The Secret Doctrine

reasonable and the least absurd? Certainly no one—provided he be not a soul‐blind Materialist—can ever object to the Occult Teaching.

Now, as shown, we gather from the latter that man was not “created” the complete being he is now, however imperfect he still remains. There was a spiritual, a psychic, an intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the highest to the lowest, as well as a physical development—from the simple and homogeneous, up to the more complex and heterogeneous; though not quite on the lines traced for us by the modern Evolutionists. This double evolution in two contrary directions, required various ages, of divers natures and degrees of spirituality and intellectuality, to fabricate the being now known as man. Furthermore, the one absolute, ever acting and never erring law, which proceeds on the same lines from one Eternity (or Manvantara) to the other—ever furnishing an ascending scale for the manifested, or that which we call the great Illusion (Mahâ‐Mâyâ), but plunging Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality on the one hand, and then redeeming it through flesh and liberating it—this law, we say, uses for these purposes the Beings from other and higher planes, men, or Minds (Manus), in accordance with their Karmic exigencies. At this juncture, the reader is again asked to turn to the Indian Philosophy and Religion. The Esotericism of both is at one with our Secret Doctrine, however much the form may differ and vary.

On The Identity And Differences Of The Incarnating Powers. The Progenitors of Man, called in India Fathers, Pitaras, or Pitris, are the “Creators” of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as the first personalities, and we are they. Primeval man would be “the bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh,” if they had bones and flesh. As stated, they were “Lunar Beings.” The endowers of man with his conscious, immortal Ego, are the “Solar Angels”—whether so regarded metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of the Conscious Ego or Human Soul are great. The Esoteric name of these Solar Angels is, literally, the “Lords” (Nâth) of “persevering ceaseless devotion” (Pranidhâna). Therefore they of the Fifth Principle (Manas) seem to be connected with, or to have originated the system of the Yogîs who make of Pranidhâna their fifth observance.(189) It has already been explained why the Trans‐Himâlayan Occultists regard them as evidently identical with those who in India are termed Kumâras, Agnishvâttas, and the Barhishads.

How precise and true is Plato’s expression, how profound and philosophical his remark on the (Human) Soul or Ego, when he defined it as “a compound of the same and the other.” And yet how little this hint has been understood, since the world took it to mean that the Soul was the Breath of God, of Jehovah. It is “the same and the other,” as the great Initiate‐Philosopher said; for the Ego—the “Higher Self” when merged with and in the Divine Monad—is Man, and yet the same as the “other”; the Angel in him incarnated is the same with the Universal Mahat. The great classical writers and philosophers felt this truth, when saying that: There must be something within us which produces our thoughts. Something very subtle; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it is quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intellection; it is a number; it is harmony.(190) All these are the Mânasas and Râjasas; the Kumâras, Asuras, and other Rulers and Pitris, who incarnated in the Third Race, and in this and various other ways endowed mankind with Mind.

There are Seven Classes of Pitris, as shown below, three Incorporeal and four Corporeal; and two kinds, the Agnishvâtta and the Barhishad. And we may add that, as there are two kinds of Pitris, so there is a double and a triple set of Barhishad and Agnishvâtta. The former, having given birth to their Astral Doubles, are reborn as Sons of Atri, and are the “Pitris of the Demons,” or Corporeal Beings, on the authority of Manu;(191) while the Agnishvâtta are reborn as Sons of Marîchi, a Son of Brahmâ, and are the “Pitris of the Gods.”(192) The Vâyu Purâna declares the Seven Orders of Pitris to have been originally the first Gods, the Vairâjas, whom Brahmâ, with the eye of Yoga, beheld in the eternal spheres, and who are the gods of the gods.... The Matsya ... adds, that the Gods worshipped them.(193) The Harivamsha distinguishes the Vairâjas as one class of the Pitris only,(194) a statement corroborated in the Secret Teachings, which, however, identify the Vairâjas with the elder Agnishvâttas(195) and the Râjasas, or Âbhûtarajasas, who are Incorporeal without even an Astral Phantom. Vishnu is said, in most of the MSS., to have incarnated in and through them.

In the Raivata Manvantara, again, Hari, best of gods, was born of Sambhûti, as the divine Mânasa—originating with the deities called Râjasas.(196) Sambhûti was a daughter of Daksha, and wife of Marîchi, the father of the Agnishvâtta, who, along with the Râjasas, are ever associated with Mânasas. As remarked by a far more able Sanskritist than Wilson, Mr. Fitzedward Hall: Mânasa is no inappropriate name for a deity associated with the Râjasas. We appear to have in it mânasam—the same as manas—with the change of termination required to express male personification.(197) All the Sons of Virâja are Mânasa, says Nîlakantha. And Virâja is Brahmâ, and, therefore, the Incorporeal Pitris are called Vairâjas from being the Sons of Virâja, says Vayu Purâna. We could multiply our proofs ad infinitum, but it is useless. The wise will understand our meaning, the unwise are not required to. There are thirty‐three crores, or three hundred and thirty millions, of Gods in India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the Bhagavad Gîtâ: They may be all devas, but are by no means all “gods,” in the high spiritual sense one attributes to the term.

This is an unfortunate blunder generally committed by Europeans. Deva is a kind of spiritual being, and because the same word is used in ordinary parlance to mean god, it by no means follows that we have and worship thirty‐three crores of gods. These beings, as may be naturally inferred, have a certain affinity with one of the three component Upâdhis [basic principles] into which we have divided man.(198) The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every Manvantara. Thus the twelve Great Gods, Jayas, created by Brahmâ to assist him in the work of creation in the very beginning of the Kalpa, and who, lost in Samâdhi, neglected to create—whereupon they were cursed to be repeatedly born in each Manvantara till the seventh—are respectively called Ajitas, Tushitas, Satyas, Haris, Vaikunthas, Sâdhyas, and Adityas:(199) they are Tushitas, in the second Kalpa, and Âdityas in this Vaivasvata Period,(200) besides other names for each age. But they are identical with the Mânasas or Râjasas, and these with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans.

Yes; besides those Beings, who, like the Yakshas, Gandharvas, Kinnaras, etc., taken in their individualities, inhabit the Astral Plane, there are real Devas, and to these classes belong the Adityas, the Vairâjas, the Kumâras, the Asuras, and all those high celestial Beings whom Occult teaching calls Manasvin, the Wise, foremost of all, and who would have made all men the self‐conscious spiritually intellectual Beings they will be, had they not been “cursed” to fall into generation, and to be reborn themselves as mortals for their neglect of duty.

15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS(201) OF FUTURE MEN(202) (A) WERE(203) BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN COLOUR(204) AND KIND (B). EACH(205) INFERIOR TO HIS FATHER.(206) THE FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS WITH BONES. THEIR PROGENY WERE BHÛTA,(207) WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND. THEREFORE THEY ARE CALLED THE CHHÂYÂ(208) RACE(C). (a) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the root man, to think, hence a “thinker.” It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung the Latin mens, Mind, the Egyptian Menes, the “Master‐Mind,” the Pythagorean monas, or conscious “thinking unit,” mind also, and even our manas or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are called Amânasa, “Mindless.” With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the Progenitors,(209) or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than the worship of the Gods.(210) May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of Progenitors?

The Pitris being divided into seven Classes, we have here the mystic number again. Nearly all the Purânas agree that three of these are Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the “Body of Twilight.” Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, according to the Vâyu Purâna. The legends are purposely mixed up and made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men simultaneously on the seven Zones.

Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That Class of the “Fire Dhyânîs,” which we identify on undeniable grounds with the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the “Heart” of the Dhyân‐ Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the terrestrial plane, of the model or prototype above. Why, it is asked, should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart have four lower cavities and three higher divisions, answering so strangely to the septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and three Incorporeal, or subtler, “Principles,” or call them by any other name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct layers in the human skin?

Says the Commentary: _Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ‐Loka, whence they descend periodically, when the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men._ _The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not‐Gods]._ “Not‐Gods,” for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest “Breaths,” for the Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four corporeal Classes creating only his body. This is very plainly shown in various texts of the Rig Veda—the highest authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means “spiritual, divine,” and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, and the term Asura, in the sense of a “God,” is applied to Varuna and Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the three highest Gods, before Brâhmanical Theo‐Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.

In the Zend Avesta the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the “all‐knowing” or “omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as Benfey shows, “the Lord who bestows Intelligence”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura Mazdâo.(211) Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo‐Iranian Asura was always regarded as sevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the “Lord,” or “Lords” collectively “who bestow Intelligence,” connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country. Why these “Gods” refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against these First‐born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous.(212)

The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people’s mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras, who are devoid thereof and are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith—a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brâhmans—and forthwith the former become A‐Suras. The First‐ and Mind‐born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are cursed by Brahmâ to be born as men. They are hurled down to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into the Infernal Regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrial illusive life, the “germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self‐ sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity through self‐conscious efforts; and it is these worshippers of form who have made Demons of the Angels of Light.

Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches that one‐third(213) of the Dhyânîs—i.e., the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with intelligence, “which is a formless breath, composed of intellectual not elementary substances”(214)—was simply doomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be re‐born, or incarnated, on Earth.(215) Some of these were Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the Purânas, re‐appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third Root‐Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the former through superstitious fear.

The supposed “Rebels,” then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop, had to incarnate anew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials—i.e., an astral body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal‐like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegory within an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with his spiritual eye.

As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitri‐Devatâs, i.e., those possessed of the physical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness. “Man must not be like one of us,” say the Creative Gods, entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.(216) Their creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means, Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared its destiny and further evolution. They would not, simply because they could not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into the flower of human reason and self‐consciousness, for they had it not to give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.

Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to the personal exertion of the individual; but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because sinless; sinless, because having only the first, pale shadowy outlines of attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no merit. Humanity, “of the earth earthy,” was not destined to be created by the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to have refused to create, and man had to be formed by more material Creators,(217) who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could only project out of themselves shadowy men, a little less ethereal and spiritual, less divine and perfect than themselves—shadows still. The first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with every negative (nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of imperfection, the incorruptible must grow out of the corruptible, having the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is absolute Darkness, and vice versâ. In fact, there is neither Light nor Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists per se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.

Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires a lower Order of Creative Angels to “create” inhabited Globes—especially ours—or to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one always finds their “Creators” occupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of mâyâvic Matter, and their followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,(218) to which Class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah. Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the Phædrus, of a “winged” race of men. Aristophanes, in Plato’s Banquet, speaks of a race androgynous and with round bodies. In Pymander, all the animal kingdom even is double‐sexed. Thus it is said:

The circuit having been accomplished, the knot was loosened ... and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, were untied [separated] together with man ... [for] ... the causes had to produce effects on earth.(219) Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, the Popol Vuh—published by the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race “whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing the divine knowledge of Gods, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts as they are recorded in the archaic symbols. (b) These “Shadows” were born “each of his own colour and kind,” each also “inferior to his Father,” or Creator, because the latter was a complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. In Pymander, the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the “Heavenly Man,” all partake of the qualities of the Seven “Governors,” or Rulers, who loved Man—their own reflection and synthesis.

In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and personifications woven into the popular “myths,” as in our Secret Doctrine; and we find them in the Vedas, the Purânas, the Mazdean Scriptures and the Kabalah. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the “Pillars of the World,” its “Supports,” are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, the seven “Workmen” or Rectors of Pymander, the seven Rishis and Pitris of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of the slain giant Ymir; but they do not create MAN, but only his form from the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.(220) The Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash‐tree, whence issued the men of the generation of bronze, the Third Root‐Race, and the Tzité tree of the Popol Vuh, out of which the Mexican third race of men was created, are all one. This may be plainly seen by any reader.

But the Occult reason why the Norse Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the Western scholars can tell?(221) Nevertheless, the fruits of all those “Trees,” whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are the “plants of life,” in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developed within and under the great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;(222) and the mystery is half revealed in the Dîrghotamas, where it is said:

Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which come spirits who love the science, and where the gods produce all marvels. As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, the “Serpent” dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; the others are its reflected parts. The “Tree” is man himself, of course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious Manas, the connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.

Everywhere, it is the same. The “Creating” Powers produce Man, but fail in their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man with conscious immortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment in the lower or nether region, which is our Earth, the lowest in its Chain; an “Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life‐cycle—in the darkness of Matter, or within animal Man. It pleased the half ignorant and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself. Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as the forbidden fruit, and the “Serpent of Wisdom,” the voice of reason and consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which is the old Dragon, the Devil!

The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the “Jaina Cross” as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the “devil’s sign,” we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand‐headed Shesha‐ Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of Time, and becomes Infinite Time itself, when called Ananta, the great Seven‐headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, the Eternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of “creation,” or evolution as one should rather say, from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whose genesis is as unknown to that Science as is that of the All‐Deity Itself. The Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the “Worker’s Hammer” in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, the “Hammer,” above referred to, in the Book of Concealed Mystery, “which striketh sparks from the flint” (Space), those sparks becoming Worlds.

It is Thor’s Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the Pre‐cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the “Storm‐hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and suffering in their life‐incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of Hel—the Goddess‐queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer, for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.

Surtur’s flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new earth.(223)

Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the “Hammer of Creation,” with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the continual motion and revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in the Cycles of Time of the world’s axes and their equatorial belts; the two lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm, Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the Earth. In the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes, the uplifted right hand is inscribed with the word “Solve,” the left with the word “Coagula.” It is at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed at the very threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ‐Mâyâ, the great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human schemes or fictions.

How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all written down in the “Scrolls of Wisdom,” of which many are lost but some still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner’s Asgard and the Gods, concerning the “Renewal of the World,” which is a prophecy about the Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense. The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:

On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, and in them their fathers rose again [the Egos of all their past incarnations]. They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled. Near them, but unseen by them, was the strong, the mighty One, who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world. _They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power, but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose out of the waters_ [of Space]. To the south above the Field of Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil’s cave a wondrous palace was erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, as they used to be, and they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From Gimil’s heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them to climb up higher, to rise in knowledge and wisdom, in piety and in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house of All father.(224)

He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom, though so imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in the above.

Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The “friction” of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the Sanskrit‐speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the “divine artist and carpenter,”(225) and is also the Father of the Gods and of “Creative Fire” in the Vedas. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being found. A number of such terra‐cotta discs, called fusaïoles, were found by Dr. Schliemann under the ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms, [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure Aryans.

(c) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image. 16. HOW ARE THE MANUSHYA(226) BORN? THE MANUS WITH MINDS, HOW ARE THEY MADE? (A) THE FATHERS(227) CALLED TO THEIR HELP THEIR OWN FIRE,(228) WHICH IS THE FIRE THAT BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH CALLED TO HIS HELP THE SOLAR FIRE.(229) THESE THREE(230) PRODUCED IN THEIR JOINT EFFORTS A GOOD RÛPA. IT(231) COULD STAND, WALK, RUN, RECLINE, OR FLY. YET IT WAS STILL BUT A CHHÂYÂ, A SHADOW WITH NO SENSE. (B) ...

