The Secret Doctrine

then, mixed with Matter, they had reäppeared in turn as great Sages and Instructors who “taught” the Fifth Race, after having instructed the two preceding Races, had ruled during the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn under various circumstances for the good of Mankind, and for its salvation at certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had become truly only the “parts of a part” on Earth, though de facto the One Supreme in Nature.

This is the metaphysics of Theogony. Now every “Power” among the Seven, once he is individualized, has in his charge one of the elements of creation, and rules over it;(799) hence the many meanings in every symbol. These, unless interpreted according to the Esoteric methods, generally lead to inextricable confusion.

Does the Western Kabalist, who is generally an opponent of the Eastern Occultist, require a proof? Let him open Éliphas Lévi’s Histoire de la Magie,(800) and carefully examine his “Grand Symbole Kabbalistique” from the Zohar. He will find there, in the engraving, a development of the “interlaced triangles,” a white man above and a black woman below reversed, the legs passing under the extended arms of the male figure, and protruding behind the shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on each side. Éliphas Lévi makes of this symbol, God and Nature; or God, “Light,” mirrored inversely in Nature and Matter, “Darkness.” Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as emblematical cosmogony goes. Neither has he invented the symbol, nor have the Kabalists. The two figures in white and black stone have existed in the temples of Egypt from time immemorial, agreeably to tradition, and historically‐ever since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them. Therefore the symbol must have been in existence for nearly 2,500 years. This, at the very least, for Cambyses, who was a son of Cyrus the Great, succeeded his father in the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two Kabiri personifying the opposite poles. Herodotus(801) tells posterity that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he burst into an inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought to be a man erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him.

These were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate “the passing of the original north pole of the earth to the south pole of the heaven,” as perceived by Mackey.(802) But they also represented the poles inverted, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, which each time resulted in the displacement of the oceans, the submersion of the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the equatorial regions, and vice versâ. These Kabirim were the “Deluge” Gods.

This may help us to get at the key of the seemingly hopeless confusion among the numbers of names and titles given to one and the same Gods, and classes of Gods. Faber, at the beginning of this century, showed the identity of the Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscuri, Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei, Dactyli, Lares, Penates, Manes,(803) Titans, and Aletæ with the Kabiri. And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the Rishis, and our Dhyân Chohans who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri‐Titans were seven Great Gods, cosmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because, perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected with at‐al‐as, the “divine sun,” and with tit, the “deluge.” But this, if true, is only the exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on the appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe‐inspiring Great Gods—the Dioscuri,(804) the deities surrounded with the darkness of Occult Nature—become the Idei Dactyli, or Ideic “Fingers,” with the Adept‐healers by metals. The true etymology of the name Lares, now signifying “Ghosts,” must be sought in the Etruscan word lars, “conductor,” “leader.” Sanchuniathon translates the word Aletæ as “fire worshippers,” and Faber believes it to be derived from al‐orit, the “God of fire.” Both are right,

for in both cases it is a reference to the Sun, the “highest” God, toward whom the Planetary Gods “gravitate” (astronomically and allegorically), and whom they worship. As Lares, they are truly the Solar Deities, though Faber’s etymology, that “Lar is a contraction of El‐Ar, the solar deity,”(805) is not very correct. They are the Lares, the Conductors and Leaders of men. As Aletæ, they were the seven Planets—astronomically; and as Lares, the Regents of these Planets, our Protectors and Rulers—mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic worship, and also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, whose attributes and dual capacities were denoted by the names of the temples to which they respectively belonged, and also by those of their priests. They all belonged, however, to the septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyân Chohans. The Sabæans, who worshipped the “Regents of the Seven Planets” just as the Hindûs worship their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes (Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the Planetary Gods. Seth and Enos were borrowed from the Sabæans and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but the truth about them can still be discovered even in Genesis.(806) Seth is the “Progenitor” of those early men of the Third Race in whom the Planetary Angels had incarnated; he was himself a Dhyân Chohan and

belonged to the informing Gods, and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch), or Hermes, was said to be his son—Enos being a generic name for all the early “Seers” (Enoïchion). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of Sabaism, and that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idrus (Hermes or Enoch);(807) that thither Sabæans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers seven times a day, turning to the North (Mount Meru, Kaph, Olympus, etc.).(808) Abd Allatif also tells us some curious things about the Sabæans and their books. So also does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 200 years later. While the latter maintains “that each pyramid was consecrated to a star” (a Star Regent rather), Abd Allatif assures us that he had read in ancient Sabæan books that “one pyramid was the tomb of Agathodæmon and the other of Hermes”:(809)

Agathodæmon was none other than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hermes was his son, adds Mr. Staniland Wake in The Great Pyramid.(810)

Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples the Kabiri were the Great Cosmic Gods—the Seven and the Forty‐nine Sacred Fires—in the Grecian fanes their rites became mostly phallic, and therefore, to the profane, obscene. In the latter case they were three and four, or seven—the male and female principles—the crux ansata. This division shows why some classical writers held that they were only three, while others named four. And these were Axieros (in his female aspect Demeter); Axiokersa (Persephone);(811) Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or Kasmilos (Hermes—not the ithyphallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus,(812) but “he of the sacred legend,” which was explained only during the Samothracian Mysteries). This identification, which is due, according to the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius,(813) to an indiscretion of Mnaseas, is really no identification at all, as names alone do not reveal much.(814) Others again have maintained, being equally right in their way, that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. These two personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial pole, and the pole of the heavens, astronomically; and also the physical and the spiritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus, Bimater, with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read esoterically for the understanding of the allegory. The parts played in the event by the Fire, Water, Earth, etc., in the many versions, will show how the “Father of the Gods” and the “merry God of Wine” were also made to personify the two terrestrial poles.

