is the Solar Lion and the emblem of the Solar Cycle, as Garuda(1333) is that of the Great Cycle, the Mahâ Kalpa, coëternal with Vishnu, and also, of course, the emblem of the Sun and Solar Cycle. This is shown by the details of the allegory. At his birth, Garuda, on account of his “dazzling splendour,” is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, and was thence called Gaganeshvara, “Lord of the Sky.” Its representation as Osiris, on the Abraxas (Gnostic) gems, and by many heads of allegorical monsters, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk—both solar birds—denotes Garuda’s solar and cyclic character. His son is Jatâyu, the cycle of 60,000 years. As well remarked by C. W. King: Whatever its primary meaning [of the gem with the solar lion and vowels] it was probably imported in its present shape from India (that true fountain head of Gnostic iconography).(1334)

The mysteries of the seven Gnostic Vowels, uttered by the Thunders of St. John, can be unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of Âryâvarta, brought into India by the primeval Brâhmans, who had been initiated in Central Asia. And this is the Occultism we study and try to explain, as much as is possible, in these pages. Our doctrine of seven Races, and seven Rounds of life and evolution around our Terrestrial Chain of Spheres, may be found even in Revelation.(1335) When the seven “Thunders,” or “Sounds,” or “Vowels”—one meaning out of the seven for each such vowel relates directly to our own Earth and its seven Root‐Races in each Round—“had uttered their voices,” but had forbidden the Seer to write them, and made him “seal up those things,” what did the Angel, “standing upon the sea and upon the earth,” do? He lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, ... that there should be time no longer: but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God [of the Cycle] should be finished.(1336)

This means, in Theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is completed, then Time will cease. “There shall be time no longer”—very naturally, since Pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on Earth to keep a division of time, during that periodical dissolution and arrest of conscious life. Dr. Kenealy and others believed that the calculations of the cyclic seven and forty‐nine were brought by the Rabbins from Chaldæa. This is more than likely. But the Babylonians, who had all those cycles and taught them only at their great initiatory mysteries of astrological Magic, got their wisdom and learning from India. It is not difficult, therefore, to recognize in them our own Esoteric Doctrine. In their secret computations, the Japanese have the same figures in their cycles. As to the Brâhmans, their Purânas and Upanishads are good proof of it. The latter have passed entirely into Gnostic literature; and a Brâhman needs only to read Pistis Sophia(1337) to recognize his forefathers’ property, even to the phraseology and similes used. Let us compare. In Pistis Sophia the disciples say to Jesus:

Rabbi, reveal unto us the mysteries of the Light [i.e., the “Fire of Knowledge or Enlightenment”], ... forasmuch as we have heard thee saying that there is another baptism of smoke, and another baptism of the Spirit of Holy Light [i.e. the Spirit of Fire].(1338) As John says of Jesus: I indeed baptize you with water; ... but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. The real significance of this statement is very profound. It means that John, a non‐initiated ascetic, can impart to his disciples no greater wisdom than the Mysteries connected with the plane of Matter, of which Water is the symbol. His Gnosis was that of exoteric and ritualistic dogma, of dead‐letter orthodoxy;(1339) while the wisdom which Jesus, an Initiate of the Higher Mysteries, would reveal to them, was of a higher character, for it was the “Fire” Wisdom of the true Gnosis or real Spiritual Enlightenment. One was Fire, the other the Smoke. For Moses, the Fire on Mount Sinai and the Spiritual Wisdom; for the multitudes of the “people” below, for the profane, Mount Sinai in (through) Smoke, i.e., the exoteric husks of orthodox or sectarian ritualism.

Now, having the above in view, read the dialogue between the sages Nârada and Devamata in the Anugîtâ,(1340) an episode from the Mahâbhârata, the antiquity and importance of which one can learn in the “Sacred Books of the East,” edited by Prof. Max Müller.(1341) Nârada is discoursing upon the “breaths” or the “life‐winds,” as they are called in the clumsy translations of such words as Prâna, Apâna, etc., whose full Esoteric meaning and application to individual functions can hardly be rendered in English. He says of this science that: It is the teaching of the Veda, that the fire verily is all the deities, and knowledge (of it) arises among Brâhmanas, being accompanied by intelligence.(1342) By “fire,” says the Commentator, he means the Self. By “intelligence,” the Occultist says, Nârada meant neither “discussion” nor “argumentation,” as Arjuna Mishra believes, but “intelligence” truly, or the adaptation of the Fire of Wisdom to exoteric ritualism for the profane. This is the chief concern of the Brâhmans, who were the first to set the example to other nations who thus anthropomorphized and carnalized the grandest metaphysical truths. Nârada shows this plainly and is made to say:

The smoke of that (fire) which is of excellent glory (appears) in the shape of ... darkness [verily so!]; (its) ashes, ... [are] passion; and ... goodness is that in connection with it, in which the offering is thrown.(1343) That is to say, that faculty in the disciple which apprehends the subtle truth (the flame) which escapes heavenward, while the objective sacrifice remains as a proof and evidence of piety only to the profane. For what else can Nârada mean by the following? Those who understand the sacrifice understand the Samâna and the Vyâna as the principal (offering). The Prâna and Apâna are portions of the offering, ... and between them is the fire. That is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by Brâhmanas. As to that which is distinct from these pairs, hear me speak about that. Day and night are a pair, between them is the fire.... That which exists and that which does not exist are a pair, between them is the fire....(1344) And after every such contrast Nârada adds: That is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by Brâhmanas.

Now many people do not know the full meaning of the statement that Samâna and Vyâna, Prâna and Apâna—which are explained to be “life‐winds,” but which we say are principles and their respective faculties and senses—are offered up to Udâna, the soi‐disant principal “life‐wind,” which is said to act at all the joints. And so the reader who is ignorant that the word “Fire” in these allegories means both the “Self” and the higher Divine Knowledge, will understand nothing in this, and will entirely miss the point of our argument, as the translator and even the editor, the great Oxford Sanskritist, F. Max Müller, have missed the true meaning of Nârada’s words. Exoterically, this enumeration of “life‐winds” has, of course, the meaning, approximately, which is surmised in the foot‐notes, namely: The sense appears to be this: The course of worldly life is due to the operations of the life‐winds which are attached to the self and lead to its manifestations as individual souls [?]. Of these, the Samâna and Vyâna are controlled and held under check by the Prâna and Apâna.... The latter two are held in check and controlled by the Udâna, which thus controls all. And the control of this, which is the control of all five, ... leads to the supreme self.(1345)

The above is given as an explanation of the text, which records the words of the Brâhmana, who narrates how he reached the ultimate Wisdom of Yogism, and in this wise reached All‐knowledge. Saying that he had “perceived by means of the self the seat abiding in the self,”(1346) where dwells the Brahma free from all; and explaining that that indestructible principle was entirely beyond the perception of senses—i.e., of the five “life‐winds”—he adds that: In the midst of all these (life‐winds) which move about in the body and swallow up one another, blazes the Vaishvânara fire sevenfold.(1347) This “Fire,” according to Nîlakantha’s commentary, is identical with the “I,” the Self, which is the goal of the ascetic; Vaishvânara being a word often used for the Self. Then the Brâhmana goes on to enumerate that which is meant by the word “sevenfold,” and says: The nose [or smell], and the tongue [taste], and the eye, and the skin, and the ear as the fifth, the mind, and the understanding, these are the seven tongues of the blaze of Vaishvânara.(1348)... Those are the seven (kinds of) fuel for me.(1349)... These are the seven great officiating priests.(1350)

These seven priests are accepted by Arjuna Mishra in the sense of meaning “the soul distinguished as so many [souls, or principles] with reference to these several powers”; and, finally, the translator seems to accept the explanation, and reluctantly admits that “they may mean” this; though he himself takes the sense to mean: The powers of hearing etc. [the physical senses, in short], which are presided over by the several deities.

But whatever it may mean, whether in scientific or orthodox interpretations, this passage on page 259 explains Nârada’s statements on page 276, and shows them referring to exoteric and esoteric methods and contrasting them. Thus the Samâna and the Vyâna, though subject to the Prâna and the Apâna, and all the four to Udâna in the matter of acquiring the Prânâyâma (of the Hatha Yogî, chiefly, or the lower form of Yoga), are yet referred to as the principal offering, for, as rightly argued by K. Trimbak Telang, their “operations are more practically important for vitality”; i.e., they are the grossest, and are offered in the sacrifice, in order that they may disappear, so to speak, in the quality of darkness of that fire or its smoke—mere exoteric ritualistic form. But Prâna and Apâna, though shown as subordinate (because less gross or more purified), have the Fire between them; the Self and the Secret Knowledge possessed by that Self. So for the good and evil, and for “that which exists and that which does not exist”; all these “pairs”(1351) have Fire between them, i.e., Esoteric Knowledge, the Wisdom of the Divine Self. Let those who are satisfied with the smoke of the Fire remain wherein they are, that is to say within the Egyptian darkness of theological fictions and dead‐letter interpretations.

The above is written only for the Western students of Occultism and Theosophy. The writer presumes to explain these things neither to the Hindûs, who have their own Gurus; nor to the Orientalists, who think they know more than all the Gurus and Rishis, past and present, put together. These rather lengthy quotations and examples are necessary, if only to point out to the student the works he has to study so as to derive benefit and learning from comparison. Let him read Pistis Sophia in the light of the Bhagavad Gîtâ, the Anugîtâ and others; and then the statement made by Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel will become clear, and the dead‐letter “blinds” disappear at once. Read the following and compare it with the explanation from the Hindû scriptures just given.

And no Name is more excellent than all these, a Name wherein be contained all Names, and all Lights, and all the [forty‐nine] Powers. Knowing that Name, if a man quits this body of matter,(1352) no smoke [i.e., no theological delusion],(1353) no darkness, nor Power, nor Ruler of the Sphere [no Personal Genius or Planetary Spirit called God] of Fate [Karma] ... shall be able to hold back the Soul that knoweth that Name.... If he shall utter that Name unto the fire, ... the darkness shall flee away.... And if he shall utter that name unto ... all their Powers, nay, even unto Barbelo,(1354) and the Invisible God, and the three triple‐powered Gods, so soon as he shall have uttered that name in those places, they shall all be thrown one upon the other, so that they shall be ready to melt and perish, and shall cry aloud, O Light of every light that is in the boundless lights, remember us also and purify us!(1355) It is easy to see what this Light and Name are: the Light of Initiation and the name of the “Fire‐Self,” which is no name, no action, but a Spiritual, Ever‐living Power, higher even than the real “Invisible God,” as this Power is Itself.

But if the able and learned author of the Gnostics and their Remains has not sufficiently allowed for the spirit of allegory and mysticism in the fragments translated and quoted by him, in the above named work, from Pistis Sophia—other Orientalists have done far worse. Having neither his intuitional perception of the Indian origin of the Gnostic Wisdom still less of the meaning of their “gems,” most of them, beginning with Wilson and ending with the dogmatic Weber, have made most extraordinary blunders with regard to almost every symbol. Sir M. Monier Williams and others show a very decided contempt for the “Esoteric Buddhists” as Theosophists are now called; yet no student of Occult Philosophy has ever mistaken a cycle for a living personage and vice versâ, as is very often the case with our learned Orientalists. An instance or two may illustrate the statement more graphically. Let us choose the best known.

In the Râmâyana, Garuda is called “the maternal uncle of Sagara’s 60,000 sons”; and Amshumat, Sagara’s grandson, “the nephew of the 60,000 uncles” who were reduced to ashes by the look of Kapila—the Purushottama, or Infinite Spirit, who caused the horse which Sagara was keeping for the Ashvamedha sacrifice to disappear. Again, Garuda’s son(1356);—Garuda being himself the Mahâ Kalpa or Great Cycle—Jatâyu, the king of the feathered tribe (when on the point of being slain by Râvana who carries off Sîtâ) says, speaking of himself: “It is 60,000 years O king, that I am born”; after which, turning his back on the Sun—he dies. Jatâyu is, of course, the cycle of 60,000 years within the Great Cycle of Garuda; hence he is represented as his son, or nephew, ad libitum, since the whole meaning rests on his being placed in the line of Garuda’s descendants. Then, again, there is Diti, the mother of the Maruts, whose descendants and progeny belonged to the posterity of Hiranyâksha, “whose number was 77 crores (or 770 millions) of men,” according to the Padma Purâna. All such narratives are pronounced “meaningless fictions” and absurdities. But—truth is the daughter of time, verily; and time will show.

Meanwhile, what could be easier than an attempt, at least, to verify Paurânic chronology? There are many Kapilas; but the Kapila who slew king Sagara’s progeny—60,000 men strong—was undeniably Kapila, the founder of the Sânkhya philosophy, since it is so stated in the Purânas; although one of them flatly denies the imputation without explaining its Esoteric meaning. It is the Bhâgavata Purâna(1357) which says that: The report is not true that the sons of the king were scorched by the wrath of the sage. For how can the quality of darkness, the product of anger, exist in a Sage whose body was goodness and who purified the world—the earth’s dust, as it were, attributed to heavens! How should mental perturbation distract that sage, identified with the Supreme Spirit, who has steered here (on earth) that solid vessel of the Sânkhya (philosophy), with the help of which he who desires to obtain liberation crosses the dreaded ocean of existence, that path to death?(1358)

The Purâna is in duty bound to speak as it does. It has a dogma to promulgate and a policy to carry out—that of great secrecy with regard to mystical divine truths divulged for countless ages only at Initiation. It is not in the Purânas, therefore, that we have to look for an explanation of the mystery connected with various transcendental states of being. That the story is an allegory is seen upon its very face: the 60,000 “sons,” brutal, vicious, and impious, are the personification of the human passions that a “mere glance of the Sage”—the Self who represents the highest state of purity that can be reached on Earth—reduces to ashes. But it has also other significations, cyclic and chronological meanings, a method of marking the periods when certain Sages flourished, found also in other Purânas.