(a) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas (Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians. It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says the Commentary, “who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man”—i.e., the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form, i.e., of the model according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta(232) or “phantom.” This “creation” was a failure.

(b) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity of physical Nature’s unaided attempts to construct even a perfect animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature‐ Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their own; but this is not enough to construct a thinking man. “Living Fire” was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self‐perception and self‐consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are the Animal‐Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of man. The first Creators, then, were the Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they failed to animate the statue—intellectually. This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the former is endowed with divine intelligence, the latter with instinctual faculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for? Says the Commentary:

_The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their abode._

This shows that not all men became incarnations of the “Divine Rebels,” but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not the “Sons of Mahat,” speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through self‐exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure spirit, that we are what we are—self‐conscious, thinking men, with the capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil. Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of self‐conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible allegories, foolishly called “fables.”

It explains, to begin with, the statement made in Pymander, that the “Heavenly Man,” the “Son of the Father,” who partook of the nature and essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material World, Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the downward‐borne nature.(233) It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many allegorical accounts about the “Wars in Heaven,” including that of Revelation with respect to the Christian dogma of the “Fallen Angels.” It explains the “Rebellion” of the oldest and highest Angels, and the meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell, i.e., Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as follows: My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war with the powers of evil preceded the Creation; I now think it followed the account of the Fall.(234)

In the same work,(235) Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The Tree has seven branches; three on the man’s side, four on that of the female. These branches are typical of the seven Root‐Races, in the third of which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the so‐called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless, then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each other. As the writer tells us: The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the creation of the world.(236)

This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, personified, or rather animalized; and Tiamat, “the embodiment of the spirit of chaos,” of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the Womb. The “spirit of chaos and disorder” refers to the mental perturbation which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which fascinates and seduces, the ever‐living active element which throws the whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman, but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George Smith:

It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall, and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity. Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour out useless prayer, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).(237) This account is omitted in Genesis, for monotheistic purposes. But it is a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments by Genesis, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.

17. THE BREATH(238) NEEDED A FORM; THE FATHERS GAVE IT. THE BREATH NEEDED A GROSS BODY; THE EARTH MOULDED IT. THE BREATH NEEDED THE SPIRIT OF LIFE; THE SOLAR LHAS BREATHED IT INTO ITS FORM. THE BREATH NEEDED A MIRROR OF ITS BODY;(239) “WE GAVE IT OUR OWN!”—SAID THE DHYÂNÎS. THE BREATH NEEDED A VEHICLE OF DESIRES;(240) “IT HAS IT!”—SAID THE DRAINER OF WATERS.(241) BUT BREATH NEEDS A MIND TO EMBRACE THE UNIVERSE; “WE CANNOT GIVE THAT!”—SAID THE FATHERS. “I NEVER HAD IT!”—SAID THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. “THE FORM WOULD BE CONSUMED WERE I TO GIVE IT MINE!”—SAID THE GREAT FIRE.(242)... MAN(243) REMAINED AN EMPTY SENSELESS BHÛTA.... THUS HAVE THE BONELESS GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO(244) BECAME MEN WITH BONES IN THE THIRD.(245)

As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few remarks will now suffice. The “Father” of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its “Mother,” because of that mysterious power in the Moon, which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The “Wind” or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon earth, is referred to as the “Nurse”;(246) while “Spiritual Fire” alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.

Now what is that “Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds from its Noumenon, the “Dhyân of the First Element.” Hydrogen is gas only on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen “would be the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”(247) and is very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, and is “fire, air and water,” in fact: one under three aspects; hence the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena. Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified it with, the To On, the “One” of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen is not water, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.

If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of these “Fires” was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, the personified sacred Fires of the most Occult Powers of Nature. The several branches of the Âryan Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there were three or four only; others say seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, and Casmilus may very well stand for the alter egos of the four Kumâras—Sanat‐Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori, Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is Brahmâ—or rather, the “Flame of his Wrath,” which prompted him to perform the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—i.e., correlative Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these “Fires” and their real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.

The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of our five physical senses, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation than the one called in the Purânas Pratisarga, or “Secondary Creation.” “Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire,” says an Occult axiom. The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and their union is Life.

In the Kabalah, Bath‐Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or Primordial Light, Shekinah. In the Purânas and Hindû exotericism, Vâch, the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi, Primordial Light. And if Bath‐Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate præter‐natural voice from heaven, revealing to the “chosen people” the sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before Judaism, the “Mother of the Vedas,” who entered into the Rishis and inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath‐Kol is said to have inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High‐Priests. And both exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial Cosmic Trinity. I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle, the Light that radiates within Darkness [Chaos], and the shining Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.(248)

Thus we have to study well the “Primary Creation” before we can understand the Secondary. The first Race had three rudimentary Elements in it; and no Fire as yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so‐called Creative Deity himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja, “pregenetic,” and the other names connect him in their descending order more and more with Matter. The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial “Man” or “Spirit,” and mortal physical man: 1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound. 2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch. 3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour. 4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste. 5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.

As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its predecessor; as each Root‐Race adds the characterizing sense of the preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary “creation” of man, who evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be shown further on. Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the First Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is the ALL CAUSE, and cannot be referred to as the “First Cause,”—which First Cause is called in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad‐Yoni, the “Womb of the World,” mankind emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and Second Races, were not physical beings, but merely rudiments of the future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi, “origin,” or the “original place whence sprang the Elements.” Hence they proceeded with all the rest from Prabhavâpyaya, “the place whence is the origination, and into which is the resolution of all things,” as explained by the Commentator on the Vishnu Purâna. Whence also our physical senses. Whence even the highest “created” Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is a Manifested Deity—hence “created,” or limited and conditioned. This is easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.

After being called the incognizable, eternal Brahma (neuter or abstract), the Pundarîkâksha, “supreme and imperishable glory,” once that instead of Sadaika‐Rûpa, “changeless” or “immutable” Nature, he is addressed as Ekâneka‐Rûpa, “both single and manifold,” he, the Cause, becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric order, show the following descending scale: Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit. Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature. Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the senses). Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul. Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter. Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe. The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe. It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân‐Chohanic Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected, in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles; _every one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion of their various __“__Fires__”__ and Elements_.

18. The Sons of Yoga. 19. The Sexless Second Race. 20. The Sons of the “Sons of Twilight.” 21. The “Shadow,” or the Astral Man, retires within, and man develops a Physical Body. 18. THE FIRST(249) WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE CHILDREN OF THE YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER. In the later Commentary, the sentence is translated: _The Sons of the Sun and of the Moon, the nursling of Ether [or the __“__Wind__”__] (a)_.... _They were the shadows of the Shadows of the Lords (b). They [the shadows] expanded. The Spirits of the Earth clothed them; the Solar Lhas warmed them [__i.e.__, preserved the Vital Fire in the nascent physical Forms]. The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. They had no Fire or Water of their own (c)._ (a) Remember in this connection the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes, the Esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to it. The Astro‐chemical is well known to students, the Anthropological may now be given. The “One Thing” mentioned in it is Man. It is said: The Father of that One Only Thing is the Sun; its Mother the Moon; the Wind carries it in his bosom, and its Nurse is the Spirituous Earth.

In the Occult rendering of the same it is added: “and Spiritual Fire is its instructor [Guru].” This Fire is the Higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally reïncarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves, changing with every re‐birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the Ego takes refuge in the Âtman, the ALL‐SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the essence thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be thoroughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple lines—Spiritual, Psychic and Physical.