The telluric, metalline, magnetic, electric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions and references to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In Astronomy, the poles are indeed the “heavenly measure”; and so are the Kabiri‐Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the Kabiri‐Titans, to whom Diodorus ascribes the “invention of Fire”(815) and the art of manufacturing iron. Moreover, Pausanias(816) shows that the original Kabiric deity was Prometheus.

But the fact that, astronomically, the Titan‐Kabirim were also the Generators and Regulators of the Seasons, and, cosmically, the great Volcanic Energies—the Gods presiding over all the metals and terrestrial works—does not prevent them from being, in their original divine characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, brought light to the world, and endowed Humanity with intellect and reason. They are preëminently in every Theogony—especially in the Hindû—the Sacred Divine Fires, Three, Seven, or Forty‐nine, according as the allegory demands it. Their very names prove it, for they are the Agni‐putra, or Sons of the Fire, in India, and the Genii of the Fire under numerous names in Greece and elsewhere. Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name kabeiros meaning “the powerful through fire,” from the Greek καίω “to burn.” The Semitic word kabirim contains the idea of “the powerful, the mighty, and the great,” answering to the Greek μεγάλοι, δυνατοί, but these are later epithets. These Gods were universally worshipped, and their origin is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia, Phœnicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was always connected with Fire, their temples ever built in the most volcanic localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to the Chthonian Divinities, and therefore has Christianity made of them Infernal Gods.

They are truly “the great, beneficent and powerful Gods,” as Cassius Hermone calls them.(817) At Thebes, Core and Demeter, the Kabirim, had a sanctuary,(818) and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter its holy precincts.(819) But we must not, at the same time, lose sight of the fact that the title of Kabiri was generic; that the Kabiri, the mighty Gods as well as mortals, were of both sexes, and also terrestrial, celestial and cosmic; that while, in their later capacity of rulers of sidereal and terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon—as it is now regarded—was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in the beginning of times, the Rulers of Mankind, when, incarnated as Kings of the “Divine Dynasties,” they gave the first impulse to civilization, and directed the mind with which they had endued men, to the invention and perfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the memory of nations. To these Kabiri or Titans is ascribed the invention of letters (the Deva‐nâgari, or alphabet and language of the Gods), of laws and legislature, of architecture, as also of the various modes of magic, so‐called, and of the medical use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus, Asclepius, all those Demi‐gods and Heroes, to whom is ascribed the revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers—too zealous for plain truth—would force posterity to see only Pagan copies of one sole prototype, named Noah—all are generic names.

It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed the great boon of agriculture, by producing corn or wheat. What Isis‐Osiris, the once living Kabiria, did in Egypt, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; they all belong to one class.

That serpents were ever emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by the Caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the God of Wisdom, with Hermes, and so on. The two serpents, entwined round the rod, are phallic symbols of Jupiter and other Gods who transformed themselves into snakes for purposes of seducing Goddesses—only in the unclean fancies of profane Symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the Adept, and of his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury, in his psychopompic character, conducting and guiding the souls of the dead to Hades with his Caduceus and even raising them to life with it, is a simple and very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret Wisdom: black and white Magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding the Soul after death, and displaying the power of calling to life that which is dead—a very deep metaphor if one but thinks over its meaning. All the peoples of antiquity, with one exception, reverenced this symbol; the exception being the Christians, who chose to forget the “brazen serpent” of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and prudence of the “serpent” by Jesus himself, “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate successors of the “Serpents” or Initiates, who ruled the early races of the Fifth Humanity. The Emperor’s throne is the “Dragon’s Seat,” and his dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the Dragon. The aphorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the Dragon is a human, albeit divine, Being. Speaking of the “Yellow Dragon,” the chief of the others, the Twan‐ying‐t’u says:

His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable ... he does not go in company and does not live in herds [he is an ascetic].... He wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes, fulfilling the decree [Karma]; at the proper seasons if there is perfection he comes forth, if not he remains [invisible]. And Lü‐lan asserts that Confucius said: The Dragon feeds in the pure (water) [of Wisdom] and disports in the clear (water) [of Life].(820) Our Divine Instructors. Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or continent, which it calls Ma‐li‐ga‐si‐ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber spell “Maurigasima,” for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their own. Kæmpfer, in his Japan,(821) gives the tradition: The island, owing to the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.

At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual, psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.

Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or Pitris; with the Chinese Chim‐nang and Tchan‐gy—their “Divine Man” and Demi‐gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul‐lil—the Creative God and the “Gods of the Ghost‐world”; with the Egyptian Isis‐Osiris and Thot; with the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco‐Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the story varies nowhere. Every nation has either the seven and ten Rishi‐ Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki‐y; or ten and seven Amshaspands(822) (six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the “Builders” of the Stanzas of Volume I. From Manu, Thot‐Hermes, Oannes‐Dagon, and Edris‐Enoch, down to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode(823) and reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as “Divine Kings and Rulers.” But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had flourished in their country only since the time of Isis‐Osiris, whom they continued to adore as Gods, “though they had become princes in human form.” And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:

It is said that this prince [Isis‐Osiris] built cities in Egypt, stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry. When Abul Feda, in his Historia Anteïslamitica,(824) says that the “Sabæan language” was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means Astronomy. In the Melelwa Nahil,(825) Hermes is called the disciple of Agathodæmon. And in another account,(826) Agathodæmon is mentioned as a “King of Egypt.” The Celepas Geraldinus gives us some curious traditions about Henoch, who is called the “Divine Giant.” In his Book of the Various Names of the Nile, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in the Bible; then he became a mortal and Adam’s son, after which he communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris), “the author of thirty books,” was “Sabæan by origin”—i.e., belonged to the Saba, “a Host”: Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship, he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to Egypt where he became its King.(827)

Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different characters. In the Burham i Kati, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and Thot.(828) The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, and civilized it under the name of Thoth.(829) But under whichever of these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the sciences from latent to active potency, i.e., with having been the first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes. Not only does Herodotus, the “father of history,” tell us of the marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed by the Dynasties of Demi‐gods, Heroes, and finally men, but the whole series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato, Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given. As Creuzer shows:

It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of spirits.(830) It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260 B.C.) to accept the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them “a superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying priests of Heliopolis.” As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks: All those historians and priests, so veracious when repeating stories of human kings and men, suddenly become extremely suspicious no sooner do they go back to their gods.

But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé: Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest mythic times, or the Reigns of the Gods and Heroes.... At the very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth‐Hermes, and the Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign of each of these.(831) These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the age of humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from the profane multitudes.

Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology. Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from the north‐east. When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (a) that the poles of the Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (b) that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic. Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at the sameness of all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:

What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian] Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien‐hoang or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti‐hoang, or Kings on Earth, and the Gin‐hoang, the King men, distinctions which are in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi‐gods and Mortals.(832) As says Panodorus: Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that the Reign of the Seven Gods who rule the world took place. It was during that period that those benefactors of humanity descended on Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.(833)

Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs‐Piromis—the Arch‐prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples, born one from the other, without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their first human King. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, three hundred and forty‐five in number, each of which had its name, history and annals. They also assured Herodotus—unless the most truthful of historians, the “father of history,” is now to be accused of fibbing, just in this instance—that no historian could ever understand or write an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned the history of the three Dynasties that preceded the human—namely, the Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi‐gods, and of the Heroes, or Giants.(834) These “three” Dynasties are the three Races.

Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or Titans. “Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as men in Bhârata‐varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the Third Root‐Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of the divisions of Jambu‐dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) works par excellence; the land of Initiation and of Divine Knowledge.(835) Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies, which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:

We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, the natural good sense and the upright judgment of the ancient peoples, quite foreign to our entirely material ideas of mechanics and physical sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or repulsion; they saw in them living bodies, animated by spirits as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature.... This doctrine of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended together.(836) It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.

Occultists believe in “spirits,” because they feel—and some see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.(837) Materialists do not. They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without seeing, or so much as sensing them.(838) Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned Jesuit, who in his Œdipus Ægyptiacus, writes: I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties and Atlantis] as pure fables (meras nugas) to the day when, better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those legends must be, after all, only the development of a great truth.(839)

As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his Meropis, made the priests of Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting, warrior race, and a pious, meditative race(840)—which Theopompus symbolizes by two cities.(841) The pious “city” was continually visited by the Gods: the belligerent “city” was inhabited by various beings invulnerable by iron, who could be mortally wounded only by stone and wood.(842) De Rougemont treats this as a pure fiction of Theopompus and even sees a fraud (supercherie) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:

A supercherie which was based on a belief, the product of the faith of the whole of antiquity; a supposition which yet gave its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe), which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, the great transoceanic land situated beyond that Atlantis and which “is reached,” it said, “by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the Good Spirits,” εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition can well be nothing else but a universal chimera!(843)

It is certain that, whether “chimera” or reality, the priests of the whole world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,(844) a Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese teachings upon the subject, if it is but a “fiction”? Have they not recorded the existence once upon a time of a Holy Island beyond the sun, Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands of Immortal Men?(845) Do they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits? As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:

If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi‐gods; and still earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, which we accept no longer because we no longer understand them, must have had motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of his Laws, says that, long before the construction of the first cities, Saturn had established on earth a certain form of government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age, and what was the occasion he had to introduce this fable into a treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to turn back to the first principles of history and tradition.