That which propels towards, and forces evolution, i.e., compels the growth and development of Man towards perfection, is (a) the Monad, or that which acts in it unconsciously through a Force inherent in itself; and (b) the lower Astral Body or the Personal Self. The former, whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an animal body, is endowed with, is indeed itself, that Force. Owing to its identity with the ALL‐FORCE, which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all‐potent on the Arûpa, or formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains all‐potential, but individually becomes inactive. For instance, the rays of the Sun, which contribute to the growth of vegetation, do not select this or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it to a piece of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not follow it. So with the Âtman: unless the Higher Self or Ego gravitates towards its Sun—the Monad—the Lower Ego, or Personal Self, will have the upper hand in every case. For it is this Ego, with its fierce selfishness and animal desire to live a senseless life (Tanha), which is the “maker of the tabernacle,” as Buddha calls it in the Dhammapada.(250) Hence the expression, the Spirits of the Earth clothed the

shadows and expanded them. To these “Spirits” belong temporarily the human Astral Selves; and it is they who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the Monad and its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the “Solar” Lhas, or Spirits, warm the Shadows. This is physically and literally true; metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true that the Âtman alone warms the Inner Man; i.e., it enlightens it with the Ray of Divine Life and alone is able to impart to the Inner Man, or the Reïncarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, we shall find, for the first three and a half Root‐Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the Astral Shadows of the “Progenitors,” the Lunar Pitris, which are the formative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the evolution of the physical form towards perfection—this, at the cost of a proportionate loss of Spirituality. Then, from the turning point, it is the Higher Ego, or Incarnating Principle, the Nous or Mind, which reigns over the Animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by the latter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes it from steadily progressing on the path of its evolution, only when

the selfishness of the Personality has so strongly infected the real Inner Man with its lethal virus, that the upward attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober truth, vice and wickedness are an abnormal, unnatural manifestation, at this period of our human evolution—at least they ought to be so. The fact that mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now—civilized nations having succeeded in making of the former an ethical characteristic, of the latter an art—is an additional proof of the exceptional nature of the phenomenon.

The entire scheme is in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, and even in the Zohar, if one only understands the meaning of the apocalyptic hints. First comes Ain Suph, the “Concealed of the Concealed,” then the Point, Sephira and the later Sephiroth; then the Atzilatic World, a World of Emanations that gives birth to three other Worlds—the first the Briatic World called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the World of Formation, or Jetziratic, the habitat of the Angels who sent forth the Third, or World of Action, the Asiatic World, which is the Earth or our World; and yet it is said of this World—also called Kliphoth, containing the (six other) Spheres, נלגלים, and Matter—that it is the residence of the “Prince of Darkness.” This is as clearly stated as can be; for Metatron, the Angel of the second Briatic World, the first habitable World, means Messenger, Ἄγγελος, Angel, called the great Teacher; and under him are the Angels of the third World, or Jetziratic, whose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,(251) of whom it is said that: They inhabit or vivify this world as essential [entities and] intelligences, and their correlates and logical contraries inhabit the third habitable world, called the Asiatic.

These “contraries” are called the “Shells,” קליפות, or Demons,(252) who inhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the seven Zones of our Globe.(253) Their prince is called in the Kabalah Samaël, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing Serpent Satan; but this Satan is also Lucifer, the bright Angel of Light, the Light‐ and Life‐bringer, the “Soul” alienated from the Holy Ones, the other Angels, and for a period, anticipating the time when they would descend on Earth to incarnate in their turn. The Book of Wisdom teaches that: All Souls [Monads] are preëxistent in the Worlds of Emanations.(254) And the Zohar teaches that in the “Soul” is the real man, i.e., the Ego and the conscious I am, the Manas. Says Josephus, repeating the belief of the Essenes, [Souls] descend from the pure air to be chained to bodies.(255) And Philo states that: The air was full of [Souls], and that those which were nearest the earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, return back to bodies, being desirous to live in them.(256)

Because through, and in, the human form they will become progressive Beings, whereas the nature of the Angel is purely intransitive; therefore Man has in him the potency of transcending the faculties of the Angels. Hence the Initiates in India say that it is the Brâhman, the Twice‐born, who rules the Gods or Devas; and Paul repeated it in his Epistle to the Corinthians: Know ye not that we [the Initiates] shall judge angels?(257) Finally, it is shown in every ancient Scripture and Cosmogony that man evolved primarily as a luminous incorporeal form, over which, like molten brass poured into the model of the sculptor, the physical frame of his body was built by, through and from, the lower forms and types of animal terrestrial life. Says the Zohar: The Soul and the Form when descending on Earth put on an earthly garment. His protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal frames are fashioned.

When Adam dwelled in the garden of Eden, he was dressed in the celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light ... light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden.(258) Man [the Heavenly Adam] was created by the ten Sephiroth of the Jetziratic World, and by their common power the seven Angels of a still lower World engendered the Earthly Adam. First Samaël fell, and then deceiving (?) man, caused his fall also. (b) The sentence, “they were the shadows of the Shadows of the Lords”—i.e., the Progenitors created man out of their own Astral Bodies—explains a universal belief. The Devas are credited in the East with having no “shadows” of their own. “The Devas cast no shadows,” and this is the sure sign of a good holy Spirit.

(c) Why had they “no Fire or Water of their own”?(259) Because that which Hydrogen is to the elements and gases on the objective plane, its Noumenon is in the world of mental or subjective phenomena; since its trinitarian latent nature is mirrored in its three active emanations from the three higher principles in man, namely, Spirit, Soul, and Mind, or Âtmâ, Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human basis. Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the “Air” or the “Wind,” becomes the perfect man later on; when, with the development of “Spiritual Fire,” the Noumenon of the “Three in One” within his Self, he acquires from his Inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of Self‐Consciousness, which he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again Divine Spirit is symbolized by the Sun or Fire; Divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, the Human Soul, or Mind, symbolized by the Wind or Air, for Pneuma, means “Breath.” Hence in the Smaragdine Tablet, disfigured by Christian hands: The Superior agrees with the Inferior; and the Inferior with the Superior; to effect that one truly wonderful work—[which is Man].

For the Secret Work of Chiram, or King Hiram in the Kabalah, “one in essence, but three in aspect,” is the Universal Agent or Lapis Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret Work is Spiritual Perfect Man, at one end of the line; the union of the three Elements is the Occult Solvent in the “Soul of the World,” the Cosmic Soul or Astral Light, at the other; and, on the material plane, it is Hydrogen in its relation to the other gases. The TO ON, truly; the ONE “whom no person has seen except the Son”; this sentence applying both to the metaphysical and physical Kosmos, and to the spiritual and material Man. For how could the latter understand the TO ON, the “One Father,” if his Manas, the “Son,” does not become (as) “One with the Father,” and through this absorption receive enlightenment from the divine “Instructor,” or Guru—Âtmâ‐Buddhi? As says the Commentary: If thou would’st understand the SECONDARY [“Creation,” so‐called], O Lanoo, thou should’st first study its relation to the PRIMARY.(260) The First Race had three Elements, but no Living Fire. Why? Because:

“We say four Elements, my Son, but ought to say three,” says Hermes Trismegistus. “In the Primary Circle,” or Creation that which is marked [Symbol: Like a large letter H, with dots above and below, and tildes above and below] reads “Root,” as in the Secondary likewise. Thus in Alchemy or Western Hermeticism—a variant on Eastern Esotericism—we find: Sulphur ... Flamma ... Spiritus Mercury ... Natura ... Aqua Salt ... Mater ... Sanguis

And these three are all quaternaries completed by their Root, Fire. The Spirit, beyond Manifested Nature, is the Fiery BREATH in its absolute Unity. In the Manifested Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible Sun, the Spirit of Nature, the terrestrial God. And in, on, and around the Earth, the fiery spirit thereof—Air, fluidic Fire; Water, liquid Fire; Earth, solid Fire. All is Fire—Ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I, the root of which is 0 (nought) in our conceptions, the All in Nature and its Mind. “Pro‐Metor” is divine Fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the Preserver. The primitive names of the Gods are all connected with fire, from Agni, the Âryan, to the Jewish God who is a “consuming fire.” In India, God is called in various dialects, Eashoor, Esur, Iswur, and Îshvara, in Sanskrit, the Lord, from Isha, but this is primarily the name of Shiva, the Destroyer; and the three chief Vedic Gods are Agni (Ignis), Vâyu, and Sûrya—Fire, Air, and the Sun, three Occult degrees of Fire. In the Hebrew, אזא (Aza) means to “illuminate,” and אשא (Asha) is “Fire.” In Occultism, to “kindle a fire” is synonymous to evoking one of the three great Fire‐powers, or to “call on God.” In Sanskrit the root Ush is fire or heat; and the Egyptian word Osiris is compounded, as shown by Schelling, of the two primitives Aish and Asr, or a “fire‐enchanter.” Aesar in the old Etruscan meant a God, being perhaps derived from Asura of the Vedas. Îshvara is an analogous term, as Dr. Kenealy thought, who quotes the Bhagavad Gitâ to the effect that:

Îshvara resides in every mortal being and puts in motion, by his supernatural powers, all things which mount on the wheel of time. It is the Creator and the Destroyer, truly. The primitive Fire was supposed to have an insatiable appetite for devouring. Maximus of Tyre relates that the ancient Persians threw into the fire combustible matter crying, Devour, O Lord! In the Irish language easam, or asam, means to make or create. [And] Aesar was the name also of one of the ancient Irish gods; the literal meaning of the word is “to kindle a fire.”(261) The Christian Kabalists and Symbologists who disfigured Pymander—prominent among them the Bishop of Ayre, François de Tours, in the 16th century—divide the Elements in the following way: The four Elements formed from divine Substances and the Spirits of the Salts of Nature represented by: [Symbol: Root symbol] ... St. Matthew ... Angel‐Man ... Water (Jesus‐ Christ, Angel‐Man, Mikael) Α‐Ω ... St. Mark ... The Lion ... Fire Ε‐Υ ... St. Luke ... The Bull ... Earth Ι‐Ο ... St. John ... The Eagle ... Air(262) Η ... The Quintessence, Ἡ ΦΛΟΞ, Flamma‐Virgo [Virgin Oil], Flamma Durissima, Virgo, Lucis Æterna Mater.

The First Race of men were, then, simply the Images, the Astral Doubles, of their Fathers, who were the pioneers, or the most progressed Entities from a preceding though lower Sphere, the shell of which is now our Moon. But even this shell is all‐potential, for, the Moon having generated the Earth, its phantom, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form its first inhabitants, the pre‐human monsters. To assure himself of this, the student has again to turn to the Chaldæan Fragments, and read what Berosus says. Berosus obtained his information, he tells us, from Ea, the male‐female Deity of Wisdom. While the Gods were generated in the androgynous bosom of this Wisdom (Svabhâvat, Mother‐Space), its reflections became on Earth the woman Omorôka, who is the Chaldæan Thavatth (or Thalatth), the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which Esoterically and even exoterically is the Moon. It was the Moon (Omorôka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings which were slain by the Dhyânîs.(263)

Evolutionary law compelled the Lunar Fathers to pass, in their monadic condition, through all the forms of life and being on this Globe; but at the end of the Third Round, they were already human in their divine nature, and were thus called upon to become the creators of the forms destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed Monads, whose turn it was to incarnate. These “Forms” are called “Sons of Yoga,” because Yoga—union with Brahmâ, exoterically—is the supreme condition of the passive infinite Deity, since it contains all the divine energies and is the essence of Brahmâ, who is said, as Brahmâ, to create everything through Yoga power. Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva are the most powerful energies of God, Brahma (Neuter), says a Paurânic text. Yoga here is the same as Dhyâna, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan text, where the “Sons of Yoga” are called “Sons of Dhyâna,” or of that abstract meditation through which the Dhyâni‐Buddhas create their celestial sons, the Dhyâni‐Bodhisattvas. All the creatures in the world have each a superior above. This superior, whose inner pleasure it is to emanate into them, cannot impart efflux until they have adored [i.e., meditated as during Yoga].(264)

19. THE SECOND RACE (WAS) THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION, THE A‐ SEXUAL(265) FROM THE SEXLESS.(266) THUS WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE PRODUCED. What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this A‐sexual Race, the Second, the Fathers of the “Sweat‐born” so‐called, and perhaps still more the Third Race, the “Egg‐born” Androgynes. These two modes of procreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those who are not students of Occult Metaphysics. European language has no words to express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution, things which therefore can have no meaning for the Materialist. But there are analogies. It is not denied that in the beginning of physical evolution there must have been processes in Nature, spontaneous generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other forms. Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any particular mode of reproducing life. For it shows that:

The same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the course of its life‐cycle, during some of which it may be sexual, and in others a‐sexual, i.e., it may reproduce itself alternately by the coöperation of two beings of opposite sex, and also by fissure or budding from one being only, which is of no sex.(267) “Budding” is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhâyâs reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since they were ethereal, a‐sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of desire, or Kâma Rûpa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved the Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the Amœba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed, the cell‐theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms, and if the microscopic cells are looked upon by Physical Science as independent living beings—just as Occultism regards the “Fiery Lives”—there is no difficulty in the conception of the primitive process of procreation.

Consider the first stages of the development of a germ‐cell. Its nucleus grows, changes, and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, [Symbol: Large X with horizontal lines across tops and bottoms] within the cell. This spindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is extruded in the form of what are called the “polar cells.” These polar cells now die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation of the remaining part of the nucleus which is nourished by the substance of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created in this way—at the very beginning of human and mammalian evolution? This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by which the Second Race was formed from the First. The Astral Form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its egg‐shaped sphere of Aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the germ‐cell or Ovum. The Astral Form itself is the nucleus, now, as then, instinct with the Principle of Life.

When the season of reproduction arrives, the Sub‐astral “extrudes” a miniature of itself from the egg of surrounding Aura. This germ grows and feeds on the Aura till it becomes fully developed, when it gradually separates from its parent, carrying with it its own sphere of Aura; just as we see living cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent division into two. The analogy with the “polar cells” would seem to hold good, since their death would now correspond to the change introduced by the separation of the sexes, when gestation in utero, i.e., within the cell, became the rule. As the Commentary tells us: _The early Second [Root] Race were the Fathers of the __“__Sweat‐ born__”__; the later Second [Root] Race were __“__Sweat‐born__”__ themselves._

This passage from the Commentary refers to the work of evolution from the beginning of a Race to its close. The “Sons of Yoga,” or the Primitive Astral Race, had seven stages of evolution racially, or collectively; as every individual Being in it had, and has now. It is not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself. Thus the first Sub‐races of the Second Race were born at first by the process described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually, pari passu with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise. The process of reproduction had seven stages also in each Race, each covering æons of time. What Physiologist or Biologist can tell whether the present mode of generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older than half a million, or at most one million of years, since their cycle of observation began hardly half a century ago?