Great changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, in heaven and on earth, and the present state of things is one of the results [Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn’s reign, and of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory; but one never hears anything of the evil which has produced these revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them. Yet ... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able to treat of royalty and the origin of power.(846)

That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd, i.e., a being of a species quite different from their own and of a superior nature. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii (δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”

It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.(847) When the world had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry, Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.(848) And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man. As say the Commentaries: _Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the __“__Lords of Wisdom,__”__ for the benefit of those they ruled from other Lokas [Spheres]._ Now: The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that the race has ever made.... The first use of fire, and the discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the domestication of animals; and, above all, the processes by which the various cereals were first developed out of some wild grasses [?]—these are all discoveries with which, in ingenuity and in importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all unknown to history—all lost in the light of an effulgent dawn.(849)

This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be asserted that there are no grains and fruits unknown to earth, then we may remind the reader that wheat has never been found in the wild state; it is not a product of the earth. All the other cereals have been traced to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin. And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheat seven cubits high.(850) Says the Egyptian Isis: I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert my nurse.(851) Sirius was called the Dog‐star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, called the great Instructor of Mankind. The Chinese Y‐King attributes the discovery of agriculture to “the instruction given to men by celestial genii.”

Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they see. They are all blind,(852) since they remain ignorant how full the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even in the most sacred places.(853) The “Sons of God” have existed and do exist. From the Hindû Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind‐born Sons, down to the Bne Aleim of the Jewish Bible, the faith of the centuries and universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value is “independent criticism” so‐called, or “internal evidence”—based usually on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter of Genesis, which repeats the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with the Zohar. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown [or giants].(854)

What does this sentence, “and also after that,” signify unless it means: There were Giants in the Earth before, i.e., before the Sinless Sons of the Third Race; and also after that when other Sons of God, lower in nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or through the wickedness of the “mighty men ... men of renown,” among whom is placed Nimrod the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” that “God saw that the wickedness of man was great,” nor in the builders of Babel, for this was after the Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who produced monstra quædam de genere giganteo, monsters from whence sprang the lower races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying‐out tribes and the huge anthropoid apes. And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne puts it:

Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.(855) This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever understood,” as is candidly confessed by Fourmont(856)—can only be explained by the Occult doctrine, through the Zohar to the Western, and the Book of Dzyan to the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; what the Zohar tells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.(857) We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the “Adversary,” is included in Job among the “sons” of God or Bne Aleim who visit their father.(858) But of this later on.

Now the Zohar says that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, were not guilty, but mixed themselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so.(859) Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim belonging to the tenth sub‐division of the “Thrones.”(860) It also explains that the Ischins—“Men‐spirits,” viri spirituales(861)—now that men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science, Homunculi which are not “small men” but “men smaller (in the sense of inferiority) than men.” Both show themselves under the form that the Ischins had then, i.e., gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel. But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is nothing of the kind. Azazel is a mystery, as explained elsewhere, and it is so expressed by Maimonides: There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning Azazel.(862) And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted before, and one who ought to know, says: This venerable divine name (nome divino e venerabile) has become through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a mountain, and a he‐goat.(863)

Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal (separated) and El (God), hence “one separated from God”—the Devil. In the Zohar, Azazel is rather the “sacrificial victim” than the “formal adversary of Jehovah,” as Spencer would have it.(864)

The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this “Host” by various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his “Host” are simply the Hebrew “Prometheus,” and ought to be viewed from the same standpoint. The Zohar shows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these “Spirits” as being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the “transgressing” Angels in the Book of Enoch, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to make one see what is behind him—viz., “magic mirrors.” Amazarak taught all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs; Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.(865) “These seven were the first instructors of the fourth man” (i.e., of the Fourth Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what its dead‐letter expresses?

It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, to a lower plane and thus transform the animal of clay into an immortal God. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us: The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man‐God, is above even Angels. On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in the coils of Matter.

Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man‐like God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many a saying in the Bible and even in the New Testament which has hitherto remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would‐be infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead‐letter or dogmatic religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and unadorned with fancy.

Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in Isis Unveiled, and a still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the “bride” of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke of the Master “Get thee behind me, Satan” was justly addressed; and again the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos, or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of Genesis—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words: “Say we not well thou hast a devil?”

Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in the Rig Veda, the Occult volume par excellence of Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in the Purânas—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account of the true Wisdom Religion. In the Rig Veda, Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma‐drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In the Purânas, Indra becomes a profligate, and a regular drunkard on the Soma‐juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is the conqueror of all the “enemies of the Gods” the Daityas, Nâgas (Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent‐gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of the militant Host. Turning to the Bible, we find Satan, one of the “Sons of God,”(866) becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in the Kabalah,(867) Samael, who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects alike Michael and Samael, who are one? Both proceed, it is taught, from Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the Chaldæan Book of Numbers Samael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher terrestrial Wisdom, both emanating from the same source, but diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They diverge, because the one (Michael) is influenced by Neshamah, while the other (Samael) remains uninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of Samael‐Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!

The Origin Of The Satanic Myth. Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi‐savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, and was once universally established through the formerly universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries, Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his God.(868)

Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, and heliolatrous worship with its Sun‐gods crossed over into the land of the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As Michael is “one as God,” or his “Double” for terrestrial purposes, and is one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to the allegory of the “War in Heaven,” its earthly origin has to be sought in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we find (a) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (b) the “Dragons” held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the Hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the “Sons of the Dragon” and “Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret Doctrine.

There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent’s Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the “Unavoidable Cycle,” more generally known as the “Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region. In De Bourbourg’s book, Votan, the Mexican Demi‐god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was a Snake’s hole, “un agujero de colubra”; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself a “Son of the Snakes,” or a Serpent.(869) This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the “Snake’s hole” is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled themselves during the Mysteries, the “Sons of the Serpent‐god,” or “Sons of the Dragon.”