Primeval human Hermaphrodites are a fact in Nature well known to the Ancients, and form one of Darwin’s greatest perplexities. Yet there is certainly no impossibility, but, on the contrary, a great probability that hermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early Races; while on the grounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one universal law in physical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction of plant, animal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of Monogenesis, and the descent of man from the mammal, instead of the mammals from man, are fatal to the completeness of evolution as taught in modern schools on Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the insuperable difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition—if the terms Science and Knowledge are denied in this particular to Antiquity—can alone reconcile the inconsistencies and fill the gap. Says a Talmudic axiom: If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eyes wide on the visible. In the Descent of Man occurs the following passage, which shows how near Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching.

It has long been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex bears rudiments of various accessory parts, appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex.... Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to have been hermaphrodite or androgynous.(268) But here we encounter a singular difficulty. _In the mammalian class the males possess rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the vesiculæ prostaticæ; they bear also rudiments of mammæ, and some male marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac._ Other analogous facts could be added. Are we, then, to suppose that some extremely ancient mammal continued androgynous, after it had acquired the chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? This seems very improbable,(269) for we have to look to fishes, the lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous forms.(270) Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which the facts so forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous stem from which the Mammalia sprang. His explanation runs:

That various accessory organs, proper to each sex, are found in a rudimentary condition in the opposite sex, may be explained by such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex, and then transmitted in a more or less imperfect state to the other.(271) He instances the case of “spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired for battle or ornament by male birds” and only partially inherited by their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the need of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so much more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial details with which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the argument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterizes the old fauna? Occultism proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most comprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock must be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other organs equally mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of functions which have long since become atrophied in the course of animal and human progress, but which once played a signal part in the general economy of primeval life.

The Occult doctrine, in any case, can be advantageously compared with that of the most liberal men of Science, who have theorized upon the origin of the first man. Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave the name of Blastema to that which the Darwinists call Protoplasm, put forward a theory half Occult and half scientifico‐materialistic. He made Adam, the A‐sexual, spring suddenly from the clay, as it is called in the Bible, the Blastema of Science. As Naudin explains: It is from this larval form of mankind, that the evolutive force effected the completion of species. For the accomplishment of this great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility and unconsciousness, very analogous to the nymphal state of animals undergoing metamorphosis.(272) For the eminent Botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but mankind, which remained Concealed within a temporary organism, already distinct from all others, and incapable of contracting an alliance with any of them. He shows the differentiation of sexes accomplished by A process of germination similar to that of medusæ and ascidians. Mankind, thus constituted physiologically, Would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production of the various great human races.

De Quatrefages criticizes this position in The Human Species. It is unscientific, he says, or, properly speaking, Naudin’s ideas “do not form a scientific theory,” inasmuch as Primordial Blastema is connected in his theory with the “first cause,” which is credited with having made potentially in the Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus of having in reality created these beings en masse; moreover, Naudin does not even consider the “second causes,” or their action in this evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with “second causes,” has thus Nothing to say to the theory of M. Naudin.(273)

Nor will it have any more to say to the Occult teachings, which are to some extent approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his “Primordial Blastema” the Dhyân‐Chohanic Essence, the Chhâyâ or Double of the Pitris, which contains within itself the potentiality of all forms, we are quite in accord. But there are two real and vital differences between our teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by sudden leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years; and his Primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts—a kind of unconscious First Cause in the Manifested Kosmos—which is an absurdity. Whereas it is our Dhyân‐Chohanic Essence—the Causality of the Primal Cause which creates physical man—which is the living, active and potential Matter (pregnant per se with that animal consciousness of a superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver) which produces the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this, his “ancient and general process of creation” from Proto‐organisms is as Occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be. Moreover, the Kabalistic works are full of the proof of this. The Zohar, for instance, says that every type in the visible has its prototype in the invisible Universe.

All that which is in the Lower (our) World is found in the Upper. The Lower and the Upper act and reäct upon each other.(274) 20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF‐BORN. THE SELF‐BORN, THE CHHÂYÂ FROM THE BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS, THE SONS OF TWILIGHT. The “Shadows,” or Chhâyâs, are called the Sons of the “Self‐born,” as the latter name is applied to all the Gods and Beings, born through the Will, whether of Deity or Adept. The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be also given this name, though the latter process is on a far more material plane. The name “Sons of Twilight” shows that the “Self‐born” Progenitors of our Doctrine are identical with the Pitris of the Brâhmanical System, as the title is a reference to their mode of birth; these Pitris being stated to have issued from Brahmâ’s “Body of Twilight,” as stated in the Purânas. 21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD WATERS MIXED WITH THE FRESHER WATERS (A). WHEN ITS DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY VANISHED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM OF LIFE. THE OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE INNER OF THE SECOND (B). THE OLD WING BECAME THE NEW SHADOW, AND THE SHADOW OF THE WING (C).

(a) The old or Primitive Race merged in the Second Race, and became one with it. (b) This is the mysterious process of the transformation and evolution of mankind. The material of the first Forms—shadowy, ethereal, and negative—was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became the complement of the Forms of the Second Race. The Commentary explains this by saying that, as the First Race was simply composed of the Astral Shadows of the Creative Progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical bodies of its own—the Race never died. Its “Men” melted gradually away, becoming absorbed in the bodies of their own “Sweat‐born” progeny, more solid than their own. The old Form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the new Form, more human and physical. There was no death in those days of a period more blissful than the Golden Age; but the first, or parent, material was used for the formation of the new being, to form the Body and even the inner or lower Principles or Bodies of the progeny.

(c) When the “Shadow” retires, i.e., when the Astral Body becomes covered with more solid flesh, man develops a Physical Body. The “Wing,” or the ethereal Form that produced its Shadow and Image, became the Shadow of the Astral Body and its own progeny. The expression is queer and original.

As there may be no occasion to refer to this mystery later, it is as well to point out at once the dual meaning contained in the Greek myth bearing upon this particular phase of evolution. It is found in the several variants of the allegory of Leda and her two sons Castor and Pollux, each of which variants has a special meaning. Thus in Book XI of the Odyssey, Leda is spoken of as the spouse of Tyndarus, who gave birth by her husband “to two sons of valiant heart”—Castor and Pollux. Jupiter endows them with a marvellous gift and privilege. They are semi‐immortal; they live and die, each in turn, and every alternate day (ἑτερήμεροι(275)). As the Tyndaridæ, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day and Night; their two wives, Phœbe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Apollo or the Sun, personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.(276) Again, in the allegory where Zeus is shown as the father of the two heroes—born from the Egg to which Leda gives birth—the myth is entirely theogonical. It relates to that group of cosmic allegories in which the world is described as born from an Egg. For Leda assumes in it the shape of a white swan, when uniting herself to the Divine Swan or Brahma‐Kalahamsa. Leda is the mythical Bird, then, to which, in the traditions of various peoples of the Âryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds which all lay golden Eggs.(277) In the Kalevala, the Epic Poem of Finland, the beauteous daughter of the Ether, the “Water‐Mother,” creates the World in conjunction with a “Duck”—another form of the Swan or Goose, Kalahamsa—who lays six golden eggs, and the seventh, an “egg of iron,” in her lap.

But the variant of the Leda allegory which has a direct reference to mystic man is found in Pindar(278) only, with a slighter reference to it in the Homeric Hymns.(279) Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri of Apollodorus(280); but become the highly significant symbol of the dual man, the Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this, but as will now be seen, they are also the symbol of the Third Race, and its transformation from the Animal‐man into a God‐man with only an animal body.

Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in the same night to her husband and also to the Father of the Gods—Zeus. Thus Castor is the son of the Mortal, Pollux the progeny of the Immortal. In the allegory made up for the occasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance against the Apharides,(281) Pollux kills Lynceus—“of all mortals he whose sight is the most penetrating”—but Castor is wounded by Idas, “he who sees and knows.” Zeus puts an end to the fight by hurling his thunderbolt and killing the last two combatants. Pollux finds his brother dying.(282) In his despair he calls upon Zeus to slay him also. “Thou canst not die altogether,” answers the master of the Gods; “thou art of a divine race.” But he gives him the choice: Pollux will either remain immortal, living eternally in Olympus; or, if he would share his brother’s fate in all things, he must pass half his existence underground, and the other half in the golden heavenly abodes. This semi‐immortality, which is also to be shared by Castor, is accepted by Pollux.(283) And thus the twin brothers live alternately, one during the day, and the other during the night.(284)

Is this a poetical fiction only? An allegory, one of those “solar myth” interpretations, higher than which no modern Orientalist seems able to soar? Indeed, it is much more. Here we have an allusion to the “Egg‐born” Third Race; the first half of which is mortal, i.e., unconscious in its Personality, and having nothing within itself to survive;(285) and the latter half of which becomes immortal in its Individuality, by reason of its Fifth Principle being called to life by the Informing Gods, and thus connecting the Monad with this Earth. This is Pollux; while Castor represents the personal, mortal man, an animal of not even a superior kind, when unlinked from the divine Individuality. “Twins” truly; yet divorced by death for ever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of twinship, bestows on his less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine nature, thus associating him with his own immortality.

Such is the Occult meaning of the metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The widely spread modern interpretation of it—so celebrated in antiquity, Plutarch tells us,(286) as symbolical of brotherly devotion—namely, that it was an image of the Sun and Moon borrowed from the spectacle of Nature, is weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the fact that the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and could therefore hardly be regarded as Castor, and at the same time be identified with Diana, ancient Symbologists who held the Sun, the king of all sidereal orbs, as the visible image of the highest Deity, would not have personified it by Pollux, a demi‐god only.(287) If from Greek mythology we pass to the Mosaic allegories and symbolism, we shall find a still more striking corroboration of the same tenet under another form. Unable to trace in them the “Egg‐born,” we shall still unmistakably find in the first four chapters of Genesis the Androgynes and the first Three Races of the Secret Doctrine, hidden under most ingenious symbology. The Divine Hermaphrodite.

An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the Occult and Religious Mysteries, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean Race, some 12,000 years ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so desecrated. Of these Sciences several have now become exoteric—such as Astronomy, for instance, in its purely mathematical and physical aspects. But their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolized and left to the sole guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and hence the meaning has become perverted. Nevertheless, one finds the Hermaphrodite in the scriptures and traditions of almost every nation; and why such unanimous agreement if the statement is only a fiction?

Under cover of this secrecy the Fifth Race were led to the establishment, or rather the reëstablishment of the Religious Mysteries, in which ancient truths might be taught to the coming generations under the veil of allegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable witness to the evolution of the Human Races from the Divine, and especially from the Androgynous Race—the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages! Divine Wisdom incarnating on Earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of personal experience of pain and suffering, generated on Earth only under the shade of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—a secret first known only to the Elohim, the Self‐Initiated, “Higher Gods.”(288)

In the Book of Enoch we have Adam,(289) the first Divine Androgyne, separating into man and woman, and becoming Jah‐Heva in one form, or Race, and Cain and Abel(290)—male and female—in its other form or Race—the double‐sexed Jehovah,(291) an echo of its Âryan prototype, Brahmâ‐Vâch. After which come the Third and Fourth Root‐Races of mankind(292)—that is to say, Races of men and women, or individuals of opposite sexes, no longer sexless Semi‐spirits and Androgynes, as were the two Races which precede them. This fact is hinted at in every Anthropogony. It is found in fable and allegory, in myth and revealed Scriptures, in legend and tradition. For, of all the great Mysteries, inherited by Initiates from hoary antiquity, this is one of the greatest. It accounts for the bi‐ sexual element found in every Creative Deity, in Brahmâ‐Virâj‐Vâch, as in Adam‐Jehovah‐Eve, also in Cain‐Jehovah‐Abel. For “The Book of the Generations of Adam” does not even mention Cain and Abel, but says only: Male and female created he them; ... and called their name Adam.(293) Then it proceeds to say: And Adam ... begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth.(294)

After which he begets other sons and daughters, thus proving that Cain and Abel are his own allegorical permutations. Adam stands for the primitive Human Race, especially in its cosmo‐sidereal sense. Not so, however, in its theo‐anthropological meaning. The compound name of Jehovah, or Jah‐ Hovah, meaning male life and female life—first androgynous, then separated into sexes—is used in this sense in Genesis from Chapter V onwards. As the author of the Source of Measures says: The two words of which Jehovah is composed make up the original idea of male‐female, as the birth originator.(295) For the Hebrew letter Jod was the membrum virile and Hovah was Eve, the mother of all living, or the procreatrix, Earth and Nature. The author believes, therefore, that: It is seen that the perfect one [the perfect female circle or Yoni, 20612, numerically], as originator of measures, takes also the form of birth origin, as hermaphrodite one; hence the phallic form and use.

Precisely; only “the phallic form and use” came long ages later; and the first and original meaning of Enos, the son of Seth, was the first Race born in the present usual way from man and woman—for Seth is no man, but a race. Before him humanity was hermaphrodite. While Seth is the first result (physiologically) after the “Fall,” he is also the first man; hence his son Enos is referred to as the “Son of Man.” Seth represents the later Third Race. To screen the real mystery name of Ain Suph—the Boundless and Endless No‐ Thing—the Kabalists have brought forward the compound attribute‐ appellation of one of the personal Creative Elohim, whose name was Yah or Jah—the letters i or j or y being interchangeable—or Jah‐Hovah, i.e., male and female;(296) Jah‐Eve a hermaphrodite, or the first form of humanity, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam Kadmon, whose “Mind‐born Son” is the earthly Jah‐Hovah, mystically. And knowing this, the crafty Rabbin‐Kabalist has made of it a name so secret, that he could not divulge it later on without exposing the whole scheme; and thus he was obliged to make it sacred.

How close is the identity between Brahmâ‐Prajâpati and Jehovah‐Sephiroth, between Brahmâ‐Virâj and Jehovah‐Adam, the Bible and the Purânas compared alone can show. Analyzed, and read in the same light, they afford cogent evidence that they are two copies of the same original—made at two periods far distant from each other. Compare once more in relation to this subject Genesis iv. 1 and 26 and Manu i. 32 and they will both yield their meaning. In Manu, Brahmâ, who, like Jehovah or Adam in Genesis, is both man and God, and divides his body into male and female, stands, in his Esoteric meaning, for the symbolical personification of creative and generative power, both divine and human. The Zohar affords still more convincing proof of identity, while some Rabbins repeat word for word certain original Paurânic expressions; e.g., the “creation” of the world is generally considered in the Brâhmanical books to be the Lîlâ, the delight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator. Vishnu, being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and time, sports like a playful boy, as you shall learn by listening to his frolics.(297) Now compare this with what is said in the Book, Nobeleth ’Hokhmah:

The Qabbalists say, that the entering into existence of the worlds happened through delight, in that Ain Suph [? !] rejoiced in Itself, and flashed and beamed from Itself to Itself ... which are all called delight.(298) Thus it is not a “curious idea of the Qabbalists,” as the author just quoted remarks, but a purely Paurânic, Âryan idea. Only, why make of Ain Suph a Creator?

The “Divine Hermaphrodite” is, then, Brahmâ‐Vâch‐Virâj; and that of the Semites, or rather of the Jews, is Jehovah‐Cain‐Abel. Only the “Heathen” were, and are, more sincere and frank than were the later Israëlites and Rabbis, who undeniably knew the real meaning of their exoteric deity. The Jews regard the name given to them—the Yah‐oudi—as an insult. Yet they have, or would have if they only wished it, as undeniable a right to call themselves the ancient Yah‐oudi, “Jah‐hovians,” as the Brâhmans have to call themselves Brâhmans after their national deity. For Jah‐hovah is the generic name of that Group or Hierarchy of Creative Planetary Angels, under whose Star their nation has evolved. He is one of the Planetary Elohim of the Regent Group of Saturn. Verse 26 of Chapter iv of Genesis, when read correctly, would alone give them such a right, for it calls the new Race of men—sprung from Seth and Enos—Jehovah, something quite different from the translation adopted in the Bible, which ought to read: To him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call themselves Jah, or Yah‐hovah,

to wit, men and women, the “Lords of Creation.” One has but to read the above‐mentioned verse in the original Hebrew text and by the light of the Kabalah, to find that, instead of the words as they now stand translated, the correct translation should be: Then began men to call themselves Jehovah; and not: Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord the latter being a mistranslation, whether deliberate or not. Again the well‐known passage: I have gotten a man from the Lord, should read: I have gotten a man, even Jehovah.(299) Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics quite differently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it: Cain—I have gotten—Kain, from Kâ’nithi, I have gotten. Luther: I have gotten a man—even the Lord [Jehovah]. And the author of The Source of Measures: I have measured a man, even Jehovah. The last is the correct rendering for—(a) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist, explained the passage to the writer in precisely this way, and (b) this rendering is identical with that in the Secret Doctrine of the East with regard to Brahmâ. In Isis Unveiled,(300) it was explained by the writer that: Cain ... is the son of the “Lord” not of Adam.

The “Lord” is Adam Kadmon, the “Father” of Yod‐Heva, “Adam‐Eve,” or Jehovah, the son of sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood. Seth, on the other hand, is the leader and the progenitor of the Races of the Earth; for he is the son of Adam, exoterically, but Esoterically he is the progeny of Cain and Abel, since Abel or Hebel is a female, the counterpart and female half of the male Cain, and Adam is the collective name for man and woman: Male and female (zachar va nakobeh) created he them ... and called their name Adam. The verses in Genesis from Chapters i to v, are purposely mixed up for Kabalistic reasons. After the “Man” of Genesis i. 26, and Enos, the Son of Man, of iv. 26; after Adam, the first Androgyne; after Adam Kadmon—the sexless (the first) Logos—Adam and Eve once separated, come finally Jehovah‐Eve and Cain‐Jehovah. These represent distinct Root‐Races, for millions of years elapsed between them. Hence the Âryan and the Semitic Theo‐anthropographies are two leaves on the same stem; their respective personifications and symbolic personages standing in relation to each other in the following way:

I. The “Unknowable” referred to in various ways in Rig Vedic verse, such as “Nought was,” called, later on, Parabrahman—the אין, Ain, No‐thing, or Ain Suph of the Kabalists—and again, the “Spirit” (of God) that moves upon the face of the Waters, in Genesis. All these are identical. Moreover, in Genesis i, verse 2 is placed as verse 1 in the secret Kabalistic texts, where it is followed by the Elohim “creating the Heaven and the Earth.” This deliberate shifting of the order of the verses was necessary for monotheistic and Kabalistic purposes. Jeremiah’s curse against those Elohim (Gods) who have not created the Heavens and the Earth,(301) shows that there were other Elohim who had. II. The Heavenly Manu‐Svâyambhuva, who sprang from Svayambhû‐Nârâyana, the “Self‐existent,” the Adam Kadmon of the Kabalists, and the Androgyne “Man,” of Genesis i, are also identical. III. Manu‐Svâyambhuva is Brahmâ, or the Logos; and he is Adam Kadmon, who in Genesis, iv. 5, separates himself into two halves, male and female, thus becoming Jah‐Hovah or Jehovah‐Eve; as Manu‐Svâyambhuva, or Brahmâ, separates himself to become “Brahmâ‐Virâj and Vâch‐Virâj,” male and female. All the rest of the texts and versions are “blinds.”

IV. Vâch is the daughter of Brahmâ and is named Shata‐Rûpâ, “the hundred‐ formed,” and Sâvitrî, Generatrix, the Mother of the Gods and of all living. She is identical with Eve, “the Mother [of all the Lords or Gods or] of all living.” Besides this there are many other Occult meanings. What is written on the subject in Isis Unveiled, although scattered about and very cautiously expressed at the time, is correct. Explaining Esoterically Ezekiel’s Wheel, it is said of Jodhevah or Jehovah:

When the Ternary is taken in the beginning of the Tetragram, it expresses the Divine Creation spiritually, i.e., without any carnal sin: taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter; it is feminine. The name of Eve is composed of three letters, that of the primitive or heavenly Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or Yod; therefore it must not be read Jehovah but Ieva, or Eve. The Adam of the first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure androgyne, Adam Kadmon. When woman issues from the left rib of the second Adam (of dust), the pure Virgo is separated, and falling into “generation,” or the downward cycle, becomes Scorpio, emblem of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle points to the purely Spiritual Races, or the ten Prediluvian Patriarchs, the Prajâpatis and Sephiroth, led on by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam Kadmon or Yodcheva, [spiritually,] the lower one [Jehovah] is that of the Terrestrial Races, led on by Enoch or Libra, the seventh; who, because he is half‐divine, half‐terrestrial, is said to have been taken by God alive. Enoch, or Hermes, or Libra, are one.(302)

This is only one of the several meanings. No need to remind the scholar that Scorpio is the astrological sign of the organs of reproduction. Like the Indian Rishis, the Patriarchs are all convertible in their numbers, as well as interchangeable. According to the subject to which they relate they become ten, twelve, seven or five, and even fourteen, and they have the same Esoteric meaning as the Manus or Rishis.

Moreover, Jehovah, as may be shown, has a variety of etymologies, but only those are true which are found in the Kabalah. יהוה (Ieve) is the Old Testament term, and was pronounced Ya‐va. Inman suggests that it is contracted from the two words יהו יה, Yaho‐Iah, Jaho‐Jah, or Jaho is Jah. Punctuated it is יְהוֶֹה, which is, however, a Rabbinical caprice to associate it with the name Adoni, or אֲדנָי, which has the same points. It is curious, and indeed hardly conceivable, that the Jews anciently read the name יהוה Adoni, when they had so many names of which Jeho, and Jah, and Iah, constituted a part. But so it was; and Philo Byblus, who gives us the so‐called fragment of Sanchuniathon, spelt it in Greek letters Ιευω, Javo or Jevo. Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounced it Yahva, and the Jews Yaho. Prof. Gibbs, however, suggests its punctuation thus: יֵהִוֶה (Ye‐hou‐vih); and he cut the Gordian knot of its true Occult meaning. For in this last form, as a Hebrew verb, it means “he will—be.”(303) It was also derived from the Chaldaic verb הֲוָא, or הִוָה, eue (eve), or eua (eva), “to be.” And so it was, since from Enosh, the “Son of Man,” only, were the truly human Races to begin and “to be,” as males and females. This statement receives further corroboration, inasmuch as Parkhurst makes the verb הוה to mean, (1) “to fall down” (i.e. into generation or Matter); and (2) “to be, to continue”—as a race. The aspirate of the word eua (Eva), “to be,” being הוה, Heve (Eve), which is the feminine of יהוה, and the same as Hebe, the Grecian Goddess of youth and the Olympian bride of Heracles, makes the name Jehovah appear still more clearly in its primitive double‐sexed form.