“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,” says Movers. The Druids of the Celto‐Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes. “I am a Serpent, I am a Druid,” they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent’s Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.(870) Besides the surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of “Builders” or “Architects,” for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such that even now the pulverized remains of them “frighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,” as Taliesin says.(871) De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo‐ Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. “I am Hivim,” they say. “Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”(872)

Furthermore, the “War in Heaven” is shown, in one of its significations, to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified human passions, when the enlightened Inner Man had to either slay them or fail. In the former case he became the “Dragon‐Slayer,” as having happily overcome all the temptations, and a “Son of the Serpent” and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in a new body, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity. Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan. He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the dark side of Osiris, his brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda. Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.

Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi‐god, the lower part of whose body ended in a Dragon’s or Serpent’s tail. During the Churning of the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the Dragon’s head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon’s tail; the two being the ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon’s head, played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Sun’s (Vikartana’s) Initiation, when the Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.

The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King‐Snakes, who dwelt in cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand‐headed Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon‐serpent oracle, all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact mentioned in the earliest Purânas. The children of Surasâ are the mighty “Dragons.” The Vâyu Purâna replacing the “Dragons” of Surasâ of the Vishnu Purâna by the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the “Dragons” and “Serpents” of Wisdom. We have only to compare the Sun‐gods of every country, to find their allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in exoteric systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern Christian schemes—several Sun‐gods and Dragons are selected at random, they will be found to be copied from each other.

Let us take Agni the Fire‐god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the “Angel of the Sun,” the first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the “Saviour”—and proceed in order.

(1) Agni, the Fire‐god, is called Vaishvânara in the Rig Veda. Now Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant‐demon,(873) whose daughters Pulomâ and Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by Kashyapa,(874) and live in Hiranyapura, “the golden city, floating in the air.”(875) Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step‐son of these two as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, the Fire‐god, or Sun (Kashyapa‐Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda or Kârttikeya, God of War, the six‐faced planet Mars astronomically, a Kumâra, or Virgin‐youth, born of Agni,(876) for the purpose of destroying Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son Hiranyâksha.(877) Târaka’s Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.(878) While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the Serpent‐Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra‐han, the “Destroyer of Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu, “Leader of the Celestial Host.” Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is called Târaka‐jit, “Vanquisher of Târaka,”(879) Kumâra Guha, the “mysterious Virgin‐youth,” Siddha‐sena, “Leader of the Siddhas,” and Shakti‐dhara, “Spear‐holder.”

(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun‐god, and by comparing the mythical accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra, Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa‐Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as the Angelic form of Jehovah) the “Angel of the Sun,” who is “like,” and “one with, God.” Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic purposes, elevated though they be into not‐to‐be‐questioned Church dogmas, prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.

Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos‐Apollo, the “Light of Life and of the World,”(880) who arises out of the Golden‐winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun‐god par excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,(881) and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, the too holy and wise Demon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the “golden star island,” the “earth which floats in the air,” which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt “from all sensual love.”(882) He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the “red Dragon,” connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child‐birth, as Python attacks Apollo’s mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the spirit of Homer’s allegories, ever had a real inkling of the esoteric meaning of the Iliad and Odyssey, he would have understood St. John’s Revelation, and even the Pentateuch, better than he does. For the way to the Bible lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.

(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John’s Revelation, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist: Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, who curses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.(883) This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other. The gods have weapons forged for them,(884) and Merodach [the Archangel Michael in Revelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.(885)

This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge. The symbols of the “Dragon” and “War in Heaven” have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In the Vedas this Ahi‐Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi‐Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra‐han or the “Slayer of Vritra,” as Michael is called the Conqueror and “Slayer of the Dragon.” Both these “Enemies” are then the “Old Dragon” precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.

The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in the Vendîdâd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to “invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares(886) of the Earth”;(887) which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra‐mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words: “I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”(888) The “Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one “of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of those manifested Powers; and “their sons and their flocks” refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations. “Amshaspand” is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the “maker of the material world.” Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as “the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”(889) who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.

Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent of Genesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the “Red Dragon.” He is the Angel of Death, for the Talmud says that “the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.” He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra. “Simoon is called Atabutos” or—Diabolos, the Devil. Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in the Book of the Dead—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent’s head with a spear; and Typhon is the all‐destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,(890) whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.(891)

Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their “Slayers” are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in Chaos, brought to order by the Sun‐gods or Creative Powers. In the Book of the Dead those principles are called the “Sons of Rebellion.”(892) In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise called the deceiving Serpent ... calls the Sons of Rebellion in Air, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there is War in Heaven and in the entire World.(893) In the Scandinavian Eddas the “War” of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and the “Wolf” who comes out of “Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth. The “Evil Spirits,”(894) who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most civilized and learned races of this globe since its creation, and have become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:

The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.(895) This is only another version of the Hindû “War in Heaven,” between Soma, the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.

It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have hardly advised his apostles to show themselves as wise as the serpent, had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the learned Egyptian Gnostics of the “Brotherhood of the Serpent,” have reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem of Wisdom, the divine Sophia, and a type of the All‐good, not the All‐bad, were that reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its great Wisdom. The draco volans, the “flying dragon” of the early painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.(896) The Jews formerly worshipped the latter idol themselves, but, after the religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and their own usurper—the “One God.”(897)

The appellation Sa’tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an “Adversary” (from the verb shatana, “to be adverse,” “to persecute”) belongs by right to the first and cruellest “Adversary” of all the other Gods—Jehovah; not to the Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the worst, even in the dogma, the “Adversary” of men. This dogma, based as it is on the third chapter of Genesis, is as illogical and unjust as it is paradoxical. For who was the first to create that original and henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely, but the “Lord God” himself, who, saying, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” made woman, and “brought her unto the man.”(898) If the unpleasant little incident that followed was and is still to be regarded as the “original sin,” then it exhibits the Creator’s divine foresight in a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of the first chapter to have been left either “male and female,” or “alone.” It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, the “agent provocateur,” and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel, “the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,” the poor Tragos having to pay the penalty for his Master’s and Creator’s blunder. This, of course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the drama of humanity in Genesis in their dead‐letter sense. Those who read them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and hypotheses; they know how to read the symbolism therein contained, and cannot err.

There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity falsely called by that name. It was a “blind” purposely created by the Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten‐fold care after the Christians had despoiled them of this God‐name which was their own property.(899) The following statement, however, is now made. The personage who is named in the first four chapters of Genesis variously as “God,” the “Lord God,” and “Lord” simply, is not one and the same person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the Kabalah. Jehovah appears only in chapter iv of Genesis, in the first verse of which he is named Cain, and in the last transformed into mankind—male and female, Jah‐ veh.(900) The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if they ate of the forbidden fruit, “ye shall not surely die”—kept his promise, and made man immortal in his incorruptible nature. He is the Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that closed the

perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the “boneless” Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of Immortality, and as the “Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah‐Cain, the male part of Adam the dual man, having separated himself from Eve, creates in her Abel, the first natural woman,(901) and sheds the virgin blood. Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv of Genesis, in the original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that “Kin (Cain) the Evil was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of Adam,”(902) and the Talmud adding that “the evil Spirit, Satan, and Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”(903)—it becomes easy to see that Jehovah (mankind, or Jah‐hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) are one and the same in every particular. There is no Devil, no Evil outside mankind to produce a Devil. Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day,

and death for that of life—that man may live for ever.

Satan represents metaphysically simply the reverse or the polar opposite of everything in Nature.(904) He is the “Adversary,” allegorically, the “Murderer,” and the great Enemy of all, because there is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be called Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and the rationale of certain early Christian sects—called heretical and viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true character of the treacherous apostle having never been correctly presented before the tribunal of humanity.

As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus it becomes comprehensible why Ilda‐baoth was regarded by most of them as the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother Elohim; the latter representing the all‐embracing, manifested Deity only in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.(905) They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao‐Jehovah, who is an emanation of Ilda‐baoth.(906) This, in their language, amounted to saying what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that “Cain had been generated by Samael or Satan.”

The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes of fallen men—allegorically, and those men themselves—Esoterically. Thus the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni‐Elohim, the Sons of God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between Thrætaona and Azhi‐dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of Evil, “of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.” And the conflict of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata. In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons and Satans, simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent of Genesis, and thus prove the new dogma. Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon.

It matters little whether it were Isis, or Ceres, the Kabiria, or again the Kabiri, who taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolizing all the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either a myth along with the others, or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc.—then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, and along with it all the Patriarchs—the Antediluvian and Pre‐Atlantean Titans. As has now been discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the God of power and generation, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.(907) Tubal‐ Cain is a Kabir, “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”; or—if this will please better—he is one with Hephæstus or Vulcan. Jabal again is taken from the Kabiri, instructors in agriculture, “such as have cattle,” and Jubal is “the father of all those who handle the harp,” he, or they who fabricated the harp for Cronus and the trident for Poseidon.(908)

The history or “fables” about the mysterious Telchines—fables echoing each and all the archaic events of our Esoteric Teachings—furnish us with a key to the origin of Cain’s genealogy in the third chapter of Genesis; they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies “the accursed blood” of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines—it is argued—the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the Gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a Deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah? The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteans also. Says Decharme: Like Lemnos and Samothrace, Rhodes, the birth‐place of the Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation.(909) The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like the Samothrace of the Kabiri, it is connected by the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present.

But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every Pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs contain, in poetized form, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies of Seth and Cain,(910) and the further equally futile attempt to show them as real, historical men, has only led to more serious enquiries into the history of the past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed revelation. For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Cronus‐Saturn is also proved. That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Bryant(911) concurs with all those who are of opinion that Sydic, or Sadic, was the Patriarch Noah, and also Melchizedek; and that the name by which he is called, Sadic, corresponds with the character given him in Genesis.(912) He was צדיק, Sadic, a just man, and perfect in his generation. All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and through his sons transmitted to posterity.(913)

Now it is Sanchuniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchi‐zedek). True enough, as this information has descended to us through the Preparatio Evangelica of Eusebius, it may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than likely that he dealt with Sanchuniathon’s works as he has with Manetho’s Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic, Cronus, or Saturn, with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah’s characteristic as a just man, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek, “king of Salem, and priest of the most high God,” after “his own order”;(914) and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they became rabbinically and kabalistically. In speaking of Adam, Cain, Mars, etc., as personifications, we find the author of the Source of Measures enunciating our very Esoteric Teachings in his kabalistic researches. Thus he says:

Now, Mars was the Lord of birth, and of death, of generation and of destruction, of ploughing, of building, of sculpture or stone‐cutting, of architecture, ... in fine, of all comprised under our English word ARTS. He was the primal principle, disintegrating into the modification of two opposites for production. Astronomically, too,(915) he held the birthplace of the day and year, the place of its increase of strength, Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as birth, was Good; as death, was Evil. As good, he was light; as bad, he was night. As good, he was man; as bad, he was woman. He held the cardinal points, and as Cain, or Vulcan,(916) or Pater Sadic, or Melchizadek, he was lord of the ecliptic, or balance, or line of adjustment, and therefore was The Just One. The ancients held to there being seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadic, The Just or Right One, was Lord of the eighth, which was Mater Terra.(917) This makes their functions, after they had been degraded, plain enough, and establishes the identity.

The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead‐letter and within the period of biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary, supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to follow that Deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that: There were two distinct races of Cabiri, the first consisting of Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionusus of Mnaseas; the second, of the children of Shem, who are the Cabiri of Sanchoniatho, while their father Sydyk is consequently the scriptural Shem.(918) The Kabirim, the “Mighty Ones,” are identical with our primeval Dhyân Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the Rulers and Instructors of the primeval races, who are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the Divine Dynasties. The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged Continents.

Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to unrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the one hand, and Persia on the other—a country ever at war with the former—there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to admit of such coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every available source, in order to the better compare those of the Magi with the so‐called Grecian “fables.” Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fairy tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the history of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel of the history and the pre‐historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says as follows:

Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one succeeding the other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who reigned but 2,000, and while the former were still in existence. The Devs were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but wiser and kinder. Here we recognize the Atlantean Giants and the Âryans, or the Râkshasas of the Râmâyana and the children of Bharata‐varsha, or India; the Ante‐ and the Post‐diluvians of the Bible.

Gyan (or Gnan, Jnâna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge), also called Gian‐ben‐Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.(919) He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic, the sorcery of the Devs. Gian‐ben‐Gian had reigned 2,000 years when Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being produced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate, or Karma.(920) They count ten kings in their last metropolis called Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam. These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given by Berosus. Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to identify them with the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew traditions, for the Jewish myth, though disdaining in its exclusiveness to speak of Pre‐Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly inferred, by sending out Cain—one of the only two living men on earth—into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.(921)

Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the 9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on this, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may restore the figures to their true meaning. We read in the Critias: First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsed since the war of the nations, which lived above and outside the Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this side.

In the Timæus Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Âryans were 200,000 years old when the first great “Island,” or Continent, was submerged, there seems hardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldæa and Persia through whose exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to posterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week “seven days,” and speaking of a “week of years” when each of its days represents 360 solar years, and the whole “week” is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the present times call an age a “century.” They of Plato’s day, the initiated writers, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years; while the Hindûs, more independent than any, have never concealed their chronology. Thus, for 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time—i.e., from the first appearance of the Âryan Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking(922) and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato’s small island of Atlantis—the Âryan races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races.

This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the Kali Yuga, and was the Mahâbhârata, or Great War, so famous in Indian history. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their isolation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era.

History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first time through Herodotus, if we do not take into account the Bible, and its queer chronology.(923) And how little Herodotus could tell is confessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at Saïs, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says: Behind the chapel ... is the tomb of One, whose name I consider it impious to divulge.... In the enclosure stand large obelisks and there is a lake near, surrounded with a stone wall formed in a circle.... In this lake they perform by night, that person’s adventures, which the Egyptians call Mysteries: on these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the particulars of them, I must observe a discreet silence.(924)

On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved and so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations. From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them. Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates, were in every temple—especially in those of Isis and Serapis—each pressing a finger to the lips. And the Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after initiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death. And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews! What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our conceptions of Science and the duration of things!

The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now entirely extinct, as some think. But this is not so; they are only transformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf (Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call them Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy‐ two kings of that name.(925) Three among them reigned for 1,000 years each.(926) Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was murdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire preserved in the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence—the origin of fire‐ worship, as some Orientalists think!

Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re‐ discovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also how to make brass‐ work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk, again, who is credited with having written the work called Eternal Wisdom, and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is built on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it can only be inferred from another legend.

In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war against the Giants on a twelve‐legged Horse, whose birth is attributed to the amours of a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This “Dodecapod” was found on the “dry island” or new continent; much force and cunning had to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his tremendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an enormous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of Damavend.(927)

Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight who always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the Persian folklore call him the Dev‐bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He, too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. Like his grand‐sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far more rare and rapid—a bird called Simorgh‐Anke. A marvellous bird, in truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.(928) What says that Persian Phœnix? It complains of its old age, for it was born cycles and cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give us again 840,000 years.(929) Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the Pre‐Adamites, says the “Romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif”!(930)

What says the Book of Numbers? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons—Ka‐yin, Habel, and Seth—represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah‐ Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo‐geological key), the Third Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, symbolizing that race which uncovered the “nakedness” of the Parent Race, and of the “Mindless,” i.e., committed sin.

Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf or Kaph. He finds there the Peris ill‐treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the giant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana,(931) whom Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the “dry island,” i.e., the new continent of Europe.(932) After him came Giamschid, who builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his great pride, believes himself immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate punishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of Dhulkarnayn, the “two‐horned.” But this epithet has no connection with the “two‐horned” gentleman of the cloven foot. The “two‐horned” is the epithet given in Asia—which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of the attributes of the Devil—to those conquerors who have subdued the world from the East to the West. Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend. These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new Dynasty. Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To begin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf?

Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far beyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors of the Parsîs or Farsîs. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the “Fortunate Islands,” wherein, from the beginning of life on earth, bubbles the “Fountain of Life.”(933) The legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first “dry island” (continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf, “the stony girdle that surrounds the world.” A journey of seven months’ duration will bring him who is possessed of “Soliman’s Ring” to that “Fountain,” if he keep on journeying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying, therefore, from Persia straight North, will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one between the sixtieth and forty‐fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath, or Taimuraz, upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.(934)

Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow‐capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus, there is a great continent now concealed from all; that it is reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve‐legged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will twelve wings,(935) or by those who have the patience to wait for the good pleasure of Simorgh‐Anke, who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the “dry island” and its severed parts.(936) This relates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric Cycle. It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth century A.D., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first, in a country “beyond the Ocean,” a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldæan. He says:

The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky; and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise. During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his posterity now inhabits.(937) The twelve‐legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the “dry island.” The “Christian Topography” of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which has now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a “dry island” beyond the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer.

In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the right end(938) of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is motionless.(939)_ The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara._(940)_ There was eternal spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to‐day, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat_(941)_ reigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the head of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated [begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ... Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was divided by the Water of Life._(942)

_It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth’s] body. Its one end issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It gets purified [on its return] to her heart—which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man’s dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes._(943)_ During the First and Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the great __ Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head‐gear [the cap]. She travailed harder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the World._(944) She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck(945)_ downward [to the South‐West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn]. Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon’s mouth, etc._

This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of human life its Root‐Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part of the world now known as Asia was only cut off from it in a later age, and divided by the glacial waters. If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed like an unreachable mirage to the few arctic travellers who perceived it.

During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the “head” from the “neck.” Beginning on both hemispheres, on the line above the most noryhern part of Spitzbergen,(946) on Mercator’s Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin’s Bay and the neighbouring islands and promontories. There it hardly reached, southward, the seventieth degree of latitude; here it formed the horseshoe continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the fiftieth degree a little South‐West, and the other Kamschatka, the two ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared. Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic Traditions.

Thus it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have reached the profane historian, Rudbeck, a Swedish Scientist, about two centuries ago, tried to prove that Sweden was the Atlantis of Plato. He even thought that he had found in the configuration of ancient Upsala, the situation and measurements of the capital of “Atlantis” as given by the Greek sage. As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so was Bailly likewise, and still more so, for Sweden and Norway had formed part and parcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just as Eastern and Western Siberia and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the Asiatic. Only, once more, when was it? We can find it out approximately only by studying the Purânas, that is to say if we will have nought to do with the Secret Teachings.

Three‐quarters of a century have already elapsed since Wilford brought forward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the “White Island,” the Atala of the Purânas. This was sheer nonsense, as the Atala is one of the seven Dvîpas, or Islands, belonging to the nether Lokas, one of the seven regions of Pâtâla (the antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford(947) shows, the Purânas place it “on the seventh zone or seventh climate”—rather, on the seventh measure of heat—which thus locates it between the latitudes of 24° and 28° North. It is then to be sought on the same degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the latitudes of 50° and 60°. Wilford speaks of it as Atala, Atlantis, the White Island. Its enemy is called the “White Devil,” the Demon of Terror, for he says: In their [the Hindû and Persian] romances, we see Cai‐caus going to the mountain of Az‐burj, or As‐burj, at the foot of which the sun sets, to fight the Div‐sefid, or white devil, the Târa‐ daitya of the Purânas, and whose abode was on the seventh stage of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the Bauddhists; ... or, in other words, to the White Island.(948)

Now here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx’s riddle, the erroneous solution of which will ever destroy their authority—if not their persons—in the eyes of every Hindû scholar, whether or not an Initiate. For there is not a statement in the Purânas—on the conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations—which has not several meanings, and which does not apply to both the physical and the metaphysical worlds. If the old Hindûs divided the face of the Globe into seven Zones, Climates, Dvîpas, geographically, and into seven Hells and seven Heavens, allegorically, the measure of seven did not apply in both cases to the same localities. Now it is the North Pole, the country of “Meru,” which is the seventh division, as it answers to the seventh Principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the Occult calculation. It represents the region of Âtmâ, of pure Soul, and Spirituality. Hence Pushkara is shown as the seventh Zone, or Dvîpa, which encompasses the Kshîra Ocean, or Ocean of Milk (the ever‐frozen white region) in the Vishnu and other Purânas.(949) And Pushkara, with its two Varshas, lies directly at the foot of Meru. For it is said that: