Footnotes:

1. Only forty-nine Slokas out of several hundred are here given. Not every verse is translated verbatim. A periphrasis is sometimes used for the sake of clearness and intelligibility, where a literal translation would be quite unintelligible.

2. The idea and the spirit of the sentence is here given, as a verbal translation would convey very little to the reader.

3. All the words and sentences placed in brackets in the Stanzas and Commentaries are the writer’s. In some places they may be incomplete and even inadequate from the Hindu standpoint; but in the meaning attached to them in Trans-Himalayan Esotericism they are correct. In every case the writer takes any blame upon herself. Having never claimed personal infallibility, that which is given on her own authority may leave much to be desired, in the very abstruse cases where too deep metaphysic is involved. The teaching is offered as it is understood; and as there are seven keys of interpretation to every symbol and allegory, that which may not fit a meaning, say from the psychological or astronomical aspect, will be found quite correct from the physical or metaphysical.

4. According to Dr. A. Wilder’s learned definition, Genesis, [[genesis]], is not generation, but “a coming out of the eternal into the Kosmos and Time”: “a coming from esse into exsistere,” or “from Be-ness into ‘being’ ” — as a Theosophist would say.

5. For a clearer explanation of the origins, as contained in the esotericism of the Bhagavad Gita, see the Notes thereon published in the “Theosophist” for February, March and June, 1887, Madras.

6. J. W. Alden, New York.

7. It has been repeatedly stated that the Serpent is the symbol of wisdom and of Occult knowledge. “The Serpent has been connected with the god of wisdom from the earliest times of which we have any historical notice,” writes Staniland Wake. “This animal was the especial symbol of Thot or Taut . . . and of all those gods, such as Hermes (?) and Seth who can be connected with him. This is also the primitive Chaldean triad Hea or Hoa.” According to Sir Henry Rawlinson, the most important titles of this deity refer to “his functions as the source of all knowledge and science.” Not only is he “the intelligent fish,” but his name may be read as signifying both “life” and a serpent (an initiated adept), and he may be considered as “figured by the great serpent which occupies so conspicuous a place among the symbols of the gods on the black stones recording Babylonian benefactions.” Esculapius, Serapis, Pluto, Knoum and Kneph, are all deities with the attributes of the serpent. Says Dupuis, “They are all healers, givers of health, spiritual and physical, and of enlightenment.” The crown formed of an asp, the Thermuthis, belongs to Isis, goddess of Life and Healing. The Upanishads have a treatise on the Science of Serpents — in other words, the Science of Occult knowledge; and the Nagas of the exoteric Buddhist are not “the fabulous creatures of the nature of serpents . . . beings superior to men and the protectors of the law of Buddha,” as Schlagintweit believes, but real living men, some superior to men by virtue of their Occult knowledge, and the protectors of Buddha’s law, inasmuch as they interpret his metaphysical tenets correctly, others inferior morally as being black magicians. Therefore it is truly declared that Gautama Buddha “is said to have taught them a more philosophical religious system than to men, who were not sufficiently advanced to understand it at the time of his appearance.” (Schlagintweit’s “Tibetan Buddhism.”)

8. The Mandragora is the mandrake of the Bible, of Rachel and Leah. They are the roots of a plant, fleshy, hairy, and forked below, representing roughly the limbs of a man, the body and even a head. Its magical and mysterious properties have been proclaimed in fable and play from the most archaic ages. From Rachel and Leah, who indulged in witchcraft with them, down to Shakespeare, who speaks of shrieking —

. . . . “Like mandrakes torn out of the earth
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad”

— the mandragora was the magic plant par excellence.

These roots, without any stalk, and with large leaves growing out of the head of the root, like a gigantic crop of hair, present little similitude to man when found in Spain, Italy, Asia Minor, or Syria. But on the Isle of Candia, and in Karamania near the city of Adan, they have a wonderfully human form; being very highly prized as amulets. They are also worn by women as a charm against sterility, and for other purposes. They are especially effective in Black Magic.

9. Copernicus wrote his theories on the “Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies” in the XVIth century, and the Zohar, even if compiled by Moses de Leon in the XIIIth century, states that: “In the book of Hammannunah, the Old, we learn . . . that the earth turns upon itself in the form of a circle; that some are on top, the others below, . . . . that there are some countries which are lightened, whilst others are in darkness; these have the day, when for the former it is night; and there are countries in which it is constantly day, or in which at least the night continues only some instants.” (Zohar iii., fol. 10a “Qabbalah,” p. 139.)

10. Science teaches that Venus receives from the sun twice as much light and heat as the earth. Thus the planet, precursor of the dawn and the twilight, the most radiant of all the planets, said to give the earth one-third of the supply she receives, has two parts left for herself. This has an occult as well as an astronomical meaning.

11. “As it is above so it is below” is the fundamental axiom of occult philosophy. As the logos is seven-fold, i.e., throughout Kosmos it appears as seven logoi under seven different forms, or, as taught by learned Brahmins, “each of these is the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the ancient wisdom religion;” and, as the seven principles which correspond to the seven distinct states of Pragna, or consciousness, are allied to seven states of matter and the seven forms of force, the division must be the same in all that concerns the earth.

12. Venus is thus the Earth .

13. In the esoteric philosophy it is male and female, or hermaphrodite; hence the bearded Venus in mythology.

14. Therefore, putting aside its religio-metaphysical aspect, the Cross of the Christians is symbolically far more phallic than the pagan Svastica.

15. The ansated Cross is the astronomical planetary sign of Venus, “signifying the existence of parturient energy in the sexual sense, and this was one of the attributes of Isis, the Mother, of Eve, Hauvah, or Mother-Earth, and was so recognised among all the ancient peoples in one or another mode of expression.” (From a modern Kabalistic MS.)

16. Athenaeus shows that the first letter of Satan’s name was represented in days of old by an arc and crescent; and some Roman Catholics, good and kind men, would persuade the public that it is in honour of Lucifer’s crescent-like horns that Mussulmen have chosen the Crescent for their national arms. Venus has always been identified, since the establishment of Roman Catholic dogmatism, with Satan and Lucifer, or the great Dragon, contrary to all reason and logic. As shown by the symbologists and astronomers, the association between the serpent and the idea of darkness had an astronomical foundation. The position which the constellation of Draco at one time occupied showed that the great serpent was the ruler of the night. This constellation was formerly at the very centre of the heavens, and is so extensive that it was called the Great Dragon. Its body spreads over seven signs of the Zodiac; and Dupuis, “who,” says Staniland Wake, “sees in the Dragon of the Apocalypse a reference to the celestial serpent,” remarks that “it is not astonishing that a constellation so extended should be represented by the author of that book as a Great Dragon with seven heads, who drew the third part of the stars from heaven and cast them to Earth;” (Dupuis, tome III., p. 255). Only Dupuis never knew why Draco, once the pole-star — the symbol of “Guide,” Guru and director — had been thus degraded by posterity. “The gods of our fathers are our devils,” says an Asiatic proverb. When Draco ceased to be the lode-star, the guiding sidereal divinity, it shared the fate of all the fallen gods. Seth and Typhon was at one time, Bunsen tells us, “a great god universally adored throughout Egypt, who conferred on the sovereigns of the 18th and 19th Dynasties the symbols of life and power. But subsequently, in the course of the 20th Dynasty, he is suddenly treated as an evil Demon, insomuch that his effigies and name are obliterated on all the monuments and inscriptions that could be reached.” The real occult reason will be given in these pages.

17. Sukra is the son of Bhrigu the great Rishi, and one of the Seven Prajapati, the founder of the Race of Bhargavas, in which Parasu Rama is born.

18. This is a flat contradiction of Swedenborg, who saw, in “the first Earth of the astral world,” inhabitants dressed as are the peasants in Europe; and on the Fourth Earth women clad as are the shepherdesses in a bal masque. Even the famous astronomer Huygens laboured under the mistaken idea that other worlds and planets have the same identical beings as those who live on our Earth, possessing the same figures, senses, brain-power, arts, sciences, dwellings and even to the same fabric for their wearing apparel! (Theorie du Monde). For the clearer comprehension of the statement that the Earth “is the progeny of the Moon,” see Book I., stanza VI.

19. This is a modern gloss. It is added to the old Commentaries for the clearer comprehension of those disciples who study esoteric Cosmogony after having passed through Western learning. The earlier Glosses are too redundant with adjectives and figures of speech to be easily assimilated.

20. “Beyond” the Great Range, means, in our case, India, as being the Trans-Himalayan region for the Cis-Himalayan region.

21. The term Pitris is used by us in these Slokas to facilitate their comprehension, but it is not so used in the original Stanzas, where they have distinct appellations of their own, besides being called “Fathers” and “Progenitors.”

22. It is erroneous to take literally the worship of the human Bodhisattvas, or Manjusri. It is true that, exoterically, the Mahayana school teaches adoration of these without distinction, and that Huien-Tsang speaks of some disciples of Buddha as being worshipped. But esoterically it is not the disciple or the learned Manjusri personally that received honours, but the divine Bodhisattvas and Dhyani Buddhas that animated (Amilakha, as the Mongolians say) the human forms.

23. The author of this work is Augustus Le Plongeon. He and his wife are well known in the United States for their untiring labours in Central America. It is they who discovered the sepulchre of the royal Kan Coh, at Cichen-Itza. The author seems to believe and to seek to prove that the esoteric learning of the Aryans and the Egyptians was derived from the Mayas. But, although certainly coeval with Plato’s Atlantis, the Mayas belonged to the Fifth Continent, which was preceded by Atlantis and Lemuria.

24. These seven caves, seven cities, etc., etc., stand in every case for the seven centres, or zones, upon which the seven primitive groups of the first Root-race were born.

25. The engraving is reproduced in the “Sacred Mysteries of the Mayas and Quiches” on p. 134.

26. See “Source of Measures” p. 50 to 53 and also Book II. Part 2.

27. See “Masonic Review,” Cincinnati, June 1886, Art. Kabala No. 6.

28. See “Isis Unveiled,” Vol. II., pp. 300 et seq., for a proof of the antiquity of the decimal system of figures.

29. See “Source of Measures,” pp. 276, et seq. App. VII.

30. In the “Book Al-Chazari” by Jehuda-ha-Levi, translated by Dr. D. Cassell.

31. The appellation Ak-ad (or Akkadians) is of the same class as Ad-m, Ha-va (Eve), AEd-en (Eden); Ak-Ad meaning “Son of Ad” (like the sons of Ad in Ancient Arabia). Ad-ad, the “Only One” and the First, was the Ad-on or “Lord” of Syria and consort of Ad-ar-gat or Aster’t, the Syrian goddess. And Gan-AEden (Eden) or Gandunia was Babylonia and Mesopotamia. In Assyrian Ak meant Creator, the letter K pronounced Kh (Ah) gutturally. According to Swedenborg’s mysticism Adam was not a man but a church (?) of primitive light. In the Vedas Ad-iti is the primitive light, the Akasa of the phenomenal world.

32. Adam-Jehovah, Brahma and Mars are, in one sense, identical; they are all symbols for primitive or initial generative powers for the purposes of human procreation. Adam is red, and so also are Brahma-Viraj and Mars — god and planet. Water is the blood of the Earth; therefore, all these names are connected with Earth and Water. “It takes earth and water to create a human soul,” says Moses. Mars is identical with Kartikeya God of War (in one sense) — which god is born of the Sweat of Siva, Siva Gharmaja and the Earth. In the Mahabharata he is shown as born without the intervention of a woman. And he is also called “Lohita,” the red, like Adam, and the other “first men.” Hence, the author of “The Source of Measures” is quite right in thinking that Mars (and all the other gods of like attributes), “being the god of war and of bloodshed, was but a secondary idea flowing out of the primary one of shedding of blood in conception for the first time.” Hence Jehovah became later a fighting god, “Lord of Hosts,” and one who commands war. He is the aggressive Zodh — or Cain by permutation who slew his (female) “brother,” whose “blood crieth from the ground,” the Earth having opened her mouth to receive the blood. (Genesis iii.)

33. Apollo Karneios is certainly a Greek transformation from the Hindu Krishna Karna. “Karna” means radiant from “carne,” “a ray,” and Karneios, which was a title of Apollo with the Celts as with the Greeks, meant “Sun born.”

34. Usanas-Sukra or Venus is our “Lucifer,” the morning star, of course. The ingenuity of this allegory in its manifold meanings is great indeed. Thus Brihaspati (the planet Jupiter) or Brahmanaspati is, in the Rig Veda, a deity who is the symbol and the prototype of the exoteric or ritualistic worship. He is priest sacrificer, suppliant, and the medium through which the prayers of mortals reach the gods. He is the Purohita (family priest, or Court Chaplain) of the Hindu Olympus and the spiritual Guru of the Gods. Soma is the mystery god and presides over the mystic and occult nature in man and the Universe. Tara, the priest’s wife, who symbolizes the worshipper, prefers esoteric truths to their mere shell, exotericism; hence she is shown as carried off by Soma. Now Soma is the sacred juice of that name, giving mystic visions and trance revelations, the result of which union is Budha (Wisdom), Mercury, Hermes, etc., etc.; that science in short which to this day is proclaimed by the Brihaspatis of Theology as devilish and Satanic. What wonder that by expanding the cycle of this allegory we find Christian theology espousing the quarrel of the Hindu gods, and regarding Usanas (Lucifer), who helped Soma against that ancient personification of ritualistic worship (Brahmanaspati, the lord of the Brahmans, now become “Jupiter-Jehovah”) as Satan, the “enemy of God”!

35. As shown elsewhere, it is only the “Heavenly Man,” Adam Kadmon, of the first chapter of Genesis, who is made “in the image and likeness of God.” Adam, of chapter ii., is not said to be made in that image nor in the divine likeness, before he ate of the forbidden fruit. The former Adam is the Sephirothal Host; the second Adam is the Mindless first human Root-race; the third Adam is the race that separated, whose eyes are opened.

36. For a discussion of the scientific objections to the views and figures here enunciated, the reader is referred to the Addenda, which form Part III. of this book.

37. Achyuta is an almost untranslatable term. It means that which is not subject to fall or change for the worse: the Unfalling; and it is the reverse of chyuta, “the Fallen.” The Dhyanis who incarnate in the human forms of the Third Root-Race and endow them with intellect (Manas) are called the chyuta, for they fall into generation.

38. This is perhaps the reason why, in the Bhagavad Gita, we are told that Brahma had communicated to Narada in the beginning that all men whatsoever, even Mlechchhas, outcasts and barbarians, might know the true nature of Vasudeva and learn to have faith in that deity.

39. Sesha, who is also Ananta, the infinite, and the “Cycle of Eternity” in esotericism, is credited with having given his astronomical knowledge to Garga, the oldest astronomer of India, who propitiated him, and forthwith knew all about the planets and how to read omens.

40. See “Lectures on the Indian Literature,” p. 253, by Prof. A. Weber; in Trubner’s Asiatic Series.

41. Even the Maya Indians of Guatemala had their Zodiac from untold antiquity. And “primitive man acted in the same manner independently of time or locality in every age,” observes a French writer.

42. The “Tirukkanda Panchanga” for the Kali Yug 4986, by Chintamany Raghanaracharya, son of the famous Government astronomer of Madras, and Tartakamala Venkata Krishna Rao.

43. 300 million years, or Three Occult Ages. The Rig Veda has the same division. In the “Physician’s Hymn,” (X 97 1) it is said that “the plants came into being three ages (Triyugam) before the gods” on our Earth (See “Chronology of the Brahmins” at the end of this Stanza).

44. These two must not be confused with the seven creations or divisions in each Kalpa (See Book I. “The Seven Creations”). The primary and secondary creations are here meant.

45. Whence the identity of the ideas? The Chinese have the same traditions. According to the commentator Kwoh P’oh, in the work called Shan-Hai-King, “Wonders by Sea and Land,” a work which was written by the historiographer Chung Ku from engravings on nine urns made by the Emperor Yu, (B.C. 2255), an interview is mentioned with men having two distinct faces on their heads, before and behind, monsters with bodies of goats and human faces, etc. Gould, in his “Mythical Monsters,” p. 27, giving the names of some authors on Natural History, mentions Shan-Hai-King. According to Kwoh P’oh (A.D. 276-324) this work was compiled three thousand years before his time, or at seven dynasties distance. Yang Sun of the Ming Dynasty (commencing A.D. 1368) states that it was compiled by Kung Chia and Chung Ku (as stated above). Chung Ku at the time of the last emperor of the Hia dynasty, B.C. 1818, fearing that the emperor might destroy the books treating of the ancient time, carried them in his flight to Yin. (See “Mythical Monsters,” by C. Gould, p. 27.)

46. Gods and planetary Spirits, especially the Ribhus. “The three Ribhus” who yet become “thrice seven in number” of their gifts.

47. Remember the “winged Races” of Plato; and the Popol-Vuh accounts of the first human race, which could walk, fly and see objects, however distant.

48. See “Mythical Monsters,” by Charles Gould.

49. In the first volume of the lately published “Introduction a l’etude des Races Humaines,” by M. de Quatrefages, there is proof that since the post-tertiary period and even before that time — since many Races were already scattered during that age on the face of the Earth — man has not altered one iota in his physical structure. And if, surrounded for ages by a fauna that altered from one period or cycle to another, which died out, which was reborn in other forms — so that now there does not exist one single animal on Earth, large or small, contemporary with the man of that period — if, then, every animal has been transformed save man himself, this fact goes to prove not only his antiquity, but that he is a distinct Kingdom. Why should he alone have escaped transformation? Because, says de Quatrefages, the weapon used by him, in his struggle with nature and the ever-changing geological conditions and elements, was “his psychic force, not his physical strength or body,” as in the case of animals. Give man only that dose of intelligence and reason with which other mammalia are endowed, and with his present bodily organization he will show himself the most helpless of creatures of Earth. And as everything goes to prove that the human organism with all its characteristics, peculiarities and idiosyncrasies existed already on our Globe in those far distant geological periods when there was not yet one single specimen of the now-existing forms of mammalia, what is the unavoidable conclusion? Why this: Since all the human races are of one and the same species, it follows that this species is the most ancient of all the now-living mammalia. Therefore it is the most stable and persevering of all, and was already as fully developed as it is now when all the other mammalia now known had not made even their first approach to appearance on this Earth. Such is the opinion of the great French Naturalist, who gives thereby a terrible blow to Darwinism.

50. The Monads of the presentments of men of the Third Round, the huge Ape-like forms.

51. In the esoteric system the seven principles in man are represented by seven letters. The first two are more sacred than the four letters of the Tetragrammaton.

52. The intermediate spheres, wherein the Monads, which have not reached Nirvana, are said to slumber in unconscious inactivity between the Manvantaras.

53. Explained elsewhere. The “Three Fires,” Pavaka, Pavamana, and Suchi, who had forty-five sons, who, with their three fathers and their Father Agni, constitute the 49 fires. Pavamana (fire produced by friction) is the parent of the fire of the Asuras; Suchi (Solar fire) is the parent of the fire of the gods; and Pavaka (electric fire) is the father of the fire of the Pitris (See Vayu Purana). But this is an explanation on the material and the terrestrial plane. The flames are evanescent and only periodical; the fires — eternal in their triple unity. They correspond to the four lower, and the three higher human principles.

54. The Suras, who become later the A-Suras.

55. Atma, Buddhi and Manas. In Devachan the higher element of the Manas is needed to make it a state of perception and consciousness for the disembodied Monad.

56. This has in esotericism a direct bearing upon the seven principles of the manifested Brahma, or universe, in the same order as in man. Exoterically, it is only four principles.

57. Demons is a very loose word to use, as it applies to a great number of inferior — i.e., more material — Spirits, or minor Gods, who are so termed because they “war” with the higher ones; but they are no devils.

58. The same order of principles in man: — Atma (Spirit), Buddhi (Soul), its vehicle, as Matter is the Vahan of Spirit, and Manas (mind), the third, or the fifth microcosmically. On the plane of personality, Manas is the first.

59. Thus, says the Commentary, the saying “by day the gods are most powerful, and by night the demons,” is purely allegorical.

60. This thinking of oneself as this, that, or the other, is the chief factor in the production of every kind of psychic or even physical phenomena. The words “whosoever shall say to this mountain be thou removed and cast into the sea, and shall not doubt . . . . that thing will come to pass,” are no vain words. Only the word “faith” ought to be translated by will. Faith without Will is like a wind-mill without wind — barren of results.

61. The same idea is found in the first four chapters of Genesis, with their “Lord” and “God,” which are the Elohim and the Androgynous Eloha.

62. But see the difficulties suggested later, in the works of various geologists, against this theory. Compare Sir R. S. Bull’s article in “Nature” (Dec. 1, 1881), and also what the American geologists say.

63. The goddess who gave birth to these primordial monsters, in the account of Berosus, was Thallath, in Greek Thalassa, “the Sea.”

64. See, for comparison, the account of creation by Berosus (Alexander Polyhistor) and the hideous beings born from the two-fold principle (Earth and Water) in the Abyss of primordial creation: Neras (Centaurs, men with the limbs of horses and human bodies), and Kimnaras (men with the heads of horses) created by Brahma in the commencement of the Kalpa.

65. See Commentary following Sloka 18.

66. For a similar admission see Prof. Lefevre’s Philosophy, p. 481.

67. The esoteric doctrine says that this “cosmic evolution” refers only to our solar system; while exoteric Hinduism makes the figures refer, if we do not mistake, to the whole Universal System.

68. Another point of disagreement. Occultism says: “The astral prototypes of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to man have taken that time (300 million years) to evolve, re-forming out of the cast-off materials of the preceding Round, which, though very dense and physical in their own cycle, are relatively ethereal as compared with the materiality of our present middle Round. At the expiration of these 300 million years, Nature, on the way to the physical and material, down the arc of descent, begins with mankind and works downwards, hardening or materialising forms as it proceeds. Thus the fossils found in strata, to which an antiquity, not of eighteen, but of many hundreds of millions of years, must be ascribed, belong in reality to forms of the preceding Round, which, while living, were far more ethereal than physical, as we know the physical. That we perceive and disinter them as tangible forms, is due to the process of materialization or crystallization referred to, which took place subsequently, at the beginning of the Fourth Round, and reached its maximum after the appearance of man, proceeding parallel with his physical evolution. This alone illustrates the fact that the degree of materiality of the Earth changes pari passu with that of its inhabitants. And thus man now finds, as tangible fossils, what were once the (to his present senses) ethereal forms of the lower kingdoms. The above Brahmanical figures refer to evolution beginning on Globe A, and in the First Round. In this Volume we speak only of this, the Fourth Round.”

69. This difference and the change of cyphers in the last three triplets of figures, the writer cannot undertake to account for. According to every calculation, once the three hundred millions are subtracted, the figures ought to stand, 1,655,884,687. But they are given as stated in the Tamil calendar above-named and as they were translated. The school of the late Pandit Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, gives a date of 1,960,852,987. See the “Arya Magazine” of Lahore, the cover of which bears the words: “Aryan era 1,960,852,987.”

70. Vaivasvata Manu is the one human being — some versions add to him the seven Rishis — who in the Matsya Avatar allegory is saved from the Deluge in a boat, like Noah in the Ark. Therefore, this Vaivasvata Manvantara would be the “post-Diluvian” period. This, however, does not refer to the later “Atlantean” or Noah’s deluge, nor to the Cosmic Deluge or Pralaya of obscuration, which preceded our Round, but to the appearance of mankind in the latter Round. There is a great difference made, however, between the “Naimitika,” occasional or incidental, “Prakritika,” elemental, “Atyantika,” the absolute, and “Nitya,” the perpetual Pralaya; the latter being described as “Brahma’s contingent recoalescence of the Universe at the end of Brahma’s Day.” The question was raised by a learned Brahmin Theosophist: “Whether there is such a thing as Cosmic Pralaya; because, otherwise, the Logos (Krishna) would have to be reborn, and he is Aja (unborn).” We cannot see why. The Logos is said to be born only metaphorically, as the Sun is born daily, or rather a beam of that Sun is born in the morning and is said to die when it disappears, whereas it is simply reabsorbed into the parent essence. Cosmic Pralaya is for things visible, not for the Arupa, formless, world. The Cosmic or Universal Pralaya comes only at the end of one hundred years of Brahma; when the Universal dissolution is said to take place. Then the Avyaya, say the exoteric scriptures, the eternal life symbolized by Vishnu, assuming the character of Rudra, the Destroyer, enters into the Seven Rays of the Sun and drinks up all the waters of the Universe. “Thus fed, the seven solar Rays dilate to seven suns and set fire to the whole Cosmos. . . . . .”

71. Since a Maha-Yuga is the 1,000th part of a day of Brahma.

72. See article “Geology,” in “Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

73. This allows a chance even to the Biblical “Adam Chronology” of 6,000 years. (Ibid.)

74. See his “Modern Science and Modern Thought.”

75. To the Silurian period as regards Molluscs and Animal life — granted; but what do they know of man?

76. Wilson’s “Translation of Vishnu Purana,” Vol. I., pp. 50, 51.

77. According to the wonderful chronology of Bentley, who wrote in days when Biblical chronology was still undisputed; and also according to that of those modern Orientalists who dwarf the Hindu dates as far as they can.

78. Now Sri is the daughter of Bhrigu, one of the Prajapatis and Rishis, the chief of the Bhrigus, “the Consumers,” the aerial class of gods. She is Lakshmi, the wife of Vishnu, and she is “the bride of Siva” (Gauri), and she is Sarasvati, “the watery,” the wife of Brahma, because the three gods and goddesses are one, under three aspects. Read the explanation by Parasara, in Vishnu Purana in Bk. I., ch. viii. (Vol. I., Wilson’s trans., p. 119), and you will understand. “The Lord of Sri” is the moon, he says, and “Sri is the wife of Narayana, the God of Gods”; Sri or Lakshmi (Venus) is Indrani, as she is Sarasvati, for in the words of Parasara: “Hari (or Iswara, “the Lord”) is all that is called male in the Universe; Lakshmi is all that is termed female. There is nothing else than they.” Hence she is “female,” and “God” is male Nature.

79. Sri is goddess of, and herself “Fortune and Prosperity.”

80. “Masonic Review;” Cincinnati, June 1886, Art. “The Cabbalah.”

81. Because, as the allegory shows, the Gods who had no personal merit of their own, dreading the sanctity of those self-striving incarnated Beings who had become ascetics and Yogis, and thus threatened to upset the power of the former by their self-acquired powers — denounced them. All this has a deep philosophical meaning and refers to the evolution and acquirement of divine powers through self-exertion. Some Rishi-Yogis are shown in the Puranas to be far more powerful than the gods. Secondary gods or temporary powers in Nature (the Forces) are doomed to disappear; it is only the spiritual potentiality in man which can lead him to become one with the infinite and the absolute.

82. See Book I., Stanzas III. to V. The triangle becomes a Pentagon (five-fold) on Earth.

83. Seth, as Bunsen and others have shown, is not only the primitive god of the Semites — early Jews included — but also their “semi-divine ancestor.” For, says Bunsen (“God in History,” vol. i, pp. 233, 234), “the Seth of Genesis, the father of Enoch (the man) must be considered as originally running parallel with that derived from the Elohim, Adam’s father.” “According to Bunsen, the Deity (the god Seth) was the primitive god of Northern Egypt and Palestine” (Staniland Wake, “The Great Pyramid”). And Seth became considered in the later Theology of the Egyptians as “an evil daemon,” says the same Bunsen, for he is one with Typhon and one with the Hindu demons as a logical sequel.

84. See Mr. Mather’s “Kabbalah Unveiled.”

85. Translated in I. Myer’s Qabbalah.

86. Vide “The Holy of Holies: its esoteric meaning,” in Part II of this Volume.

87. Zohar iii., 290a, quoted in Isaac Myer’s Qabbalah, p. 387.

88. “. . . Huxley, supported by the most evident discoveries in Comparative Anatomy, could utter the momentous sentence that the anatomical differences between man and the highest apes are less than those between the latter and the lowest apes. In relation to our genealogical tree of man, the necessary conclusion follows that the human race has evolved gradually from the true apes.” (“The Pedigree of Man,” by Ernest Haeckel, translated by Ed. B. Aveling, p. 49).

What may be the scientific and logical objections to the opposite conclusion — we would ask? The anatomical resemblances between Man and the Anthropoids — grossly exaggerated as they are by Darwinists, as M. de Quatrefages shows — are simply enough “accounted for” when the origin of the latter is taken into consideration.

“Nowhere, in the older deposits, is an ape to be found that approximates more closely to man, or a man that approximates more closely to an ape . . . . . .”

89. “. . . . . The same gulf which is found to-day between Man and Ape, goes back with undiminished breadth and depth to the Tertiary period. This fact alone is enough to make its untenability clear,” (Dr. F. Pfaff, Prof. of Natural Science in the University of Erlangen).

90. We are quite aware that the Vayu and Matsya Puranas identify (agreeably to Western interpretation) the Agnishwatta with the seasons, and the Barhishad Pitris with the months; adding a fourth class — the Kavyas — cyclic years. But do not Christian, Roman Catholics identify their Angels with planets, and are not the seven Rishis become the Saptarshi — a constellation? They are deities presiding over all the cyclic divisions.

91. The Vayu Purana shows the region called Viraja-loka inhabited by the Agnishwattas.

92. This was hinted at in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., p. xxxviii., though the full explanation could not then be given: “The Pitris are not the ancestors of the present living men, but those of the first human kind or Adamic race; the spirits of human races, which, on the great scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were physically as well as spiritually, far superior to our modem pigmies. In Manava-Dharma-Sastra they are called the Lunar ancestors.”

93. Whence the subsequent assertions of St. John’s vision, referred to in his Apocalypse, about “the great red Dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads,” whose “tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth” (ch. xii.).

94. The verse “did cast them to the Earth,” plainly shows its origin in the grandest and oldest allegory of the Aryan mystics, who, after the destruction of the Atlantean giants and sorcerers, concealed the truth — astronomical, physical, and divine, as it is a page out of pre-cosmic theogony — under various allegories. Its esoteric, true interpretation is a veritable Theodice of the “Fallen Angels,” so called; the willing and the unwilling, the creators and those who refused to create, being now mixed up most perplexingly by Christian Catholics, who forget that their highest Archangel, St. Michael, who is shown to conquer (to master and to assimilate) the Dragon of Wisdom and of divine Self-sacrifice (now miscalled and calumniated as Satan), was the first to refuse to create! This led to endless confusion. So little does Christian theology understand the paradoxical language of the East and its symbolism, that it even explains, in its dead letter sense, the Chinese Buddhist and Hindu exoteric rite of raising a noise during certain eclipses to scare away the “great red Dragon,” which laid a plot to carry away the light! But here “Light” means esoteric Wisdom, and we have sufficiently explained the secret meaning of the terms Dragon, Serpent, etc., etc., all of which refer to Adepts and Initiates.

95. In spite of all efforts to the contrary, Christian theology — having burdened itself with the Hebrew esoteric account of the creation of man, which is understood literally — cannot find any reasonable excuse for its “God, the Creator,” who produces a man devoid of mind and sense; nor can it justify the punishment following an act, for which Adam and Eve might plead non compos. For if the couple is admitted to be ignorant of good and evil before the eating of the forbidden fruit, how could it be expected to know that disobedience was evil? If primeval man was meant to remain a half-witted, or rather witless, being, then his creation was aimless and even cruel, if produced by an omnipotent and perfect God. But Adam and Eve are shown, even in Genesis, to be created by a class of lower divine Beings, the Elohim, who are so jealous of their personal prerogatives as reasonable and intelligent creatures, that they will not allow man to become “as one of us.” This is plain, even from the dead-letter meaning of the Bible. The Gnostics, then, were right in regarding the Jewish God as belonging to a class of lower, material and not very holy denizens of the invisible World.

96. In Isis Unveiled several of these Gnostic systems are given. One is taken from the Codex Nazaraeus, the Scriptures of the Nazarenes, who, although they existed long before the days of Christ, and even before the laws of Moses, were Gnostics, and many of them Initiates. They held their “Mysteries of Life” in Nazara (ancient and modern Nazareth), and their doctrines are a faithful echo of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine — some of which we are now endeavouring to explain.

97. See the translation from the Greek by Francois, Monsieur de Foix, Evesque d’Ayre: the work dedicated to Marguerite de France, Reine de Navarre. Edition of 1579, Bordeaux.

98. See Max Muller’s review of the Popol-Vuh.

99. Mr. James Darmesteter, the translator of the Vendidad, speaking of it, says: “The tree, whatever it is . . .” (p. 209).

100. Plato’s “Timaeus.”

101. See “Asgard and the Gods”: “The renewal of the World.”

102. The “Father of the Sacred Fire,” writes Prof. Jolly, “is Twashtri . . . his mother was Maya. He himself was styled Akta (anointed, [[christos]]), after the priest had poured upon his head the spirituous (?) Soma, and on his body butter purified by sacrifice”; (“Man before Metals,” p. 190). The source of his information is not given by the French Darwinist. But the lines are quoted to show that light begins to dawn even upon the materialists. Adalbert Kuhn, in his “Die Herabkunft des Feuers,” identifies the two signs and with Arani, and designates them under this name. He adds: “This process of kindling fire naturally led men to the idea of sexual reproduction,” etc. Why could not a more dignified idea, and one more occult, have led man to invent that symbol, in so far as it is connected, in one of its aspects, with human reproduction? But its chief symbolism refers to Cosmogony.

“Agni, in the condition of Akta, or anointed, is suggestive of Christ,” remarks Prof. Jolly. “Maya, Mary, his mother; Twastri, St. Joseph, the carpenter of the Bible.” In the Rig Veda, Viswakarman is the highest and oldest of the Gods and their “Father.” He is the “carpenter or builder,” because God is called even by the monotheists, “the Architect of the Universe.” Still, the original idea is purely metaphysical, and had no connection with the later Phallicism.

103. It is not clear why “Bhutas” should be rendered by the Orientalists as meaning “evil Spirits” in the Puranas. In the Vishnu Purana, Book I, ch. 5, the Sloka simply says: “Bhutas — fiends, frightful from being monkey-coloured and carnivorous”; and the word in India now means ghosts, ethereal or astral phantoms, while in esoteric teaching it means elementary substances, something made of attenuated, noncompound essence, and, specifically, the astral double of any man or animal. In this case these primitive men are the doubles of the first ethereal Dhyanis or Pitris.

104. See “Pymander,” Bk. II., verses 17 to 29.

105. See “Genesis of the Elements,” by Prof. W. Crookes, p. 21.

106. The opponents of Hinduism may call the above Pantheism, Polytheism, or anything they may please. If Science is not entirely blinded by prejudice, it will see in this account a profound knowledge of natural Sciences and Physics, as well as of Metaphysics and Psychology. But to find this out, one has to study the personifications, and then convert them into chemical atoms. It will then be found to satisfy both physical and even purely materialistic Science, as well as those who see in evolution the work of the “Great Unknown Cause” in its phenomenal and illusive aspects.

107. See Vol. 1. Part III., “Gods, Monads and Atoms.” It is symbolised in the Pythagorean Triangle, the 10 dots within, and the seven points of the Triangle and the Cube.

108. Whence the Kabalistic name of Shells given to the astral form, the body called Kama Rupa, left behind by the higher angels in the shape of the higher Manas, when the latter leaves for Devachan, forsaking its residue.

109. Which shows that the Essenes believed in re-birth and many reincarnations on Earth, as Jesus himself did, a fact we can prove from the New Testament itself.

110. It is corroborated, however, as we have shown, by the esotericism of Genesis. Not only are the animals created therein after the “Adam of Dust,” but vegetation is shown in the Earth before “the heavens and the Earth were created.” “Every plant of the field before it (the day that the heavens and the Earth were made, v. 4) was in the Earth” (v. 5). Now, unless the Occult interpretation is accepted, which shows that in this 4th Round the Globe was covered with vegetation, and the first (astral) humanity was produced before almost anything could grow and develop thereon, what can the dead letter mean? Simply that the grass was in the earth of the Globe before that Globe was created? And yet the meaning of verse 6, which says that “there went up a mist from the Earth” and watered the whole face of the Earth before it rained, and caused the trees, etc., to grow, is plain enough. It shows also in what geological period it occurred, and further what is meant by “Heaven and Earth.” It meant the firmament and dry incrustated land, separated and ridden of its vapours and exhalations. Moreover, the student must bear in mind that, as Adam Kadmon, “the male and female being” of Genesis, ch. 1., is no physical human being but the host of the Elohim, among which was Jehovah himself — so the animals mentioned in that chapter as “created” before man in the dead letter text, were no animals, but the Zodiacal signs and other sidereal bodies.

111. To those who would inquire “What has Hydrogen to do with air or oxygenation?” it is answered: “Study first the ABC of Occult Alchemy.” In their anxiety, however, to identify Pymander, “the mouth of Mystery,” with St. John the Baptist prophetically, they thus identified also the 7 Kabeiri and the Assyrian Bulls with the Cherubs of the Jews and the Apostles. Having, moreover, to draw a line of demarcation between the four and the three — the latter being the Fallen Angels; and furthermore to avoid connecting these with the “Seven Spirits of the Face,” the Archangels, they unceremoniously threw out all they did not choose to recognise. Hence the perversion in the order of the Elements, in order to make them dovetail with the order of the Gospels, and to identify the Angel-Man with Christ. With the Chaldees, the Egyptians, from whom Moses adopted the Chroub (Cherubs in their animal form), and the Ophites; with all these, the Angels, the Planets, and the Elements, were symbolized mystically and alchemically by the Lion (Mikael); the Bull (Uriel); the Dragon (Raphael); the Eagle (Gabriel); the Bear (Thot-Sabaoth); the Dog (Erataoth); the Mule (Uriel or Thartharaoth). All these have a qualificative meaning.

112. See Laing’s “Modern Science and Modern Thought,” p. 90.

113. See Book I. Part I. Stanza VII. Commentary 10.

114. Second Edition, p. 161.

115. And why not all the progenitive first Races, human as well as animal; and why one “remote progenitor”?

116. Obviously so, on the lines of Evolutionism, which traces the mammalia to some amphibian ancestor.

117. “Odyssey,” xi. 298 to 305; “Iliad,” iii., 243.

118. Chants Cypriaques, Hyg. Tal., 80. Ovid, “Fasti,” etc. See Decharme’s “Mythologie de la Grece Antique.”

119. See Brahma Kalahamsa in Book I. Stanza III., p. 78.

120. See Decharme’s “Mythologie,” etc., p. 652.

121. Nem., x., 80 et seq. Theocras, xxiv., 131.

122. xxxiv., v. 5; Theocritus, xxii., 1.

123. Apollodorus, III. ii., 1.

124. Castor’s tomb was shown in Sparta, in days of old, says Pausanias (III., 13, 1); and Plutarch says that he was called at Argos the demi-mortal or demi-hero [[mizarchagetas]]. (See Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 23.)

125. Pindar. Nem. x., 60, Dissen.

126. Schol. Eurip. “Orestes,” 463, Dindorf. See Decharme’s “Mythol.,” etc., p. 654.

127. The Monad is impersonal and a god per se, albeit unconscious on this plane. For, divorced from its third (often called fifth) principle, Manas, which is the horizontal line of the first manifested triangle or trinity, it can have no consciousness or perception of things on this earthly plane. “The highest sees through the eye of the lowest” in the manifested world; Purusha (Spirit) remains blind without the help of Prakrit (matter) in the material spheres; and so does Atma-Buddhi without Manas.

128. “Morals,” p. 484 f.

129. This strange idea and interpretation are accepted by Decharme in his “Mythologie de la Grece Antique.” “Castor and Pollux,” he says, “are nothing but the Sun and Moon, conceived as twins . . . The Sun, the immortal and powerful being that disappears every evening from the horizon and descends under the Earth, as though he would make room for the fraternal orb which comes to life with night, is Pollux, who sacrifices himself for Castor; Castor, who, inferior to his brother, owes to him his immortality: for the Moon, says Theophrastus, is only another, but feebler Sun.” (De Ventis 17. See Decharme, p. 655.)

130. See “Book of Enoch.”

131. Adam (Kadmon) is, like Brahma and Mars, the symbol of the generative and creative power typifying Water and Earth — an alchemical secret. “It takes Earth and Water to create a human soul,” said Moses. Mars is the Hindu Mangala, the planet Mars, identical with Kartikeya, the “War-God,” born of Gharma-ja (Siva’s sweat) and of the Earth. He is Lokita, the red, like Brahma also and Adam. The Hindu Mars is, like Adam, born from no woman and mother. With the Egyptians, Mars was the primeval generative Principle, and so are Brahma, in exoteric teaching, and Adam, in the Kabala.

132. Abel is Chebel, meaning “Pains of Birth,” conception.

133. See “Isis Unveiled,” Vol. II, p. 398, where Jehovah is shown to be Adam and Eve blended, and Hevah, and Abel, the feminine serpent.

134. See “Isis Unveiled,” Vol. I., 305: “The union of the two create a third Race, etc.”

135. Jod in the Kabala has for symbol the hand, the forefinger and the lingham, while numerically it is the perfect one; but it is also the number 10, male and female, when divided.

136. See “Source of Measures,” p. 227.

137. Vol. II., p. 264, et seq.

138. “Isis Unveiled,” Vol. II., p. 462.

139. See for comparison Hosea, xii. 6, where it is so punctuated.

140. See the “Timaeus.”

141. See Extracts from that Essay in “The Theosophist,” of February, 1883.

142. Compare Ezekiel’s vision (chap. i) of the four divine beings who “had the likeness of a man” and yet had the appearance of a wheel, “when they went they went upon their four sides . . . . for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheel.”

143. See Prof. Wilder’s Essay “The Primeval Race Double-Sexed.”

144. Eugibinus, a Christian, and the Rabbis Samuel, Manasseh ben Israel, and Maimonides taught that “Adam had two faces and one person, and from the beginning he was both male and female — male on one side and female on the other (like Manu’s Brahma), but afterwards the parts were separated.” The one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm of David recited by Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eliazar is evidence of this. “Thou hast fashioned me behind and before,” not beset as in the Bible, which is absurd and meaningless, and this shows, as Prof. Wilder thinks, “that the primeval form of mankind was androgynous.”

145. See the union of Chochmah, Wisdom, with Binah, Intelligence, or Jehovah, the Demiurge, called Understanding in the Proverbs of Solomon, ch. vii. Unto men Wisdom (divine occult Wisdom) crieth: “Oh, ye simple, understand Wisdom; and ye fools, be of an understanding heart.” It is spirit and matter, the nous and the psyche; of the latter of which St. James says that it is “earthly, sensual, and devilish.”

146. An hypothesis evolved in 1881 by Mr. Mattieu Williams seems to have impressed Astronomers but little. Says the author of “The Fuel of the Sun,” in Knowledge, Dec. 23, 1881: “Applying now the researches of Dr. Andrews to the conditions of Solar existence . . . I conclude that the Sun has no nucleus, either solid, liquid, or gaseous, but is composed of dissociated matter in the critical state, surrounded, first, by a flaming envelope, due to the recombination of the dissociated matter, and outside of this, by another envelope of vapours due to this combination.”

This is a novel theory to be added to other hypotheses, all scientific and orthodox. The meaning of the “critical state” is explained by Mr. M. Williams in the same journal (Dec. 9, 1881), in an article on “Solids, Liquids, and Gases.” Speaking of an experiment by Dr. Andrews on carbonic acid, the scientist says that “when 88° is reached, the boundary between liquid and gas vanished; liquid and gas have blended into one mysterious intermediate fluid; an indefinite fluctuating something is there filling the whole of the tube — an etherealised liquid or a visible gas. Hold a red-hot poker between your eye and the light; you will see an upflowing wave of movement of what appears like liquid air. The appearance of the hybrid fluid in the tube resembles this, but is sensibly denser, and evidently stands between the liquid and gaseous states of matter, as pitch or treacle stands between solid and liquid.”

The temperature at which this occurs has been named by Dr. Andrews the “critical temperature”; here the gaseous and the liquid states are “continuous,” and it is probable that all other substances capable of existing in both states have their own particular critical temperatures.

Speculating further upon this “critical” state, Mr. Mattieu Williams emits some quite occult theories about Jupiter and other planets. He says: “Our notions of solids, liquids, and gases are derived from our experiences of the state of matter here upon this Earth. Could we be removed to another planet, they would be curiously changed. On Mercury water would rank as one of the condensible gases; on Mars, as a fusible solid; but what on Jupiter?”

“Recent observations justify us in regarding this as a miniature sun, with an external envelope of cloudy matter, apparently of partially-condensed water, but red-hot, or probably still hotter within. His vaporous atmosphere is evidently of enormous depth, and the force of gravitation being on his visible outer surface two-and-a-half times greater than that on our Earth’s surface, the atmospheric pressure, in descending below this visible surface, must soon reach that at which the vapour of water would be brought to its critical condition. Therefore we may infer that the oceans of Jupiter are neither of frozen, liquid, nor gaseous water, but are oceans or atmospheres of critical water. If any fish or birds swim or fly therein, they must be very critically organized.”

As the whole mass of Jupiter is 300 times greater than that of the Earth, and its compressing energy towards the centre proportional to this, its materials, if similar to those of the Earth, and no hotter, would be considerably more dense, and the whole planet would have a higher specific gravity; but we know by the movement of its satellites that, instead of this, its specific gravity is less than a fourth of that of the Earth. This justifies the conclusion that it is intensely hot; for even hydrogen, if cold, would become denser than Jupiter under such pressure.

“As all elementary substances may exist as solids, liquids, or gases, or, critically, according to the conditions of temperature and pressure, I am justified in hypothetically concluding that Jupiter is neither a solid, a liquid, nor a gaseous planet, but a critical planet, or an orb composed internally of associated elements in the critical state, and surrounded by a dense atmosphere of their vapours and those of some of their compounds such as water. The same reasoning applies to Saturn and other large and rarified planets.”

It is gratifying to see how scientific imagination approaches every year more closely to the borderland of our occult teachings.

147. “The Day After Death,” p. 23.

148. The first occurred when what is now the North Pole was separated from the later Continents.

149. We must remember that at the head of all the Babylonian gods were Ea, Anu, and the primeval Bel; and that Ea, the first, was the God of Wisdom, the great “God of Light” and of the deep, and that he was identified with Oannes, or the Biblical Dagon — the man-fish who rose out of the Persian Gulf.

150. See Part. II. § “The Holy of Holies.”

151. It is far later on that the Moon became a male god; with the Hindus it was Soma, with the Chaldeans Nannak or Nannar, and Sin, the son of Mulil, the older Bel. The “Akkadians” called him the “Lord of Ghosts”; and he was the god of Nipoor (Niffer) in northern Babylonia. It is Mulil who caused the waters of the Flood to fall from heaven on Earth, for which Xisuthrus would not allow him to approach his altar. As the modern Assyriologists have now ascertained, it is the northern Nipoor which is the centre whence Chaldean (black) magic spread; and Eridu (the Southern) which was the primitive seat of the worship of the culture god, the god of divine wisdom — the Sun-God being the supreme deity everywhere. With the Jews, the Moon is connected with Israel’s Jehovah and his seed, because Ur was the chief seat of the worship of the Moon-god, and because Abraham is said to have come from Ur, when from A-bra(h)m, he becomes Abraham.

152. When Narada, the virgin-ascetic, threatened to put an end to the human race by preventing Daksha’s sons from procreating it.

153. This is corroborated by a learned Brahmin. In his most excellent lectures on the Bhagavad Gita (see “Theosophist,” April, 1887, p. 444) the lecturer says: “There is a peculiarity to which I must call your attention. He (Krishna) speaks here of four Manus. Why does he speak of four? We are now in the seventh Manvantara, that of Vaivasvata. If he is speaking of the past Manus, he ought to speak of six, but he only mentions four. In some commentaries an attempt has been made to interpret this in a peculiar manner. The word ‘Chatvaraha’ is separated from the word ‘Manavaha,’ and is made to refer to Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatkumara, and Sanatsujata, who are also included among the mind-born sons of Prajapati. But this interpretation will lead to a most absurd conclusion, and make the sentence contradict itself. The persons alluded to in the text have a qualifying clause in the sentence. It is well known that Sanaka and the other three refused to create, though the other sons had consented to do so; therefore, in speaking of those persons from whom humanity has sprung into existence, it would be absurd to include those four also in the list. The passage must be interpreted without splitting the compound into two nouns. The number of Manus will then be four, and the statement would then contradict the Puranic account, though it would be in harmony with the occult theory. You will recollect that it is stated (in Occultism) that we are now in the Fifth Root-Race. Each Root-Race is considered as the Santhathi of a particular Manu. Now, the Fourth Race has passed, or, in other words, there have been four past Manus. . . . .”

154. “Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,” xviii.; “American Journal of Science,” III., xi., 456; and Croll’s “Climate and Time.” Lemuria was not submerged by a flood, but was destroyed by volcanic action, and afterwards sank.

155. Agruerus is Kronos, or Saturn, and the prototype of the Israelitish Jehovah. As connected with Argha, the Moon or Ark of salvation, Noah is mythologically one with Saturn. But then this cannot relate to the terrestrial flood. (But see Faber’s “Kabiri,” Vol. I, pp. 35, 43, and 45.)

156. See ibid., Vol. II., p. 240.

157. Sanchoniathon says that the Titans were the sons of Kronos, and seven in number; and he calls them fire-worshippers, Aletae (sons of Agni?), and diluvians. Al-ait is the god of fire.

158. Of which seven, let us remark, the Aryans, and not the Semites, were the originators, while the Jews got that number from the Chaldeans.

159. Seven individual sons of God, or Pitars and Pitris; also in this case the sons of Kronos or Saturn (Kala “time”) and Arkites, like the Kabiri and Titans, as their name — “lunar ancestors” — shows, the Moon being the Ark, or Argha, on the watery abyss of space.

160. See “Kabiri,” Vol. I., p. 131.

161. Aretia is the female form of Artes (Egyptian Mars). Thence the Chaldean (and now Hebrew) word (Aretz) “Earth.” The author of “Beitrage zur Kenntniss” (Art. under “Artes” Mars) quotes: “Addit Cedrenus (Salem I., 3): Stella Martis ab Egyptiis vocatur Ertosi (plantare, generare). Significat autem hoc omnis generis procreationem et vivificationem, omnisque substantiae et materiae naturam et vim ordinantem atque procreantem.” It is Earth as “source of being;” or, as explained by the author of “The Source of Measures,” Arts is the same in Hebrew and Egyptian, and both combine the primeval idea of Earth as source; precisely as in the Hebrew itself, under another form, Adam and Madim, (Mars) are the same, and combine the idea of Earth with Adam under the form of H-Adam-H.

162. Chap. lxiv., Sect. xi.

163. All such expressions are explained in the “Anthropogenesis” of this Book, and elsewhere.

164. One has to remember that, in the Hindu philosophy, every differentiated unit is such only through the cycles of Maya, being one in its essence with the Supreme or One Spirit. Hence arises the seeming confusion and contradiction in the various Puranas, and at times in the same Purana, about the same individual. Vishnu — as the many-formed Brahma, and as Brahma (neuter) — is one, and yet he is said to be all the 28 Vyasas (Vishnu Purana). “In every Dvapara (third) age, Vishnu, in the person of Vyasa, divides the Veda, which is one, into four and many portions. Twenty-eight times have the Vedas been arranged by the great Rishis in the Vaivasvata Manvantara, in the Dvapara Yuga . . . and, consequently, twenty-eight Vyasas have passed away . . . they who were all in the form of Veda-Vyasas, who were the Vyasas of their respective eras. . . . ” (Book III., Ch. III.) “This world is Brahma in Brahma, from Brahma . . . nothing further to be known.” Then, again . . . “There were in the First Manvantara seven celebrated sons of Vasishta, who in the Third Manvantara, were sons of Brahma (i.e., Rishis), the illustrious progeny of Urja.” This is plain: the Humanity of the First Manvantara is that of the seventh and of all the intermediate ones. The mankind of the First Root-Race is the mankind of the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. To the last it forms a cyclic and constant reincarnation of the Monads belonging to the Dhyan Chohans of our Planetary chain.

165. The Dvapara Yuga differs for each Race. All races have their own cycles, which fact causes a great difference. For instance, the Fourth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans was in its Kali-Yug, when destroyed, whereas the Fifth was in its Satya or Krita Yuga. The Aryan Race is now in its Kali Yuga, and will continue to be in it for 427,000 years longer, while various “family Races,” called the Semitic, Hamitic, etc., are in their own special cycles. The forthcoming 6th Sub Race — which may begin very soon — will be in its Satya (golden) age while we reap the fruit of our iniquity in our Kali Yuga.

166. “Posthumous Humanity” — translated by H. S. Olcott, London, 1887.

167. Professor Newcomb says: “The heat evolved by contraction would last only 18,000,000 years” (“Popular Astronomy,” p. 500); but “a temperature permitting the existence of water could not be reached earlier than 10,000,000 years ago” (Winchell’s “World-Life, “ p. 356). But Sir W. Thomson says that the whole age of the incrustation of the Earth is 18,000,000 years, though, this year, he has again altered his opinion and allows only 15,000,000 years as the age of the Sun. As will be shown in the Addenda, the divergence of scientific opinions is so great that no reliance can ever be placed upon scientific speculation.

168. The essay on “The Plurality of Worlds” (1853) — an anonymous work, yet well known to have been the production of Dr. Whewell — is a good proof of this. No Christian ought to believe in either the plurality of worlds or the geological age of the globe, argues the Author; because, if it is asserted that this world is only one among the many of its kind, which are all the work of God, as it is itself; that all are the seat of life, all the realm and dwelling of intelligent creatures endowed with will, subject to law and capable of free-will; then, it would become extravagant to think that our world should have been the subject of God’s favours and His special interference, of His communications and His personal visit. . . . . . . Can the Earth presume to be considered the centre of the moral and religious Universe, he asks, if it has not the slightest distinction to rely upon in the physical Universe? Is it not as absurd to uphold such an assertion (of the plurality of inhabited worlds), as it would be to-day to uphold the old hypothesis of Ptolemy, who placed Earth in the centre of our system? . . . The above is quoted from memory, yet almost textually. The author fails to see that he is bursting his own soap-bubble with such a defence.

169. Or what is more generally known as Protoplasm. This substance received its name of “Sarcode” from Prof. Dujardin Beaumetz far earlier.

170. The Monera are indeed Protista. They are neither animals “nor plants,” writes Haeckel; “. . . the whole body of the Moneron represents nothing more than a single thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive condition.” (“Journal of Microscopical Science,” Jan., 1869, p. 28.)

171. Behold the Iguanodon of the Mesozoic ages — the monster 100 feet long — now transformed into the small Iguana lizard of South America. Popular traditions about giants in days of old, and their mention in every mythology, including the Bible, may some day be shown to be founded on fact. In nature, the logic of analogy alone ought to make us accept these traditions as scientific verities.

172. “Force and Matter”; by L. Buchner, edited by J. F. Collingwood, F.R.S.L., p. 61.

173. “Introduction a l’Etude des Races Humaines.”

174. “Modern Science and Modern Thought,” by S. Laing, p. 32.

175. “Esoteric Buddhism,” p. 70.

176. The same fate is in store for spiritualistic phenomena and all the other psychological manifestations of the inner Man. Since the days of Hume, whose researches culminated in a nihilistic idealism, Psychology has gradually shifted its position to one of crass materialism. Hume is regarded as a psychologist, and yet he denied a priori the possibility of phenomena in which millions now believe, including many men of science. The Hylo-idealists of to-day are rank Annihilationists. The schools of Spencer and Bain are respectively positivist and materialist, and not metaphysical at all. It is psychism and not psychology; it reminds one as little of the Vedantic teaching as the pessimism of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann recalls the esoteric philosophy, the heart and soul of true Buddhism.

177. It must be noted that, though the astral and physical planes of matter ran parallel with one another even in the earliest geological ages, yet they were not in the same phases of manifestation in which they are now. The Earth did not reach its present grade of density till 18,000,000 years ago. Since then both the physical and astral planes have become grosser.

178. The conception and definition of the Absolute by Cardinal Cusa may satisfy only the Western mind, prisoned, so unconsciously to itself, and entirely degenerated by long centuries of scholastic and theological sophistry. But this “Recent philosophy of the Absolute,” traced by Sir W. Hamilton to Cusa, would never satisfy the more acutely metaphysical mind of the Hindu Vedantin.

179. Cudworth’s “Intellectual System,” I. p. 328.

180. See Book I., chap. v., p. 71.

181. “Vishnu Purana,” Book I., chap. xv. of vol. 2.

182. Ibid., Book I., chap. v.

183. Whom Manu calls “our paternal grandfathers” (III., 284). The Rudras are the seven manifestations of Rudra-Siva, “the destroying god,” and also the grand Yogi and ascetic.

184. See § II, §§ 1, Commentary.

185. To speak of life as having arisen, and of the human race as having originated, in this absurdly unscientific way, in the face of the modern Pedigrees of Man, is to court instantaneous annihilation. The esoteric doctrine risks the danger, nevertheless, and even goes so far as to ask the impartial reader to compare the above hypothesis (if it is one) with Haeckel’s theory — now fast becoming an axiom with science — which is quoted verbatim: —

“. . . How did life, the living world of organisms, arise? And, secondly, the special question: How did the human race originate? The first of these two inquiries, that as to the first appearance of living beings, can only be decided empirically (! !) by proof of the so-called Archebiosis, or equivocal generation, or the spontaneous production of organisms of the simplest conceivable kind. Such are the Monera (Protogenes, Protamoeba, etc), exceedingly simple microscopic masses of protoplasm without structure or organisation, which take in nutriment and reproduce themselves by division. Such a Moneron as that primordial organism discovered by the renowned English zoologist Huxley, and named Bathybius Haeckelii, appears as a continuous thick protoplasmic covering at the greatest depths of the ocean, between 3,000 and 30,000 feet. It is true that the first appearance of such Monera has not up to the present moment been actually observed; but there is nothing intrinsically improbable in such an evolution.” (The “Pedigree of Man,” Aveling’s translation, p 33.)

The Bathybius protoplasm having recently turned out to be no organic substance at all, there remains little to be said. Nor, after reading this, does one need to consume further time in refuting the further assertion that . . . . “in that case man also has beyond a doubt (to the minds of Haeckel and his like) arisen from the lower mammalia, apes and the earlier simian creatures, the still earlier Marsupialia, Amphibia, Pisces, by progressive transformations,” all produced by “a series of natural forces working blindly, . . . . . . . . aim, without design” (p. 36).

The above-quoted passage bears its criticism on its own face. Science is made to teach that which, up to the present time, “has never been actually observed.” She is made to deny the phenomenon of an intelligent nature and a vital force independent of form and matter, and to find it more scientific to teach the miraculous performance of “natural forces working blindly without aim or design.” If so, then we are led to think that the physico-mechanical forces of the brains of certain eminent Scientists are leading them on as blindly to sacrifice logic and common sense on the altar of mutual admiration. Why should the protoplasmic Moneron producing the first living creature through self-division be held as a very scientific hypothesis, and an ethereal pre-human race generating the primeval men in the same fashion be tabooed as unscientific superstition? Or has materialism obtained a sole monopoly in Science?

186. The Rakshasas, regarded in Indian popular theology as demons, are called the “Preservers” beyond the Himalayas. This double and contradictory meaning has its origin in a philosophical allegory, which is variously rendered in the Puranas. It is stated that when Brahma created the demons, Yakshas (from Yaksh, to eat) and the Rakshasas, both of which kinds of demons, as soon as born, wished to devour their creator, those among them that called out “Not so! oh, let him be saved (preserved)” were named Rakshasas (Vishnu Purana Book I. ch. v.). The Bhagavata Purana (III, 20, 19-21) renders the allegory differently. Brahma transformed himself into night (or ignorance) invested with a body, upon which the Yakshas and Rakshasas seized, exclaiming “Do not spare it; devour it.” Brahma then cried out, “Do not devour me, spare me.” This has an inner meaning of course. The “body of Night” is the darkness of ignorance, and it is the darkness of silence and secrecy. Now the Rakshasas are shown in almost every case to be Yogis, pious Saddhus and Initiates, a rather unusual occupation for demons. The meaning then is that while we have power to dispel the darkness of ignorance, “devour it,” we have to preserve the sacred truth from profanation. “Brahma is for the Brahmins alone,” says that proud caste. The moral of the fable is evident.

187. The gradual evolution of man in the Secret Doctrine shows that all the later (to the profane the earliest) Races have their physical origin in the early Fourth Race. But it is the sub-race, which preceded the one that separated sexually, that is to be regarded as the spiritual ancestors of our present generations, and especially of the Eastern Aryan Races. Weber’s idea that the Indo-Germanic Race preceded the Aryan Vedic Race is, to the Occultist, grotesque to the last degree.

188. Every process of healing and cicatrization in the higher animal groups — even in the case of reproduction of mutilated limbs with the Amphibians — is effected by fission and gemmation of the elementary morphological elements.

189. The term here means neither the dolicho-cephalic nor the brachyo-cephalic, nor yet skulls of a smaller volume, but simply brains devoid of intellect generally. The theory which would judge of the intellectual capacity of a man according to his cranial capacity, seems absurdly illogical to one who has studied the subject. The skulls of the stone period, as well as those of African Races (Bushmen included) show that the first are above rather than below the average of the brain capacity of the modern man, and the skulls of the last are on the whole (as in the case of Papuans and Polynesians generally) larger by one cubic inch than that of the average Frenchman. Again, the cranial capacity of the Parisian of to-day represents an average of 1437 cubic centimetres compared to 1523 of the Auvergnat.

190. A. Lefevre, “Philosophy,” p. 498.

191. “Principles of Zoology,” p. 206.

192. Vol. I, p. 154.

193. This is explained in the section which follows this series of Stanzas in the allegory from the Puranas concerning Kandu, the holy sage, and Pramlocha, the nymph alleged to have hypnotised him, (Vide §§ II., Commentary after St. I.), a suggestive allegory, scientifically, as the drops of perspiration, which she exuded, are the symbols of the spores of science (Vide infra).

194. This will be explained as we proceed. This unwillingness to fashion men, or create, is symbolized in the Puranas by Daksha having to deal with his opponent Narada, the “strife-making ascetic.”

195. Vide Verse 24.

196. The evolutionist Professor Schmidt alludes to “the fact of the separation of sexes, as to the derivation of which from species once hermaphrodite all (the believers in creation naturally excepted) are assuredly of one accord.” Such indeed is the incontestable evidence drawn from the presence of rudimentary organs. (Cf., his “Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,” p. 159.) Apart from such palpable traces of a primeval hermaphroditism, the fact may be noted that, as Laing writes, “a study of embryology. . . . shows that in the human higher animal species the distinction of sex is not developed until a considerable progress has been made in the growth of the embryo.” (“A Modern Zoroastrian,” p.106.) The Law of Retardation — operative alike in the case of human races, animal species, etc., when a higher type has once been evolved — still preserves hermaphroditism as the reproductive method of the majority of plants and many lower animals.

197. See “Vishnu Purana,” Book I., ch. 7, para. 1.

198. See “Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 777.

199. Vide “Vishnu-Purana,” Book III., chap. 2.

200. In the oldest MS. of “Vishnu-Purana” in the possession of an Initiate in Southern India, the god is not Indra, but Kama, the god of love and desire. See text further on.

201. These are the exoteric figures given in a purposely reversed and distorted way, being the figure of the duration of the cycle between the first and second human race. All Orientalists to the contrary, there is not a word in any of the Puranas that has not a special esoteric meaning.

202. “Vishnu Purana,” Book I., ch. 15. Cf. also Vivien’s temptation of Merlin (Tennyson), the same legend in Irish tradition.

203. The text has: — “From Brahma were born mind-engendered progeny, with forms and faculties derived from his corporeal nature, embodied spirits produced from the limbs (gatra) of Dhimat (all-wise deity). These beings were the abode of the three qualities of deva-sarga (divine creation, which, as the five-fold creation, is devoid of clearness of perception, without reflection, dull of nature). But as they did not multiply themselves, Brahma created “other mind-born sons like himself,” namely, the Brahma-rishis, or the Prajapati (ten and seven). Sanandana and the other sons of Vedhas (Brahma) were previously created, but, as shown elsewhere, they were “without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the universe and undesirous of progeny” (Book I, ch. 7). These Sanandana and other Kumaras are then the Gods, who after refusing to “create progeny” are forced to incarnate in senseless men. The reader must pardon unavoidable repetitions in view of the great number of the facts given.

204. See Plato’s “Banquet.”

205. An allegorical reference to the “Sacred Animals” of the Zodiac and other heavenly bodies. Some Kabalists see in them the prototypes of the animals.

206. In “Hesiod,” Zeus creates his third race of men out of ash-trees. In the “Popol Vuh” the Third Race of men is created out of the tree Tzita and the marrow of the reed called Sibac. But Sibac means “egg” in the mystery language of the Artufas (or Initiation caves). In a report sent in 1812 to the Cortes by Don Baptista Pino it is said: “All the Pueblos have their Artufas — so the natives call subterranean rooms with only a single door where they (secretly) assemble. . . . . These are impenetrable temples . . . . and the doors are always closed to the Spaniards. . . . . They adore the Sun and Moon . . . . fire and the great snake (the creative power), whose eggs are called Sibac.”

207. There is a notable difference esoterically between the words Sarpa and Naga, though they are both used indiscriminately. Sarpa (serpent) is from the root Srip, serpo to creep; and they are called “Ahi,” from Ha, to abandon. “The sarpa was produced from Brahma’s hair, which, owing to his fright at beholding the Yakshas, whom he had created horrible to behold, fell off from the head, each hair becoming a serpent. They are called Sarpa from their creeping and Ahi because they had deserted the head” (Wilson). But the Nagas, their serpent’s tail notwithstanding, do not creep, but manage to walk, run and fight in the allegories.

208. Wilson translates the word as “demigods” (See his Vishnu Purana, p. 130); but Raumas or Raumyas are simply a race, a tribe.

209. xii. 10308.

210. “Vishnu Purana”

211. “Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism,” pp. 186-7. The “Unknown Ancestry” referred to are the primeval astral prototypes. Cf. § II., p. 260 (a).

212. See verse 24.

213. These “animals,” or monsters, are not the anthropoid or any other apes, but verily what the Anthropologists might call the “missing link,” the primitive lower man; see infra.

214. The shame of their animal origin which our modern scientists would emphasize if they could.

215. Vide “Esoteric Buddhism.”

216. “A very strong argument in favour of variability is supplied by the science of Embryology. Is not a man in the uterus . . . . . a simple cell, a vegetable with three or four leaflets, a tadpole with branchiae, a mammal with a tail, lastly a primate (?) and a biped? It is scarcely possible not to recognise in the embryonic evolution a rapid sketch, a faithful summary, of the entire organic series.” (Lefevre, Philosophy, p. 484).

The summary alluded to is, however, only that of the store of types hoarded up in man, the microcosm. This simple explanation meets all such objections, as the presence of the rudimentary tail in the foetus — a fact triumphantly paraded by Haeckel and Darwin as conclusively in favour of the Ape-Ancestor theory. It may also be pointed out that the presence of a vegetable with leaflets in the embryonic stages is not explained on ordinary evolutionist principles. Darwinists have not traced man through the vegetable, but Occultists have. Why then this feature in the embryo, and how do the former explain it?

217. “The Proofs of Evolution,” a lecture by Haeckel.

218. Cory: “Ancient Fragments.”

219. “Origin of Species,” pp. 448, 489, first edition.

220. This verse in the Veda (X. 5-6), “The seven wise ones (rays of wisdom, Dhyanis) fashion seven paths (or lines as also Races in another sense). To one of these may the distressed mortal come” — which is interpreted solely from the astronomical and cosmic aspect — is one of the most pregnant in occult meaning. The “paths” may mean lines (maryadah), but they are primarily beams of light falling on the paths leading to wisdom. (See Rig Veda IV. 5-13.) It means “ways” or paths. They are, in short, the seven Rays which fall free from the macrocosmic centre, the seven principles in the metaphysical, the seven Races in the physical sense. All depends upon the key used.

221. “Rig Veda,” X. 10, 5, 2.

222. It is next to impossible to translate verbally some of these old Commentaries. We are often obliged to give the meaning only, and thus retranslate the verbatim translations.

223. Rudra, as a Kumara, is Lilalohita — red and blue.

224. This, regardless of modern materialistic evolution, which speculates in this wise: “The primitive human form, whence as we think all human species sprang, has perished this long time.” (This we deny; it has only decreased in size and changed in texture.) “But many facts point to the conclusion that it was hairy and dolichocephalic.” (African races are even now dolichocephalic in a great measure, but the palaeolithic Neanderthal skull, the oldest we know of, is of a large size, and no nearer to the capacity of the gorilla’s cranium than that of any other now-living man). “Let us, for the time being, call this hypothetical species Homo primigenius. . . . This first species, or the Ape-man, the ancestor of all the others, probably arose in the tropical regions of the old world from anthropoid apes.” Asked for proofs, the evolutionist, not the least daunted, replies: “Of these no fossil remains are as yet known to us, but they were probably akin to the Gorilla and Orang of the present day.” And then the Papuan negro is mentioned as the probable descendant in the first line (Pedigree of Man, p. 80).

Haeckel holds fast to Lemuria, which with East Africa and South Asia also, he mentions as the possible cradle of the primitive Ape-men; and so do many geologists. Mr. A. R. Wallace admits its reality, though in a rather modified sense, in his “Geographical Distribution of Animals.” But let not Evolutionists speak so lightly of the comparative size of the brains of man and the ape, for this is very unscientific, especially when they pretend to see no difference between the two, or very little at any rate. For Vogt himself showed that, while the highest of the Apes, the gorilla, has a brain of only 30 to 51 cubic inches, the brain of the lowest of the Australian aborigines amounts to 99.35 cubic inches. The former is thus “not half of the size of the brain of a new-born babe,” says Pfaff.

225. “Polynesian Researches,” Ellis. Vol. II., p. 38.

Missionaries seem to have pounced upon this name Ivi and made of it Eve. But, as shown by Professor Max Muller, Eve is not the Hebrew name but an European transformation of , chavah, “life,” or mother of all living; “while the Tahitian Ivi and the Maori Wheva meant bone and bone only.” (“False Analogies.”)

226. Chaire d’Hebreu au college de France, p. 20.

227. Of such semi-animal creatures, the sole remnants known to Ethnology were the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China, the men and women of which are entirely covered with hair. They were the last descendants in a direct line of the semi-animal latter-day Lemurians referred to. There are, however, considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks — e.g., the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Aryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc.

The Australians of the Gulf of St. Vincent and the neighbourhood of Adelaide are very hairy, and the brown down on the skin of boys of five or six years of age assumes a furry appearance. They are, however, degraded men — not the closest approximation to the “pithecoid man,” as Haeckel so sweepingly affirms. Only a portion of these men are a Lemurian relic. (Cf. “Esoteric Buddhism,” p.55.)

228. In calling the animal “Soulless,” it is not depriving the beast, from the humblest to the highest species, of a “soul,” but only of a conscious surviving Ego-soul, i.e., that principle which survives after a man, and reincarnates in a like man. The animal has an astral body, that survives the physical form for a short period; but its (animal) Monad does not re-incarnate in the same, but in a higher species, and has no “Devachan” of course. It has the seeds of all the human principles in itself, but they are latent.

229. “Manual of Geology,” p. 302.

230. The “fables” and “myths” about Leda and Jupiter, and such like, could never have sprung up in people’s fancy, had not the allegory rested on a fact in nature. Evolution, gradually transforming man into a mammal, did in his case only what it did in that of other animals. But this does not prevent man from having always stood at the head of the animal world and other organic species, and from having preceded the former.

231. To avoid confusion, let the reader remember that the term Root-Race applies to one of the seven great Races, sub-Race to one of its great Branches, and Family-Race to one of the sub-divisions, which include nations and large tribes.

232. In the Section on the Divine Dynasties, the nature of these “Instructors” is explained.

233. Vide Section attached to the “Divisions into Yugas.”

234. The present yellow races are the descendants, however, of the early branches of the Fourth Race. Of the third, the only pure and direct descendants are, as said above, a portion of the fallen and degenerated Australians, whose far distant ancestors belonged to a division of the seventh Sub-race of the Third. The rest are of mixed Lemuro-Atlantean descent. They have since then entirely changed in stature and intellectual capacities.

235. Language is certainly coeval with reason, and could never have been developed before men became one with the informing principles in them — those who fructified and awoke to life the manasic element dormant in primitive man. For, as Professor Max Muller tells us in his “Science of Thought,” “Thought and language are identical.” Yet to add to this the reflection that thoughts which are too deep for words, do not really exist at all, is rather risky, as thought impressed upon the astral tablets exists in eternity whether expressed or not. Logos is both reason and speech. But language, proceeding in cycles, is not always adequate to express spiritual thoughts. Moreover, in one sense, the Greek Logos is the equivalent of the Sanscrit Vach, “the immortal (intellectual) ray of spirit.” And the fact that Vach (as Devasena, an aspect of Saraswati, the goddess of hidden Wisdom) is the spouse of the eternal celibate Kumara, unveils a suggestive, though veiled, reference to the Kumaras, those “who refused to create,” but who were compelled later on to complete divine Man by incarnating in him. All this will be fully explained in the sections that follow.

236. Ptolemy, speaking in his ninth table of the Kabolitae (Kabul tribes), calls them [[Aristophuloi]], the aristocratic or noble tribes. The Afghans call themselves Ben-Issrael (children of Is(sa)rael), from Issa, “woman and also earth,” Sons of Mother Earth. But if you call an Afghan Yahoudi (Jew), he will kill you. The subject is fully treated elsewhere. The names of the supposed twelve tribes and the names of the real tribes, the same in number, of the Afghans, are the same. The Afghans being far older (at any rate, their Arabic stock) than the Israelites, no one need be surprised to find such tribal names among them as Youssoufzic, “Sons of Joseph” in Punjcaure and Boonere; the Zablistanee (Zebulon); Ben-manasseh (sons of Manasseh) among the Khojar Tartars; Isaguri, or Issachar (now Ashnagor in Afghanistan), etc., etc. The whole twelve names of the so-called twelve tribes are names of the signs of the Zodiac, as is now well proven. At any rate, the names of the oldest Arabic tribes, re-transliterated, yield the names of the zodiacal signs and of the mythical sons of Jacob likewise. Where are the traces of the Jewish twelve tribes? Nowhere. But there is a trace, and a good one, that the Jews have tried to deceive people with the help of those names. For, see what happens ages after the ten tribes had wholly disappeared from Babylon. Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to have the Hebrew Law translated for him into Greek (the famous Septuagint), wrote to the high priest of the Jews, Eleazar, to send him six men from each of the twelve tribes; and the seventy-two representatives (of whom sixty were ghosts apparently) came to the king in Egypt and translated the law amid miracles and wonders. See Butler’s “Horae Biblicae,” Josephus, and Philo Judaeus.

237. The Commentary explains that the apes are the only species, among the animals, which has gradually and with every generation and variety tended more and more to return to the original type of its male forefather — the dark gigantic Lemurian and Atlantean.

238. Vol. I., pp. 575, et seq.

239. “Journal Asiatique,” seventh year, 1855.

240. See Moses Maimonides, “More Nevochim.”

241. “Science Occulte,” p. 646.

242. “Revolution du Globe,” vol. v., p. 464.

243. We read in the “Memoire a l’Academie” of the “naive astonishment of Geoffrey St. Hilaire, when M. de Paravey showed to him in some old Chinese works and Babylonian tiles dragons, . . . . saurians and ornithorhynchuses (aquatic animals found only in Australia), etc., extinct animals that he had thought unknown on earth. . . . till his own day.”

244. See Isaiah, xxx. 6: “The viper and the flying serpent unto the land of trouble and anguish,” and the fiery serpents conquered by the brazen serpent of Moses.

245. The fossils reconstructed by science, which we know ought to be sufficient warrant for the possibility of even a Leviathan, let alone Isaiah’s flying serpents, or saraph mehophep, which words are translated in all the Hebrew dictionaries as “saraph,” enflamed or fiery venom, and “mehophep,” flying. But, although Christian theology has always connected both (Leviathan and saraph mehophep) with the devil, the expressions are metaphorical and have nought to do with the “evil one.” But the word Dracon has become a synonym for the latter. In Bretagne the word Drouk now signifies “devil,” whence, as we are told by Cambry (“Monuments Celtiques,” p. 299), the devil’s tomb in England, Draghedanum sepulcrum. In Languedoc the meteoric fires and will-o’-the-wisps are called Dragg, and in Bretagne Dreag, Wraie (or wraith), the castle of Drogheda in Ireland meaning the devil’s castle.

246. The ultramontane writers accept the whole series of draconian stories given by Father Kircher (OEdipus AEgyptiacus, “De Genere Draconum,”) quite seriously. According to that Jesuit, he himself saw a dragon which was killed in 1669 by a Roman peasant, as the director of the Museo Barberini sent it to him, to take the beast’s likeness, which Father Kircher did and had it published in one of his in-folios. After this he received a letter from Christopher Scherer, Prefect of the Canton of Soleure, Switzerland, in which that official certifies to his having seen himself with his own eyes, one fine summer night in 1619, a living dragon. Having remained on his balcony “to contemplate the perfect purity of the firmament,” he writes, “I saw a fiery, shining dragon rise from one of the caves of Mount Pilatus and direct itself rapidly towards Fluelen to the other end of the lake. Enormous in size, his tail was still longer and his neck very extended. His head and jaws were those of a serpent. In flying he emitted on his way numerous sparks (? !) . . . . I thought at first I was seeing a meteor, but soon looking more attentively, I was convinced by his flight and the conformation of his body that I saw a veritable dragon. I am happy to be thus able to enlighten your Reverence on the very real existence of those animals”; in dreams, the writer ought to have added, of long past ages.

247. As a convincing proof of the reality of the fact, a Roman Catholic refers the reader to the picture of that incident painted by Simon de Sienne, a friend of the poet, on the portal of the Church Notre Dame du Don at Avignon; notwithstanding the prohibition of the Sovereign Pontiff, who “would not allow this triumph of love to be enthroned in the holy place”; and adds: “Time has injured and rubbed out the work of art, but has not weakened its tradition.” De Mirville’s “Dragon-Devils” of our era seem to have no luck, as they disappear most mysteriously from the museums where they are said to have been. Thus the dragon embalmed by Ulysses Aldobranda and presented to the Musee du Senat, either in Naples or Bologna, “was there still in 1700, but is there no more.” (Vol. 2, p. 427, “Pneumatologie.”)

248. “Sacred Serpents” on p. 432 of de Mirville’s “Memoire.”

249. This is about as just as though — a few millenniums hence — a fanatic of some future new creed, who was bent on glorifying his religion at the expense of ancient Christianity, were to say: “Everywhere the quadruped lamb was adored. The nun placed it, calling it the Agnus, on her bosom; the priest laid it on the altar. It figured in every paschal meal, and was glorified loudly in every temple. And yet the Christians dreaded it and hated it, for they slew and devoured it. . . .” Heathens, at any rate, do not eat their sacred symbols. We know of no serpent, or reptile-eaters except in Christian civilized countries, where they begin with frogs and eels, and must end with real snakes, as they have begun with lamb and ended with horse-flesh.

250. “Pantheon,” 3.

251. The solar Chnouphis, or Agathodaemon, is the Christos of the Gnostics, as every scholar knows. He is intimately connected with the seven sons of Sophia (Wisdom), the seven sons of Aditi (universal Wisdom), her eighth being Marttanda, the Sun, which seven are the seven planetary regents or genii. Therefore Chnouphis was the spiritual Sun of Enlightenment, of Wisdom, hence the patron of all the Egyptian Initiates, as Bel-Merodach (or Bel-Belitanus) became later with the Chaldeans.

252. Hermes, or rather Thot, was a generic name. Abul Teda shows in “Historia Anti-Islamitica” five Hermes, and the names of Hermes, Nebo, Thot were given respectively in various countries to great Initiates. Thus Nebo, the son of Merodach and Zarpanitu (whom Herodotus calls Zeus-Belos), gave his name to all the great prophets, seers and Initiates. They were all “serpents of Wisdom,” as connected with the Sun astronomically, and with Wisdom spiritually.

253. “Pantheon,” text 15.

254. “Genesis,” ch. xlix.

255. Dunlap, in his introduction to “Sod, the Mysteries of Adonis,” explains the word “Sod” as arcanum, religious mystery, on the authority of Schindler’s “Penteglott.” “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him,” says Psalm xxv., 14. This is a mistranslation of the Christians, for it ought to read “Sod Ihoh (the mysteries of Ihoh) are for those who fear him” (Dunlap, “Mysteries of Adonis,” xi). “Al (El) is terrible in the great Sod of the Kadeshim (the priests, the holy, the Initiated), Psalm lxxxix, 7” (ibid.). The Kadeshim were very far from holy. (Vide Part II., “The Holy of Holies.”)

256. “The members of the priest-Colleges were called Sodales,” says Freund’s “Latin Lexicon” (iv. 448). “Sodalities were constituted in the Idaean Mysteries of the Mighty Mother,” writes Cicero in de Senectute. (“Mysteries of Adonis.”)

257. The priests of Baal who jumped over the fires. But this was a Hebrew term and a local one. “Saraph” — “fiery or flaming venom.”

258. “Book of the Dead” xxxix.

259. The same ram’s horns are found on the heads of Moses which were on some old medals seen by the writer in Palestine, one of which is in her possession. The horns, made to form part of the shining aureole on the statue of Moses in Rome (Michael Angelo), are vertical instead of being bent down to the ears, but the emblem is the same; hence the Brazen Serpent.

260. But see Harris’s “Magic Papyrus” No. v.; and the ram-headed Ammon manufacturing men on a potter’s wheel.

261. Brasseur de Bourbourg: “Mexique,” pp. 135 and 574.

262. Ulupi has an entirely Atlantean ring about it. Like Atlantis, it is neither a Greek nor a Sanskrit name, but reminds one of Mexican names.

263. “Mahabharata,” Adiparva, Sloka, 7788, 7789. The “Bhagavata Purana,” ix., xx., 31, as explained by Sridhera, the commentator, makes Ulupi the daughter of the king of Manipura; but the late Pundit Dayanand Saraswati, certainly the greatest Sanskrit and Puranic authority in India on such questions, personally corroborated that Ulupi was daughter of the king of the Nagas at Patala, or America, 5000 years ago, and that the Nagas were Initiates.

264. Foh-tchou, literally, in Chinese meaning Buddha’s lord, or the teacher of the doctrines of Buddha-Foh.

265. This mountain is situated south-west of China, almost between China and Tibet.

266. Let the reader be reminded that in the Zohar, and also in all the Kabalistic works, it is maintained that “Metatron united to Shekinah” (or Shekinah as the veil (grace) of Ain-Soph), representing the Logos, is that very Tree of Knowledge; while Shamael — the dark aspect of the Logos — occupies only the rind of that tree, and has the knowledge of evil alone. As Lacour, who saw in the scene of the Fall (chap. iii., Genesis) an incident pertaining to Egyptian Initiation, says: — “The Tree of the Divination, or of the Knowledge of Good and Evil . . . . is the science of Tzyphon, the genius of doubt, Tzy to teach, and phon, doubt. Tzyphon is one of the Aleim; we shall see him presently under the name of Nach, the tempter” (Les OEloim, Vol. II., p. 218). He is now known to the symbologists under the name Jehovah.

267. This is the view taken and adopted by all the Church Fathers, but it is not the real esoteric teaching. The curse did not begin with the formation of either man or woman, for their separation was a natural sequence of evolution, but for breaking the law (See supra).

268. “By which (human) nature lives,” not even the animal — but the misguided, sensual and vicious nature, which men, not nature, created.

269. “The Source of Measures.”

270. Vide infra, “The Septenary,” in Part II.

271. “The Unicorn: a Mythological Investigation,” Robert Brown, jun., F.S.A.

272. Pp. 3 and 4, Introduction to “Mythical Monsters.”

273. “The Human Species,” p. 52.

274. “Manual of Geology,” p. 301.

275. “Recherches sur les Mammiferes,” plate 1.

276. Preface to “Wonders by Land and Sea,” (Shan Hai King).

277. There are archaeologists, who, like Mr. James Fergusson, deny the great antiquity of even one single monument in India. In his work, “Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India,” the author ventures to express the very extraordinary opinion that “Egypt had ceased to be a nation before the earliest of the cave-temples of India was excavated.” In short, he does not admit the existence of any cave anterior to the reign of Asoka, and seems anxious to prove that most of these rock-cut temples were executed during a period extending from the time of that pious Buddhist king until the destruction of the Andhra dynasty of Maghada, in the beginning of the fifth century. We believe such a claim perfectly arbitrary. Further discoveries will show that it is erroneous and unwarranted.

278. America when discovered, was called Atlanta by some native tribes.

279. Since then Donnelly’s Atlantis has appeared, and soon its actual existence will have become a scientific fact.

280. It is so divided to this day, and theosophists and Occultists, who have learned something of the Occult but undeniable power of Dugpaship at their own expense, know this but too well.

281. An approach to the statues at Bamian — also a Buddha 200 feet high — is found near a Jain settlement in Southern India, and appears to be the only one that remains at present.

282. Even Wilson admits that Rama and Ravana were personages founded on historical facts: — “The traditions of Southern India uniformly ascribing its civilization and the settlement of civilized Hindus (the Fifth Race) to the conquest of Lanka by Rama” (Vishnu Purana, iii., p. 318) — the victory of the “Sons of God” over the Atlantean sorcerers, says the true tradition.

283. Thus we are shown one hero, to give an instance, first born as the “unrighteous but valiant monarch” (Purusha) of the Daityas, Hiranyakasipu, slain by the Avatar Nara-Sinha (Man-lion). Then he was born as Ravana, the giant king of Lanka, and killed by Rama; after which he is reborn as Sisupala, the son of Rajarishi (King Rishi) Damaghosha, when he is again killed by Krishna, the last incarnation of Vishnu. This parallel evolution of Vishnu (spirit) with a Daitya, as men, may seem meaningless, yet it gives us the key not only to the respective dates of Rama and Krishna but even to a certain psychological mystery.

284. Strictly speaking, it is only from the time of the Atlantean, brown and yellow giant Races, that one ought to speak of man, since it was the Fourth race only which was the first completely human species, however much larger in size than we are now. In “Man” (by two chelas), all that is said of the Atlanteans is quite correct. It is chiefly that race which became “black with sin” that brought the divine names of the Asuras, the Rakshasas and the Daityas into disrepute, and passed them on to posterity as the names of fiends. For, as said, the Suras (gods) or Devas having incarnated in the wise men of Atlantis, the names of Asuras and Rakshasas were given to the Atlanteans; which names, owing to their incessant conflicts with the last remnants of the Third Race and the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” have led to the later allegories about them in the Puranas. “Asura was the generic appellation of all the Atlanteans who were the enemies of the spiritual heroes of the Aryans (gods).” (“Man,” p. 97.)

285. In general, the so-called orthodox Christian conceptions about the “fallen” angels or Satan, are as remarkable as they are absurd. About a dozen could be cited, of the most various character as to details, and all from the pen of educated lay authors, “University graduates” of the present quarter of our century. Thus, the author of “Earth’s Earliest Ages,” J. H. Pember, M.A., devotes a thick volume to proving Theosophists, Spiritualists, Metaphysicians, Agnostics, Mystics, poets, and every contemporary author on oriental speculations, to be the devoted servants of the “Prince of the Air,” and irretrievably damned. He describes Satan and his Antichrist in this wise: —

“Satan is the ‘Anointed Cherub’ of old. . . . God created Satan, the fairest and wisest of all his creatures in this part of His Universe, and made him Prince of the World, and of the Power of the Air. . . . He was placed in an Eden, which was both far anterior to the Eden of Genesis. . . . and of an altogether different and more substantial character, resembling the New Jerusalem. Thus, Satan being perfect in wisdom, and beauty, His vast empire is our earth, if not the whole solar system. . . . Certainly no other angelic power of greater or even equal dignity has been revealed to us. The Archangel Michael himself is quoted by Jude as preserving towards the Prince of Darkness the respect due to a superior, however wicked he may be, until God has formally commanded his deposition.” Then we are informed that “Satan was from the moment of his creation surrounded by the insignia of royalty” (!!): that he “awoke to consciousness to find the air filled with the rejoicing music of those whom God had appointed . . . .” Then the Devil “passes from the royalty to his priestly dignity” (!!!) “Satan was also a priest of the Most High,” etc., etc. And now — “Antichrist will be Satan incarnate” (pp. 56-59). The Pioneers of the coming Apollyon have already appeared — they are the Theosophists, the Occultists, the authors of the “Perfect Way,” of “Isis Unveiled,” of the “Mystery of the Ages,” and even of the “Light of Asia”!! The author notes the “avowed origin” (of Theosophy) from the “descending angels,” from the “Nephilim,” or the angels of the VIth ch. of Genesis, and the Giants. He ought to note his own descent from them also, as the present Secret Doctrine endeavours to show — unless he refuses to belong to the present humanity.

286. It is not correct to refer to Christ — as some theosophists do — as the sixth principle in man — Buddhi. The latter per se is a passive and latent principle, the spiritual vehicle of Atman, inseparable from the manifested Universal Soul. It is only in union and in conjunction with Self-consciousness that Buddhi becomes the Higher Self and the divine, discriminating Soul. Christos is the seventh principle, if anything.

287. To make it plainer, any one who reads that passage in Luke, will see that the remark follows the report of the seventy, who rejoice that “even the devils (the spirit of controversy and reasoning, or the opposing power, since Satan means simply “adversary” or opponent) are subject unto us through thy name.” (Luke x. 17.) Now, “thy name” means the name of Christos, or Logos, or the spirit of true divine wisdom, as distinct from the spirit of intellectual or mere materialistic reasoning — the higher self in short. And when Jesus remarks to this that he has “beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven,” it is a mere statement of his clairvoyant powers, notifying them that he already knew it, and a reference to the incarnation of the divine ray (the gods or angels) which falls into generation. For not all men, by any means, benefit by that incarnation, and with some the power remains latent and dead during the whole life. Truly “No man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son” as added by Jesus then and there (Ibid v. 22) — the Church “of Christ” less than any one else. The Initiates alone understood the secret meaning of the term “Father and the Son,” and knew that it referred to Spirit and Soul on the Earth. For the teachings of Christ were occult teachings, which could only be explained at the initiation. They were never intended for the masses, for Jesus forbade the twelve to go to the Gentiles and the Samaritans (Matt. x. 8), and repeated to his disciples that the “mysteries of Heaven” were for them alone, not for the multitudes (Mark iv. 11).

288. So, for instance, in the Puranas, “Pulastya,” a Prajapati, or son of Brahma — the progenitor of the Rakshasas, and the grandfather of Ravana, the Great King of Lanka (see Ramayana) — had, in a former birth, a son named Dattoli, “who is now known as the sage Agastya” — says Vishnu Purana. This name of Dattoli alone, has six more variants to it, or seven meanings. He is called respectively, Dattoi, Dattali, Dattotti, Dattotri, Dattobhri, Dambhobhi and Dambholi — which seven variants have each a secret sense, and refer in the esoteric comments to various ethnological classifications, and also to physiological and anthropological mysteries of the primitive races. For, surely, the Rakshasas are not demons, but simply the primitive and ferocious giants, the Atlanteans, who were scattered on the face of the globe as the Fifth Race is now. Vasishta is a warrant to this, if his words addressed to Parasara, who attempted a bit of jadoo (sorcery), which he calls “sacrifice,” for the destruction of the Rakshasas, mean anything. For he says, “Let no more of these unoffending ‘Spirits of Darkness’ be destroyed.” (see for details Adiparvan, s. 176, Mahabharata; also the Linga Purana “Purvardha,” s. 64.)

289. We have a passage from a Master’s letter which has a direct bearing upon these incarnating angels. Says the letter: “Now there are, and there must be, failures in the ethereal races of the many classes of Dhyan-Chohans, or Devas (progressed entities of a previous planetary period), as well as among men. But still, as the failures are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyan-Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower Kingdoms, this then happens. Where a new solar system has to be evolved these Dhyan-Chohans are borne in by influx ‘ahead’ of the Elementals (Entities . . . to be developed into humanity at a future time) and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual force, in the aura of a nascent world . . . until the stage of human evolution is reached. . . . Then they become an active force and commingle with the Elementals, to develop little by little the full type of humanity.” That is to say, to develop in, and endow man with his Self-conscious mind, or Manas.

290. When the earth with its planetary chain and man were to appear.

291. Our earth and the physical plane of consciousness.

292. When the pure, celestial Being (Dhyan Chohan) and the great Pitris of various classes were commissioned — the one to evolve their images (Chhaya), and make of them physical man, the others to inform and thus endow him with divine intelligence and the comprehension of the Mysteries of Creation.

293. The “dynasties of the kings” who all regard themselves as the “anointed,” reigning “by the Grace of God,” whereas in truth, they reign by the grace of matter, the great Illusion, the Deceiver.

294. See the “Primeval Manus of Humanity.”

295. The “Heavenly Man” — please mark again the word — is “the Logos” or the “Son” esoterically. Therefore, once that the title was applied to Christ (declared God and the very God himself) Christian theology had no choice. In order to support its dogma of the personal Trinity it had to proclaim, as it does, that the Christian Logos is the only true one, and that all the Logoi of other religions were false, and only the masquerading Evil Principles, Satan. Now see where this led Western theology to.

296. “For the Mind, a deity abounding in both sexes, being Life and Life, brought forth by its Word another Mind or Workman; which, being God of the Fire and the Spirit, fashioned and formed seven other Governors, which in their circles contain the Phenomenal World, and whose disposition is called Fate or Destiny.” (Section 9, ch. 1, ed. of 1579).

Here it is evident that “Mind” (the primeval universal Divine Thought) is neither the Unknown unmanifested One, since it abounds in both sexes (is male and female), nor yet the Christian Father, as the latter is a male and not an androgyne. The fact is that the Father, Son, and Man are hopelessly mixed up in the translations of Pymander.

297. The allegory of the fire of Prometheus is another version of the rebellion of the proud Lucifer, who was hurled down to the bottomless pit, or simply unto our Earth, to live as man. The Hindu Lucifer, the Mahasura, is also said to have become envious of the Creator’s resplendent light, and, at the head of inferior Asuras (not gods, but spirits), to have rebelled against Brahma; for which Siva hurled him down to Patala. But, as philosophy goes hand in hand with allegorical fiction in Hindu myths, the devil is made to repent, and is afforded the opportunity to progress: he is a sinful man esoterically, and can by yoga devotion, and adeptship, reach his status of one with the deity, once more. Hercules, the Sun-god, descends to Hades (the cave of Initiation) to deliver the victims from their tortures, etc., etc. The Christian Church alone creates eternal torment for the devil and the damned, that she has invented.

298. Why should, for instance, Eliphas Levi, the very fearless and outspoken Kabalist, have hesitated to divulge the mystery of the Fallen Angels so-called? That he knew the fact and real meaning of the allegory — both in its religious and mystical, as well as in its physiological sense — is proved by his voluminous writings and frequent allusions and hints. Yet Eliphas, after having alluded to it a hundred times in his previous works, says in his latest “Histoire de la Magie,” p. 220 . . . “We protest with all our might against the sovereignty and the ubiquity of Satan. We pretend neither to deny nor affirm here the tradition on the Fall of the Angels . . . but if so, then the prince of the Angelic Rebels can be at best the last and the most powerless among the condemned — now that he is separated from deity — which is the principle of every power. . . .” This is hazy and evasive enough; but see what Hargrave Jennings writes in his weird, staccato-like style: —

“Both Saint Michael and Saint George are types. They are sainted personages, or dignified heroes, or powers apotheosized. They are each represented with their appropriate faculties and attributes. These are reproduced and stand multiplied — distinguished by different names in all the mythologies . . . (including the Christian). . . . The idea regarding each is a general one. This idea and representative notion is that of the all-powerful champion — child-like in his ‘Virgin innocence’ — so powerful that this god-filled innocence (the Seraphim ‘Know most,’ the Cherubim ‘love most’) can shatter the world (articulated, so to use the word — in the magic of Lucifer, but condemned) in opposition to the artful constructions (this ‘side-life’) of the magnificent apostate, the mighty rebel, but yet at the same time the ‘Light-bringer,’ the Lucifer, the ‘Morning Star,’ the ‘Son of the morning’ — the very highest title ‘out of heaven,’ for in heaven it cannot be, but out of heaven it is everything. In an apparently incredible side of his character — qualities are of no sex — this archangel, St. Michael, is the invincible, sexless, celestial ‘Energy’ — to dignify him by his grand characteristics — the invisible ‘Virgin Combatant,’ clothed . . . and at the same time armed, in the denying mail of the Gnostic ‘refusal to create.’ This is another . . . ‘myth within myths’ . . . a stupendous ‘mystery of mysteries,’ because it is so impossible and contradictory. Unexplainable as the Apocalypse. Unrevealable as the ‘Revelation’ ” (p. 213).

Nevertheless, this unexplainable and unrevealable mystery will now be explained and revealed by the doctrines of the East. But as the very erudite, but still more puzzling author of “Phallicism” gives it, of course, no uninitiated mortal would ever understand the real drift of his remarks.

299. “Creation” — out of pre-existent eternal substance, or matter, of course, which substance, according to our teachings, is boundless, ever-existing space.

300. The Luciferians — the sect of the fourth century who are alleged to have taught that the Soul was a carnal body transmitted to the child by its father; — and that other religious and still earlier sect of the second century A.D., the Lucianists, who taught all this, and further, that the animal Soul was not immortal, were philosophizing on the grounds of the real Kabalistic and Occult teachings.

301. This “central sun” of the Occultists, which even Science is obliged to accept astronomically, for it cannot deny the presence in Sidereal Space of a central body in the milky way, a point unseen and mysterious, the ever-hidden centre of attraction of our Sun and system — this “Sun” is viewed differently by the Occultists of the East. While the Western and Jewish Kabalists (and even some pious modern astronomers) claim that in this sun the God-head is specially present — referring to it the volitional acts of God — the Eastern Initiates maintain that, as the supra-divine Essence of the Unknown Absolute is equally in every domain and place, the “Central Sun” is simply the centre of Universal life-Electricity; the reservoir within which that divine radiance, already differentiated at the beginning of every creation, is focussed. Though still in a laya, or neutral condition, it is, nevertheless, the one attracting, as also the ever-emitting, life Centre.

302. The Fourth, and the Fifth from below beginning by the physical body; the Third and the Fourth, if we reckon from Atma.

303. “New Aspects of Life.”

304. Angelic, Spiritual Essences, immortal in their being because unconditioned in Eternity; periodical and conditioned in their Manvantaric manifestations.

305. The history of Prometheus, Karma, and human consciousness, is found further on.

306. By an Englishman whose erratic genius killed him. The son of a Protestant clergyman, he became a Mahomedan, then a rabid atheist, and after meeting with a master, a Guru, he became a mystic; then a theosophist who doubted, despaired; threw up white for black magic, went insane and joined the Roman Church. Then again turning round, anathematized her, re-became an atheist, and died cursing humanity, knowledge, and God, in whom he had ceased to believe. Furnished with all the esoteric data to write his “War in Heaven,” he made a semi-political article out of it, mixing Malthus with Satan, and Darwin with the astral light. Peace be to his — Shell. He is a warning to the chelas who fail. His forgotten tomb may now be seen in the Mussulman burial ground of the Joonagad, Kathiawar, in India.

307. The author talks of the active, fighting, damning Jehovah as though he were a synonym of Parabrahm! We have quoted from this article to show where it dissents from theosophic teachings; otherwise it would be quoted some day against us, as everything published in the Theosophist generally is.

308. Explaining the Kabala, Dr. H. Pratt says, “Spirit was to man (to the Jewish Rabbin, rather?) a bodiless, disembodied, or deprived, and degraded being, and hence was termed by the ideograph Nahash ‘Deprived;’ represented as appearing to and seducing the human race — men through the Woman. . . . In the picture from this Nahash, this spirit was represented by a serpent, because from its destitution of bodily members, the Serpent was looked upon as a deprived and depraved and degraded creature” (“New Aspects,” p. 235). Symbol for symbol there are those who would prefer that of the serpent — the symbol of wisdom and eternity, deprived of limbs as it is — to the Jod () — the poetical ideograph of Jehovah in the Kabala — the god of the male symbol of generation.

309. Daksha, the “intelligent, the competent.” “This name generally carries with it the idea of creative power.” He is a son of Brahma, and of Aditi, and agreeably to other versions, a self-born power, which, like Minerva, sprang from his father’s body. He is the chief of the Prajapati — the Lords or Creators of Being. In Vishnu Purana, Parasara says of him, “in every Kalpa (or manvantara) Daksha and the rest are born and are again destroyed.” And the Rig-Veda says that “Daksha sprang from Aditi and Aditi from Daksha,” a reference to the eternal cyclic re-birth of the same divine Essence.

310. No one of these orders is distinct from the Pitris or Progenitors, as says Manu (iii. 284). “The wise call our fathers Vasus; our paternal grandfathers, Rudras; our paternal great grandfathers, Adityas; agreeably to a text of the Vedas,” or “this is an everlasting Vedic text” in another translation.

311. As now discovered by the late G. Smith in the Babylonian cylinder literature, it was the same in Chaldean theogony. Ishtar, “eldest of Heaven and of Earth.” Below him the Igaga or Angels of Heaven, and the Anunnaki, or angels of Earth. Below these again various classes of Spirits and “Genii” called Sadu, Vadukku, Ekimu, Gallu — of which some were good, some evil. (See “Babylonian Mythology.”)

312. Some superior, others inferior, to suit the Karma of the various reincarnating Monads which could not be all of the same degree of purity in their last births in other worlds. This accounts for the difference of races, the inferiority of the savage, and other human varieties.

313. “There are,” says Topinard (English edition of “Anthropology,” with preface by Professor Broca), “three fundamental elements of colour in the human organism — namely, the red, the yellow, and the black, which, mixed in variable quantities with the white of the tissues, give rise to those numerous shades seen in the human family.” Here is science unintentionally supporting Occultism again.

314. It must be remembered that the “last remnants” here spoken of, refer to those portions of the “great continent” which still remained, and not to any of the numerous islands which existed contemporaneously with the continent. Plato’s “island” was, for instance, one of such remnants; the others having sunk at various periods previously. An occult “tradition” teaches that such submersions occur whenever there is an eclipse of the “spiritual sun.”

315. Mr. Gladstone’s unfortunate attempt to reconcile the Genetic account with science (see Nineteenth Century, “Dawn of Creation” and the “Proem to Genesis,” 1886) has brought upon him the Jovian thunderbolt hurled by Mr. Huxley. The dead-letter account warranted no such attempt; and his fourfold order, or division of animated creation, has turned into the stone which, instead of killing the fly on the sleeping friend’s brow, killed the man instead. Mr. Gladstone killed Genesis for ever. But this does not prove that there is no esotericism in the latter. The fact that the Jews and all the Christians, the modern as well as the early sects, have accepted the narrative literally for two thousand years, shows only their ignorance; and shows the great ingenuity and constructive ability of the initiated Rabbis, who have built the two accounts — the Elohistic and the Jehovistic — esoterically, and have purposely confused the meaning by the vowelless glyphs or word-signs in the original text. The six days — yom — of creation do mean six periods of evolution, and the seventh that of culmination of perfection (not of rest), and refer to the seven Rounds and the seven Races with a distinct “creation” in each; though the use of the words boker, dawn or morning, and crib, evening twilight — which have esoterically the same meaning as sandhya, twilight, in Sanskrit — have led to a charge of the most crass ignorance of the order of evolution.

316. “Follow the law of analogy” — the Masters teach. Atma-Buddhi is dual and Manas is triple; inasmuch as the former has two aspects, and the latter three, i.e., as a principle per se, which gravitates, in its higher aspect, to Atma-Buddhi, and follows, in its lower nature, Kama, the seat of terrestrial and animal desires and passions. Now compare the evolution of the Races, the First and the Second of which are of the nature of Atma-Buddhi, their passive Spiritual progeny, and the Third Root-Race shows three distinct divisions or aspects physiologically and psychically; the earliest, sinless; the middle portions awakening to intelligence; and the third and last decidedly animal: i.e., Manas succumbs to the temptations of Kama.

317. “Men are made complete only during their third, toward the fourth cycle (race). They are made “gods” for good and evil, and responsible only when the two arcs meet (after 3 1/2 rounds towards the fifth Race). They are made so by the Nirmanakaya (spiritual or astral remains) of the Rudra-Kumaras, “cursed to be reborn on earth again; meaning — doomed in their natural turn to reincarnation in the higher ascending arc of the terrestrial cycle.” (Commentary IX.)

318. The whole trouble is this: neither physiologists nor pathologists will recognize that the cell-germinating substance (the cytoblastema) and the mother-lye from which crystals originate, are one and the same essence, save in differentiation for purposes.

319. “Trans. of Geolog. Soc. of Glasgow,” vol. iii. Very strangely, however, he has just changed his opinion. The sun, he says, is only 15,000,000 old.

320. Hence the philosophy in the allegory of the 7, 10, and finally 21 Prajapati, Rishis, Munis, etc., who all are made the fathers of various things and beings. The order of the seven classes or orders of plants, animals, and even inanimate things, given at random in the Puranas, is found in several commentaries in the correct rotation. Thus, Prithu is the father of the Earth. He milks her, and makes her bear every kind of grain and vegetable, all enumerated and specified. Kasyapa is the father of all the reptiles, snakes, demons, etc., etc.

321. See Vol. I. 151, et seq., about the tree of evolution — The “Mundane Tree.”

322. Checked and modified, however, by the Law of Retardation, which imposes a restriction on the advance of all species when a Higher Type makes its appearance.

323. This is shown by Faber, again a pious Christian, who says that “the Noetic family also . . . bore the appellations of Atlanteans and Titans, and the great patriarch himself was called by way of eminence Atlas and Titan.” (Vol. II. p. 285). And if so, then, according to the Bible, Noah must have been the progeny of the Sons of God, the fallen angels, agreeably to the same authority, and of the “daughters of men who were fair,” (See Genesis, chap. vi.) And why not, since his father Lamech slew a man, and was, with all his sons and daughters (who perished in the Deluge), as bad as the rest of mankind?

324. In that wonderful volume of Donnelly’s “Atlantis, the Antediluvian World,” the author, speaking of the Aryan colonies from Atlantis, and of the arts and sciences — the legacy of our Fourth Race — bravely announces that “the roots of the institutions of to-day reach back to the Miocene age.” This is an enormous allowance for a modern scholar to make; but civilization dates still further back than the Miocene Atlanteans. “Secondary-period” man will be discovered, and with him his long forgotten civilization.

325. Nature is the natural body, the shadow of the Progenitors; and —

326. Man is the “Heavenly man,” as already stated.

327. The “Pymander” of our museums and libraries is an abridgement of one of the Books of Thoth, by a Platonist of Alexandria. In the Third Century it was remodelled after old Hebrew and Phoenician MSS. by a Jewish Kabalist, and called the “Genesis of Enoch.” But even its disfigured remnants show how closely its text agrees with the Archaic Doctrine, as is shown in the creation of the Seven Creators and seven primitive men. As to Enoch, Thoth or Hermes, Orpheus and Kadmus, these are all generic names, branches and offshoots of the seven primordial sages (incarnated Dhyan Chohans or Devas, in illusive, not mortal bodies) who taught Humanity all it knew, and whose earliest disciples assumed their master’s names. This custom passed from the Fourth to the Fifth Race. Hence the sameness of the traditions about Hermes (of whom Egyptologists count five) Enoch, etc., they are all inventors of letters; none of them dies but still lives, and they are the first Initiators into, and Founders of the Mysteries. The Genesis of Enoch disappeared only very lately among the Kabalists. Guillaume Postel saw it. It was most certainly in a great measure a transcript from the books of Hermes, and far anterior to the Books of Moses, as Eliphas Levi tells his readers.

328. Uranos is a modified Varuna, “the Universal encompasser,” the all-embracer, and one of the oldest of the Vedic deities — Space, the maker of Heaven and Earth, since both are manifested out of his (or its) seed. It is only later that Varuna became the chief of the Adityas and a kind of Neptune riding on the Leviathan — Makara, now the most sacred and mysterious of the signs of the Zodiac. Varuna, “without whom no creature can even wink,” was degraded like Uranos, and, like him, he fell into generation, his functions, “the grandest cosmical functions,” as Muir calls them, having been lowered down from heaven to earth by exoteric anthropomorphism. As the same Orientalist says, “The attributes ascribed to Varuna (in the Vedas) impart to his character a moral elevation and sanctity far surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic Deity.” But to understand correctly the reason of his fall, like that of Uranos, one has to see in every exoteric religion the imperfect and sinful work of man’s fancy, and also to study the mysteries which Varuna is said to have imparted to Vasishta. Only . . . “his secrets and those of Mitra are not to be revealed to the foolish.”

329. Kronos is not only [[Chronos]], time, but also, as Breal showed in his Hercule et Cacus (p. 57), comes from the root Kar, “to make, to create.” Whether Breal and Decharme, who quotes him, are as right in saying that in the Vedas Kronan is a creative god, we have our doubts. Breal probably meant Karma, or rather Visva-Karma, the creative god, the “Omnificent” and the “great Architect of the world.”

330. The Titanic struggle, in theogony at least, is the fight for supremacy between the children of Uranos and Gaia (or Heaven and Earth in their abstract sense), the Titans, against the children of Kronos, whose chief is Zeus. It is the everlasting struggle going on to this day between the spiritual inner man and the man of flesh, in one sense.

331. Just as the “Lord God,” or Jehovah, is Cain esoterically, and the “tempting serpent” as well, the male portion of the androgynous Eve, before her “Fall;” the female portion of Adam Kadmon; the left side or Binah of the right side Chochmah in the first Sephirothal Triad.

332. In the Egyptian legend, translated by M. Maspero (the ex-director of the Bulaq Museum), called the “two Brothers,” the original of Pandora is given. Noum, the famous heavenly artist, creates a marvellous beauty, a girl which he sends to Batoo, after which the happiness of the latter is destroyed. Batoo is man, and the girl Eve, of course. (See Maspero’s Egyptian Legends, and also Decharme’s “Mythologie de la Grece Antique.”)

333. Yima is not the “first man” in the Vendidad, but only in the theories of the Orientalists. — See further on.

334. Boeotia, then ancient Athens, and Eleusis were submerged.

335. The name is used here in the sense of, and as a synonym of “sorcerers.” The Atlantean races were many, and lasted in their evolution for millions of years: all were not bad. They became so toward their end, as we (the fifth) are fast becoming now.

336. The “Gods of the Elements” are by no means the Elementals. The latter are at best used by them as vehicles and materials in which to clothe themselves. . . . .

337. Cain was the sacrificer, as shown at first in chap. iv. of Genesis, of “the fruit of the ground,” of which he was first tiller, while Abel “brought of the firstlings of his flock” to the Lord. Cain is the symbol of the first male, Abel of the first female humanity, Adam and Eve being the types of the third race. (See “The Mystery of Cain and Abel.”) The “murdering” is blood-shedding, but not taking life.

338. It is, perhaps, with an eye to this degradation of the highest and purest Spirits, who broke through the intermediate planes of lower consciousness (the “Seven circles of fire” of Pymander), that St. James is made to say that “this Wisdom (psuche in the original) descended not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish”; and psuche is Manas, the “human soul,” the Spiritual Wisdom or Soul being Buddhi. Yet Buddhi per se, being so near the Absolute, is only latent consciousness.

339. This is the “undying race” as it is called in Esotericism, and exoterically the fruitless generation of the first progeny of Daksha, who curses Narada, the divine Rishi, alleged to have dissuaded the Haryaswas and the Sabalaswas, the sons of Daksha, from procreating their species, by saying “Be born in the womb; there shall not be a resting place for thee in all these regions”; after this Narada, the representative of that race of fruitless ascetics, is said, as soon as he dies in one body, to be reborn in another.

340. The traditions of every country and nation point to this fact. Donnelly quotes from Father Duran’s Historia Antigua de la Nueva Espana of 1885, in which a native of Cholula, a centenarian, accounts for the building of the great pyramid of Cholula, by saying as follows: “In the beginning, before the light of the Sun had been created, this land (Cholula) was in obscurity and darkness . . . . but immediately after the light of the Sun arose in the East, there appeared gigantic men . . . . who built the said pyramid, its builders being scattered after that to all parts of the Earth.”

“A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the doings of an ancient race of giants called Quinanes,” says the author of “Atlantis” (p. 204.)

341. There are critics who, finding no evidence about the existence of Tertullian save in the writings of Eusebius “the veracious,” are inclined to doubt it.

342. And that, notwithstanding the formal prohibition at the great Church Council of Elyrus in A.D. 303, when it was declared that “the form of God, which is immaterial and invisible, shall not be limited by figure or shape.” In 692, the council of Constantinople had similarly prohibited “to paint or represent Jesus as a lamb,” as also “to bow the knee in praying, as it is the act of idolatry.” But the council of Nicaea (787) brought this idolatry back, while that of Rome (883) excommunicated John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, for his showing himself a declared enemy of image worship.

343. Treating of the Chinese Dragon and the literature of China, Mr. Ch. Gould writes in his “Mythical Monsters” on p. 212: — “Its mythologies, histories, religions, popular stories and proverbs, all teem with references to a mysterious being who has a physical nature and spiritual attributes. Gifted with an accepted form, which he has the supernatural power of casting off for the assumption of others, he has the power of influencing the weather, producing droughts or fertilizing rains at pleasure, of raising tempests and allaying them. Volumes could be compiled from the scattered legends which everywhere abound relating to this subject. . . .”

This “mysterious being” is the mythical Dragon, i.e., the symbol of the historical, actual Adept, the master and professor of occult sciences of old. It is stated already elsewhere, that the great “magicians” of the Fourth and Fifth Races were generally called the “Serpents” and the “Dragons” after their progenitors. All these belonged to the hierarchy of the so-called “Fiery Dragons of Wisdom,” the Dhyan Chohans, answering to the Agnishwatta Pitris, the Maruts and Rudras generally, as the issue of Rudra their father, identified with the god of fire. More is said in the text. Now Clement, an initiated Neo-Platonist, knew, of course, the origin of the word “Dragon,” and why the initiated Adepts were so-called, as he knew the secret of Agathodaemon, the Christ, the seven-vowelled Serpent of the Gnostics. He knew that the dogma of his new faith required the transformation of all the rivals of Jehovah, the angels supposed to have rebelled against that Elohim as the Titan-Prometheus rebelled against Zeus, the usurper of his father’s kingdom; and that “Dragon” was the mystic appellation of the “Sons of Wisdom”; from this knowledge came his definition, as cruel as it was arbitrary, “Serpents and Giants signify Demons,” i.e., not “Spirits,” but Devils, in Church parlance.

344. “What would you say to our affirmation that the Chinese — I speak of the inland, the true Chinaman, not of the hybrid mixture between the Fourth and Fifth Races now occupying the throne, the aborigines who belong in their unallied nationality wholly to the highest and last branch of the Fourth Race — reached their highest civilization when the Fifth had hardly appeared in Asia” (Esoteric Buddhism, p. 67). And this handful of the inland Chinese are all of a very high stature. Could the most ancient MSS. in the Lolo language (that of the aborigines of China) be got at and translated correctly, many a priceless piece of evidence would be found. But they are as rare as their language is unintelligible. So far, one or two European archaeologists only have been able to procure such priceless works.

345. Remember the same statement in the Book of Enoch, as also the ladder seen by Jacob in his dream. The “two worlds” mean of course the “two planes of Consciousness and Being.” A seer can commune with beings of a higher plane than the earth, without quitting his arm-chair.

346. Vide supra the Commentary on the Four Races — and on the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” the immaculate progeny of the Androgynous Third Race.

347. In the Kabala the pronunciation of the four-lettered ineffable name is “a most secret arcanum” — “a secret of secrets.”

348. Returning once more to the most important subject in the archaic Cosmogony, it may be said that even in the Norse legends, in the Sacred Scrolls of the goddess Saga, we find Loki, the brother by blood of Odin (as Typhon, Ahriman, and others are brothers of Osiris and Ormazd), becoming evil only later, when he has mixed too long with humanity. Like all other fire or light gods — fire burning and destroying as well as warming and giving life — he ended by being accepted in the destructive sense of “fire.” The name Loki, we learn (“Asgard and the Gods,” p. 250), has been derived from the old word “liechan,” to enlighten. It has, therefore, the same origin as the Latin “lux, light.” Hence Loki is identical with Lucifer (light-bringer). This title, given to the Prince of Darkness, is very suggestive and is a vindication in itself against theological slander. But Loki is still more closely related to Prometheus, as he is shown chained to a sharp rock, while Lucifer, identified with Satan, was chained down in hell; a circumstance, however, which prevented neither of them from acting in all freedom on Earth, if we accept the theological paradox in its fulness. Loki is a beneficent, generous and powerful god in the beginning of times, and the principle of good, not of evil, in early Scandinavian theogony.

349. The Greek mythos just alluded to a few pages back, namely the mutilation of Uranos by his son Kronos in the Greek theogony, is an allusion to this theft by the Son of the Earth and Heavens of the divine creative fire. If Uranos, the personification of the celestial Powers, has to stop creating (he is made impotent by Kronos, the god in time) so, in the Egyptian Cosmogony it is Thot, the god of Wisdom, who regulates this fight between Horus and Set, the latter being served by the former as Uranos is by Kronos (see “Book of the Dead” ch. XVII. V. 26). In the Babylonian account it is the god Zu, who strips “the father of the gods” of umsimi — the ideal creative organ not the crown (!) as G. Smith thought (see pp. 115 and 116 Chaldean Account). For, in the fragment K. 3454 (British Museum) it is said very clearly, that Zu having stripped the “venerable of Heaven” of his desire, he carried away the umsimi of the gods, and burnt thereby the teroti (the power) of all the other gods, thus “governing the seed of all the angels” (15). As the umsimi was on the seat of Bel, it could hardly be the “crown.” A fourth version is in the Bible. Ham is the Chaldean Zu, and both are cursed for the same allegorically described crime.

350. These are the beings whose legendary existence has served as a ground-work upon which to build the rabbinical Lilith, and what the believers in the Bible would term the antediluvian women, and the Kabalists the pre-Adamite races. They are no fiction — this is certain, however fantastic the exuberance of later growth.

351. For suggestiveness, we would recommend a short article in the Theosophist of August, 1887, “Esoteric Studies.” Its author expounds therein quite an occult theory, though to the world a new idea: “the progress of the Monad concurring with the retrogression of Form” (666), i.e., “with decrease of the vis formativa.” He says, “Who knows what shape vehicled the Ego in remote rings (Rounds, or races?) . . . ? May not man’s type have been that of the Simiadae in its variety? Might not the monkey-kingdom of Ramayana fame rest on some far-off tradition relating to a period when that was the common lot, or rather aspect, of man?” . . . and winds up a very clever, though too short, exposition of his theory by saying that which every true occultist will endorse: “With physico-ethereal man there must be involution of sex. As physico-astral man depended on entities of the sub-human class (evolved from animal prototypes) for rebirth, so will physico-ethereal man find among the graceful, shapely orders issuing from the air-plane, one or more which will be developed for his successive embodiments when procreated forms are given — a process which will include all mankind only very gradually. The (pre?) Adamic and post-Adamic races were giants; their ethereal counterparts may possibly be liliputians — beauteous, luminous, diaphanous — but will assuredly be giants in mind” (p. 671, art. by Visconde de Figaniere, F.T.S.).

352. It may be objected that this is a contradiction. That, as the first Root-Race appeared 300,000,000 years after the vegetation had evolved, the seed of vegetable life could not be in the First Race. We say it could; for up to man’s appearance in this Round, the vegetation was of quite another kind than it is now, and quite ethereal, this for the simple reason that no grass or plants could have been physical, before there were animal or other organisms to breathe out the carbonic acid which vegetation has to imbibe for its development, its nutrition and growth. They are inter-dependent in their physical and achieved forms.

353. “Visconde de Figaniere, F.T.S.” (The Theosophist, Aug. 1887, page 676.)

354. It is stated in the Zohar that the “primordial worlds” (sparks) could not continue because man was not as yet. “The human form contains everything; and as it did not as yet exist, the worlds were destroyed.”

355. This is the meaning when the allegory and symbol are opened and read by means of the human key, or the key to terrestrial anthroposophy. This interpretation of the “ark” symbolism does not in the least interfere with its astronomical, or even theogonic keys; nor with any of the other six meanings. Nor does it seem less scientific than the modern theories about the origin of man. As said, it has seven keys to it, like the rest.

356. Vendidad Sadah, See also Bund. XV.; and J. Darmesteter’s translation of the Vendidad. “Sacred Books of the East.”

357. See “Kabbalah Unveiled” by S. McGregor Mathers, p. 104.

358. Darwinian Evolutionists who are so wont to refer to the evidence of reversion to type — the full meaning of which, in the case of human monsters, is embraced in the esoteric solution of the embryological problem — as proof of their arguments, would do well to inquire into those instances of modern giants who are often 8, 9, and even 11 feet high. Such reversions are imperfect, yet undeniable reproductions of the original towering man of primeval times.

359. See “Mythical Monsters,” by Ch. Gould, from whose interesting and scientific volume a few passages are quoted further on. See in Mr. Sinnett’s “Occult World,” the description of a cavern in the Himalayas filled with relics of human and animal giant bones.

360. Viz., the third eye was at the back of the head. The statement that the latest hermaphrodite humanity was “four-armed,” unriddles probably the mystery of all the representations and idols of the exoteric gods of India. On the Acropolis of Argos, there was a [[Zoanon]], a rudely carved wooden statue (attributed to Daedalus), representing a three-eyed colossus, which was consecrated to Zeus Triopas (three-eyed). The head of the “god” has two eyes in its face and one above on the top of the forehead. It is considered the most archaic of all the ancient statues (Schol. Vatic. ad Eurip. Troad. 14).

361. The Inner sight could henceforth be acquired only through training and initiation, save in the cases of “natural and born magicians,” sensitives and mediums, as they are called now.

362. This expression “petrified” instead of “ossified” is curious. The “back eye,” which is of course the pineal gland, now so-called, the small pea-like mass of grey nervous matter attached to the back of the third ventricle of the brain, is said to almost invariably contain mineral concretions and sand, and “nothing more.” (Vide Infra.)

363. “Deeply placed within the head, covered by thick skin and muscles, true eyes that cannot see are found in certain animals,” also, says Haeckel: “Vertebrate . . . blind moles and field mice, blind snakes and lizards. . . . They shun daylight . . . dwelling under the ground. They were not originally blind but have evolved from ancestors that lived in the light and had well-developed eyes. The atrophied eye beneath the opaque skin may be found in these blind beings in every stage of reversion.” (“Sense Organs,” Haeckel.) And if two eyes could become so atrophied in lower animals, why not one eye — the pineal gland — in man, who is but a higher animal in his physical aspect?

364. The “Nervous Ether” of Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S. — the nerve-aura of occultism. The “animal spirits”(?) are equivalent to the currents of nerve-auric compound circulation.

365. Let us remember that the First Race is shown in Occult sciences as spiritual within and ethereal without; the second, psycho-spiritual mentally, and ethero-physical bodily; the third, still bereft of intellect in its beginning, is astro-physical in its body, and lives an inner life, in which the psycho-spiritual element is in no way interfered with as yet by the hardly nascent physiological senses. Its two front eyes look before them without seeing either past or future. But the “third eye” “embraces eternity.”

366. But in a very different manner to that pictured by Haeckel as an “evolution by natural selection in the struggle for existence” (“Pedigree of Man.” “Sense Organs,” p. 335). The mere “thermal sensibility of the skin,” to hypothetical light-waves, is absurdly incompetent to account for the beautiful combination of adaptations present in the eye. It has, moreover, been previously shown that “natural Selection” is a pure myth when credited with the origination of variations (vide infra, Part III., on Darwinian mechanical causation); as the “survival of the fittest” can only take place after useful variations have sprung up, together with improved organisms. Whence came the “useful variations,” which developed the eye? Only from “blind forces . . . without aim, without design?” The argument is puerile. The true solution of the mystery is to be found in the impersonal Divine Wisdom, in its Ideation — reflected through matter.

367. Palaeontology has ascertained that in the animals of the Cenozoic age — the Saurians especially, such as the antediluvian Labyrinthodon, whose fossil skull exhibits a perforation otherwise inexplicable — the third, or odd eye must have been much developed. Several naturalists, among others E. Korscheldt, feel convinced that whereas, notwithstanding the opaque skin covering it, such an eye in the reptiles of the present period can only distinguish light from darkness (as the human eyes do when bound with a handkerchief, or even tightly closed), in the now extinct animals that eye functioned and was a real organ of vision.

368. Karma is a word of many meanings, and has a special term for almost every one of its aspects. It means, as a synonym of sin, the performance of some action for the attainment of an object of worldly, hence selfish, desire, which cannot fail to be hurtful to somebody else. Karman is action, the Cause; and Karma again is “the law of ethical causation”; the effect of an act produced egotistically, when the great law of harmony depends on altruism.

369. Objectors to the doctrine of Karma should recall the fact that it is absolutely out of the question to attempt a reply to the Pessimists on other data. A firm grasp of the principles of Karmic Law knocks away the whole basis of the imposing fabric reared by the disciples of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.

370. The doctrine and theology of Calvinists. “The purpose of God from eternity respecting all events” (which becomes fatalism and kills free will, or any attempt of exerting it for good). . . . . “It is the pre-assignment or allotment of men to everlasting happiness or misery” (Catechism). A noble and encouraging Doctrine this!

371. Some theosophists, in order to make Karma more comprehensible to the Western mind, as being better acquainted with the Greek than with Aryan philosophy, have made an attempt to translate it by Nemesis. Had the latter been known to the profane in antiquity, as it was understood by the Initiate, this translation of the term would be unobjectionable. As it is, it has been too much anthropomorphised by Greek fancy to permit our using it without an elaborate explanation. With the early Greeks, “from Homer to Herodotus, she was no goddess, but a moral feeling rather,” says Decharme; the barrier to evil and immorality. He who transgresses it, commits a sacrilege in the eyes of the gods, and is pursued by Nemesis. But, with time, that “feeling” was deified, and its personification became an ever-fatal and punishing goddess. Therefore, if we would connect Karma with Nemesis, it has to be done in the triple character of the latter, viz., as Nemesis, Adrasteia and Themis. For, while the latter is the goddess of Universal Order and Harmony, who, like Nemesis, is commissioned to repress every excess, and keep man within the limits of Nature and righteousness under severe penalty, Adrasteia — “the inevitable” — represents Nemesis as the immutable effect of causes created by man himself. Nemesis, as the daughter of Dike, is the equitable goddess reserving her wrath for those alone who are maddened with pride, egoism, and impiety. (See Mesomed. Hymn. Nemes., V. 2. Brunck, Analecta II. p. 292; Mythol. de la Grece Antique, p. 304.) In short, while Nemesis is a mythological, exoteric goddess, or Power, personified and anthropomorphised in its various aspects, Karma is a highly philosophical truth, a most divine noble expression of the primitive intuition of man concerning Deity. It is a doctrine which explains the origin of Evil, and ennobles our conceptions of what divine immutable Justice ought to be, instead of degrading the unknown and unknowable Deity by making it the whimsical, cruel tyrant, which we call Providence.

372. Pralaya — a word already explained — is not a term that applies only to every “Night of Brahma,” or the world’s dissolution following every Manvantara, equal to 71 Maha-yugas. It applies also to each “obscuration” as well, and even to every Cataclysm that puts an end, by Fire or by Water in turn, to each Root-Race. Pralaya is a term like that of “Manu” — the generic name for the Sishtas, who, under the appellation of “King,” are shown in the Puranas as preserved “with the seed of all things in an ark from the waters of that flood” (or the fires of a general volcanic conflagration, the commencement of which we already see for our Fifth-Race in the terrible earthquakes and eruptions of these late years, and especially in the present one) . . . . which in the season of a pralaya overspreads the world” (the Earth). (See Preface, p. lxxxi., to Wilson’s “Vishnu Purana.”) Time is only a form of “Vishnu” — truly, as Parasara says in that Purana. In the Hindu Yuga Kalpa, we have the regular descending series 4, 3, 2, with ciphers multiplied as occasion requires for esoteric purposes, but not, as Wilson and other Orientalists thought, for “sectarian embellishments.” A Kalpa may be an age, a “Day” of Brahma, or a sidereal Kalpa, astronomical and earthly. Those calculations are found in all the Puranas, but some differ — as for instance, “the year of the seven Rishis, 3,030 mortal years, and the year of Dhruva, 9,090 in the Linga Purana,” which are again esoteric, and which do represent actual (secret) chronology. As said in the Brahma Vaivarta: “Chronologers compute a Kalpa by the life of Brahma. Minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are numerous.” “Minor Kalpas” denote here every period of destruction, as was well understood by Wilson himself, who explains the latter as “those in which the Samvarta wind or other destructive agents operate” (Vishnu Purana, p. 54, vol. I.).

373. An intuition and a presentiment of the Sishtas may be found in Mr. Sinnett’s “Esoteric Buddhism, “Fifth Edition. See in it Annotations — the “Noah’s Ark Theory” pp. 146, 147.

374. The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by Viraj, and that he then produced the ten Prajapatis, who again produced seven Manus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other Manus (Manu, I., 33-36) relates to other still earlier mysteries, and is at the same time a blind with regard to the doctrine of the Septenary chain, and the simultaneous evolution of seven humanities, or Men. However, the present work is written on the records of Cis-Himalayan Secret Teachings, and Brahmanical esoteric philosophy may now differ in form as the Kabala does. But they were identical in hoary antiquity.

375. There is another esoteric reason besides this one for it. A Vaivasvata is the seventh Manu, because this our Round, although the Fourth, is in the preseptenary Manvantara, and the Round itself is in its seventh stage of materiality or physicality. The close of its middle racial point occurred during the Fourth Root Race, when man and all nature reached their lowest state of gross matter. From that time, i.e., from the end of the three and a half races, humanity and nature entered on the ascending arc of their racial cycle.

376. The interval that precedes each Yuga is called a Sandhya, composed of as many hundreds of years as there are thousands in the yuga; and that which follows the latter is named Sandhyamsa, and is of similar duration, we are told in Vishnu Purana. “The interval between the Sandhya and the Sandhyamsa is the yuga denominated Krita, Treta, etc., etc. The (four) Krita, Treta, Dwapara, and Kali constitute a great age, or aggregate of four ages: a 1000 such aggregates are a Day of Brahma; and 14 Manus reign within that term.” Now had we to accept this literally then there would be only one Manu for every 4,320,000,000 of years. As we are taught that it took 300,000,000 of years for the two lower kingdoms to evolve, and that our humanity is just 18 and some odd millions old — where were the other Manus spoken of, unless the allegory means what the esoteric doctrine teaches us about the 14 being each multiplied by 49.

377. The words “creation,” “dissolution,” etc., do not render correctly the right meaning of either Manvantara or Pralaya. The Vishnu Purana enumerates several: The dissolution of all things is of four kinds, Parasara is made to say: — Naimittika (occasional), when Brahma slumbers (his night, when, “At the end of this day occurs a re-coalescence of the Universe, called Brahma’s contingent re-coalescence,” because Brahma is this universe itself); “Prakritika (elemental), when the return of this universe to its original nature is partial and physical; Atyantika (absolute), identification of the embodied with the incorporeal Supreme spirit — Mahatmic state, whether temporary or until the following Maha Kalpa: also absolute obscuration — as of a whole planetary chain, etc.; and Nitya (perpetual) Mahapralaya for the Universe, death — for man, nitya is the extinction of life, like the extinction of a lamp,” also “in sleep at night.” Nitya Sarga is “constant or perpetual creation,” as Nitya pralaya is “constant or perpetual destruction of all that is born.” “That which ensues after a minor dissolution is called ephemeral creation. . . . This is Samyama” (production, existence, and dissolution) (Vishnu Purana, Book I., ch. vii.) The subject is so difficult that we are obliged to repeat our statements.

378. But see the superb definitions of Parabrahmam and the Logos in Mr. Subba Row’s Lectures on the Bhagavat Gita in the early numbers of the Theosophist of 1887, Feb., March, April, and May.

379. See preceding foot-note.

380. See Manu I., 32, 33. Vaiswanara is, in another sense, the living magnetic fire that pervades the manifested solar system. It is the most objective (to us the reverse) and ever present aspect of the one life, for it is the Vital Principle. (See Theosophist, July, 1883, p. 249). It is also a name of Agni.

381. This — in the period of Secondary creation, so called. Of the Primary, when Earth is in possession of the three Elemental Kingdoms, we cannot speak for several reasons, one of which is, that, unless one is a great seer, or naturally intuitional, he will be unable to realise that which can never be expressed in any existing terms.

382. Hippocrates said that number seven “By its occult virtues tended to the accomplishment of all things, to be the dispenser of life and fountain of all its changes.” The life of man he divided into seven ages (Shakespeare), for “As the moon changes her phases every seven days, this number influences all sublunary beings,” and even the Earth, as we know. With the child, it is the teeth that appear in the seventh month and he sheds them at seven years; at twice seven puberty begins, at three times seven all our mental and vital powers are developed, at four times seven he is in his full strength, at five times seven his passions are most developed, etc., etc. Thus for the Earth. It is now in its middle age, yet very little wiser for it. The Tetragrammaton, the four-lettered sacred name of the Deity, can be resolved on Earth only by becoming Septenary through the manifest triangle proceeding from the concealed Tetraktis. Therefore, the number seven has to be adopted on this plane. As written in the Kabala “The greater Holy Assembly” v. 1161: — “For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save (what they derive) from the seventh. For all things depend from the seventh.”

383. Says St. Augustin of Jesus, “For he is a fish that lives in the midst of waters.” Christians called themselves little fishes — pisciculi — in their sacred mysteries. “So many fishes bred in the water, and saved by one great fish,” says Tertullian of the Christians and Christ and the Church.

384. “Esoteric Buddhism,” p. 55.

385. This event, the destruction of the famous island of Ruta and the smaller one Daitya, which occurred 850,000 years ago in the later Pliocene times, must not be confounded with the submersion of the main continent of Atlantis during the Miocene period. Geologists cannot place the Miocene only so short a way back as 850,000 years; whatever they do, it is several million years ago that the main Atlantis perished.

386. Mr. Huxley divides those races into the quintuple group of Australioids, Negroids, Mongoloids, Xanthochroics and Melanochroics — all issuing from imaginary Anthropoids. And yet, while protesting against those who say “that the structural differences between man and apes are small and insignificant,” and adding that “every bone of the gorilla bears a mark by which it can be distinguished from a corresponding human bone,” and that “in the present state of creation, at least, no intermediary being fills the gap which separates the man from the troglodyte” — the great anatomist goes on speaking of the Simian characteristics in Man! (See de Quatrefages’ “The Human Species,” p. 113.)

387. This is the reason why, perhaps, even Easter Island with its wondrous gigantic statues — a speaking witness to a submerged continent with a civilized mankind on it — is hardly mentioned anywhere in the modern Encyclopaedias. Its mention is carefully avoided except in some books of Travels; modem science has an undeniable predilection for forcing upon the cultured public hypotheses, built on personal hobbies, as well-established evidence, for offering it guesses instead of Knowledge, and calling them “scientific conclusions.” Its specialists will evolve a thousand and one contradictory speculations rather than confess an awkward self-evident fact — pre-eminent among such specialists being Haeckel and his English admirers and co-thinkers. Yet “they are authorities” — we are sternly reminded. What of that? The Pope of Rome is also an authority and an infallible one — for his followers; whereas the remarkable fallibility of Scientific speculations is being proven periodically with every change of the moon.

388. Our best modern novelists, who are neither Theosophists nor Spiritualists, begin to have, nevertheless, very psychological and suggestively Occult dreams: witness Mr. Louis Stephenson and his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, than which no grander psychological essay on Occult lines exists. Has the rising novelist, Mr. Rider Haggard, also had a prophetic or rather a retrospective clairvoyant dream before he wrote “She”? His imperial Kor, the great city of the dead, whose surviving living men sailed northwards after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems to step out in its general outlines from the imperishable pages of the old archaic records. Ayesha suggests “that those men who sailed north may have been the fathers of the first Egyptians”; and then seems to attempt a synopsis of certain letters of a Master quoted in “Esoteric Buddhism.” For, she says, “Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away, and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This (the nation of Kor) is but one of several; for time eats up the work of man unless, indeed, he digs in caves like the people of Kor, and then mayhap the sea swallows them, or the earthquake shakes them in. . . . . Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I think. Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were many. But the barbarians. . . came down upon them, and took their women to wife, and the race of the Amahagger that is now is a bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and behold it dwelleth in the tombs with its fathers’ bones. . .” (pp. 180, 181.)

Here the clever novelist seems to repeat the history of all the now degraded and down-fallen races of humanity. The Geologists and Anthropologists would place at the head of humanity as descendants of Homo primigenius, the ape-man, of which “no fossil remains are as yet known to us,” but (which) “were probably akin to the gorilla and orang of the present day” (Haeckel). In answer to whose “probably,” occultists point to another and a greater probability — the one given in our text. (See above.)

389. See Stanza II, ante. This would account for the great difference and variation between the intellectual capacities of races, nations, and individual men. While incarnating, and in other cases only informing the human vehicles evolved by the first brainless (manasless) race, the incarnating Powers and Principles had to make their choice between, and take into account, the past Karmas of the Monads, between which and their bodies they had to become the connecting link. Besides which, as correctly stated in “Esoteric Buddhism” (p. 30), “the fifth principle, or human (intellectual) soul, in the majority of mankind is not even yet fully developed.”

390. It is said by Krishna, the Logos incarnate, in the Bhagavat-gita, “The seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my nature, were born from my mind: from them sprang (emanated or was born) the human race and the world,” (Chap. X. Verse 6.)

Here, by the seven great Rishis, the seven great rupa hierarchies or classes of Dhyan Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the Saptarshi (the seven Rishis) are the regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, therefore, of the same nature as the angels of the planets, or the seven great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn, all men on earth in various Kalpas and races. Moreover, “the four preceding Manus” are the four classes of the originally arupa gods — the Kumaras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.: who are also said to have incarnated. They are not the Prajapatis, as the first are, but their informing principles — some of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their reflections. As Krishna truly says —the same words being repeated later by another vehicle of the logos — “I am the same to all beings. . . . those who worship me (the 6th principle or the intellectual divine Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the higher faculties of Manas) are in me, and I am in them.” (Ibid, 29.) The Logos, being no personality but the universal principle, is represented by all the divine Powers born of its mind — the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the “Intellectual Breaths” — those angels who are said to have made themselves independent, i.e., passed from the passive and quiescent, into the active state of Self-Consciousness. When this is recognised, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row’s excellent lecture on the Bhagavatgita, (“Theosophist,” April 1887, p. 444.)

391. In a lecture, Professor Pengelly, F.R.S., quoting Professor Oliver, makes him say “that the present Atlantic islands’ Flora affords no substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the mainland of the New World,” but himself adds that, at the same time, “at some period of the Tertiary epoch, N.E. Asia was united to N.W. America, perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends.” Thus Occult Science alone can reconcile the contradictions and hesitations of modern Science. Moreover, surely the argument for the existence of Atlantis does not rest on Botany alone.

392. As shown in the Introduction, it stands to reason that neither the name of Lemuria nor even Atlantis are the real archaic names of the lost continents, but have been adopted by us for the sake of clearness. Atlantis was the name given to those portions of the submerged Fourth-Race continent which were “beyond the pillars of Hercules,” and which happened to keep above water after the general cataclysm. The last remnant of these — Plato’s Atlantis, or the “Poseidon” (another substitute or rather a translation of the real name) — was the last of it some 11,000 years ago. Most of the correct names of the countries and islands of both continents are given in the Puranas; but to mention them specially, as found in other more ancient works, such as the Surya Siddhanta, would necessitate too lengthy explanations. If, in earlier writings, the two seem to have been too faintly disconnected, this must be due to careless reading and want of reflection. If ages hence, Europeans are referred to as Aryans, and a reader confuses them with the Hindus and the latter with the Fourth Race, as they live (some of them) in ancient Lanka — the blame will not fall on the writer.

393. See Professor Dana’s article, “American Journal of Science,” III, v. 442-3; Prof. Winchell’s “World Life”; and other geological works.

394. Speaking on periodical elevation and subsidence of the equatorial and polar regions, and ensuing changes of climate, Mr. Winchell (professor of Geology at Michigan) says — “As the movements here contemplated are cyclical, the same conditions would recur again and again; and accordingly the same fauna might return again and again to the same region, with intervals of occupation by another fauna. Progressive sedimentation would preserve the records of such faunal alterations; and there would be presented the phenomena of ‘colonies’ ‘re-apparitions’ and other faunal dislocations in the vertical and horizontal distributions of fossil remains. These phenomena are well known to the student of geology.” (“Effects of Astronomical changes.”)

395. “Half-grown babes” in comparison with their giant Brethren on other zones. So would we now.

396. Relates to Lemuria.

397. There are other cycles, of course, cycles within cycles — and this is just that which creates such a difficulty in the calculations of racial events. The circuit of the ecliptic is completed in 25,868 years. And, with regard to our Earth, it is calculated that the equinoctial point falls back fifty minutes ten seconds, annually. But there is another cycle within this one. It is said that “as the apsis goes forward to meet it at the rate of eleven minutes twenty-four seconds, annually,” (see the article on Astronomy in Encyclopaedia Britannica), “this would complete a revolution in one hundred and fifteen thousand three hundred and two years (115,302). The approximation of the equinox and the apsis is the sum of these motions, sixty-one minutes thirty-four seconds, and hence the equinox returns to the same position in relation to the apsis in 21,128 years.” We have mentioned this cycle in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., in relation to other cycles. Each has a marked influence on its contemporary race.

398. See at the end of this Stanza “On the Duration of Ages and Cycles.”

399. “History of English Literature,” p. 23.

400. Quoted in “Atlantis,” etc., p. 132.

401. See also “Pneumatologie des Esprits” Vol. III., p. 55, de Mirville.

402. The first and second have, in common with Bartholdi’s Statue, an entrance at the foot, leading by a winding staircase cut in the rock up into the heads of the statues. The eminent French archeologist and anthropologist, the Marquis de Nadeylac, justly remarks in his work that there never was in ancient or in modern times a sculptured human figure more colossal than the first of the two.

403. Pierres Animees et parlantes., p. 283. Theologie de la Pierre, 270.

404. Saturn is Kronos — “Time.” His swallowing Jupiter lapis may turn out one day a prophecy. “Peter (Cephas, lapis), is the stone on which the Church of Rome is built” we are assured. But Kronos is as sure “to swallow it” one day, as he has swallowed Jupiter-lapis and still greater characters.

405. The same, of course, as the “small voice” heard by Elijah after the earthquake at the mouth of the cave. (1 Kings xix. 12.)

406. The rocking, or Logan, stones bear various names. The Celts had their clacha-brath, the “Destiny or judgment-stone”; the divining-stone, or “stone of the ordeal” and the oracle stone; the moving or animated stone of the Phoenicians; the rumbling stone of the Irish. Brittany has its “pierres branlantes” at Huelgoat. They are found in the Old and the New Worlds: in the British Islands, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany, etc., as in North America. (See Hodson’s “Letters from North America,” Vol. II., p. 440.) Pliny speaks of several in Asia (Hist. Nat. Lib. I., c. 96); and Apollonius Rhodius expatiates on the rocking stones, and says that they are “stones placed on the apex of a tumulus, and so sensitive as to be movable by the mind” (Ackerman’s Arth. Index, p. 34), referring no doubt to the ancient priests who moved such stones by will-power and from a distance.

407. See, among others, “History of Paganism in Caledonia,” by Dr. Th. A. Wise, F.R.A.S., etc.

408. Ham was no more a Titan or Giant than Shem and Japhet. They are either all Arkite Titans, as Faber shows them, or myths.

409. Diodorus Siculus asserts that in the days of Isis, all men were of a vast stature, who were denominated by the Hellenes Giants. “[[Oi d’en Aiguptoi muthologousi kata ten Isidos helikian gegonenai tinas polusomatous]].”

410. “It is difficult,” writes Creuzer, “not to suspect in the structures of Tiryns and Mycenae planetary forces supposed to be moved by celestial powers, analogous to the famous Dactyles.” (Pelasges et Cyclopes). To this day Science is ignorant on the subject of the Cyclopes. They are supposed to have built all the so-called “Cyclopean” works whose erection necessitated several regiments of Giants, and — they were only seventy-seven in all (about one hundred, Creuzer thinks). They are called “Builders,” and Occultism calls them the initiators, who, initiating some Pelasgians, thus laid the foundation stone of true masonry. Herodotus associates the Cyclops with Perseus “the son of an Assyrian demon” (I. VI. p. 54). Raoul Rochette found that Palaemonius, the Cyclops, to whom a sanctuary was raised, “was the Tyrian Hercules.” Anyhow, he was the builder of the sacred columns of Gadir, covered with mysterious characters to which Apollonius of Tyana was the only one in his age to possess the key; and with figures which may still be found on the walls of Ellora, the gigantic ruins of the temple of Viswakarma, “the builder and artificer of the Gods.”

411. Messrs. Richardson and Barth are said to have been amazed at finding in the Desert of Sahara the same trilithic and raised stones they had seen in Asia, Circassia, Etruria, and in all the North of Europe. Mr. Rivett-Carnac, B.C.S., of Allahabad, the distinguished Archaeologist, shows the same amazement in finding the description given by Sir J. Simpson of the cuplike markings on stones and rocks in England, Scotland, and other Western countries — “offering an extraordinary resemblance” to “the marks on the trap Boulders which encircle the Barrows near Nagpur” (the city of Snakes). The eminent scholar saw in this “another and very extraordinary addition to the mass of evidence. . . that a branch of the nomadic tribes, who swept at an early date over Europe, penetrated into India also.” We say Lemuria, Atlantis and her giants, and the earliest races of the Fifth Root-Race had all a hand in these betyles, lithoi, and “magic” stones in general. The cup marks noticed by Sir J. Simpson, and the “holes scooped out on the face” of rocks and monuments found by Mr. Rivett-Carnac “of different sizes varying from six inches to an inch-and-a-half in diameter, and in depth from one to one-and-a-half inch . . . . . . generally arranged in perpendicular lines presenting many permutations in the number and size and arrangement of the cups” — are simply written records of the oldest races. Whosoever examines with attention the drawings made of such marks in the “Archaeological Notes on Ancient Sculpturing on Rocks in Kumaon, India, etc.,” will find in it the most primitive style of marking or recording; something of the sort having been adopted by the American inventors of the Morse code of telegraphic writing, which reminds us of the Ahgam writing, a combination of long and short strokes, as Mr. Rivett-Carnac describes it “cut on sandstone.” Sweden, Norway, and Scandinavia are full of such written records, the Runic characters having followed the cup-marks and long and short strokes. In “Johannes Magnus’ Infolio” one sees the representation of the demi-god, the giant Starchaterus (Starkad, the pupil of Kroszharsgrani, the Magician) who holds under each arm a huge stone covered with Runic characters; and Starkad, according to Scandinavian legend, went to Ireland and performed marvellous deeds in the North and South, East and West. (See “Asgard and the Gods.”)

412. Charton, the Author of “Voyageurs anciens et modernes,” quoted by De Mirville.

413. As shown by H. Lizeray in the “Trinite Chretienne Devoilee” — placed between the immutable Father (the Pole, a fixed Point) and mutable matter, the Dragon transmits to the latter the influences received by him from the Pole, whence his name — the Verbum.

414. Symbolized by the Egyptians under the form of a Serpent with a hawk’s head.

415. Also translated as “blissful Immortals” by Dr. W. Geiger; but the first is more correct.

416. These “seven” became the eight, the Ogdoad, of the later materialized religions, the seventh, or the highest principle, being no longer the pervading Spirit, the Synthesis, but becoming an anthropomorphic number, or additional unit.

417. These elements are: — The cosmic, the terrene, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, the aqueous, and finally the human — in their physical, spiritual, and psychic aspects.

418. Who adds that the Egyptians had various ways of representing the angles of the Poles. Also in Perry’s View of the Levant there is “a figure representing the South Pole of the Earth in the constellation of the Harp,” in which the poles appear like two straight rods, surmounted with hawks’ wings, but they were also often represented as serpents with heads of hawks, one at each end.

419. Faber and Bishop Cumberland would make them all the later pagan personifications, as the former writer has it, of “the Noetic Ark, and no other than the Patriarch (Noah) and his family” (!) See his “Kabiri,” Vol. 1., 136; because, we are told, “after the Deluge in commemoration of the event, the pious Noachidae had established a religious festival, which was, later on, corrupted by their impious descendants; demons or hero-gods; and at length unblushing obscenity usurped the name and garb of religion” (Vol. I., p. 10.). Now this is indeed putting an extinguisher upon the human reasoning powers, not only of antiquity, but even of our present generations. Reverse the statement, and explain after the words “Noah and his family” that what is meant by that patriarch and family is simply the Jewish version of a Samothracian mystery, of Saturn, or Kronos-Sadic and his Sons, and then we may say Amen.

420. Who became later on, with the Greeks, limited only to Castor and Pollux. But in the days of Lemuria, the Dioscuri, the “Egg-born,” were the Seven Dhyan Chohans (Agnishwatta-Kumara) who incarnated in the Seven Elect of the Third Race.

421. Clement of Alexandria recognized the astronomical significance of chapter xxv. et seq. of Exodus. According to the Mosaic doctrine, he says that the seven planets help in the generation of terrestrial things. The two cherubs standing on the two sides of the sacred tetragrammaton represent the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

422. It is a curious idea — yet one not very far from the truth, perhaps — that speculation of Mackey, the self-made Adept of Norwich, found in his “Mythological Astronomy.” He says that the Kabiri named Axieros and Axiokersa derived their names (a) from Kab or Cab, a measure, and from Urim, the heavens: the Kabirim being thus “a measure of the heavens;” and (b) that their distinctive names, implying the principle of generation, referred to the sexes. For, “the word sex was formerly understood by aix; which has now settled . . . . into sex.” And he refers to “Encyclopaedia Londinus” at the word “aspiration.” Now if we give the aspirated sound to Axieros, it would be Saxieros; and the other pole would be Saxiokersa. The two poles would thus become the generators of the other powers of nature — they would be the parents: therefore the most powerful gods.

423. The word “guebra” comes from Kabiri, gabiri, and means Persian ancient fire-worshippers, or Parsis. Kabiri became gabiri and then remained as an appellation of the Zoroastrians in Persia. (See Hyde’s “De Religio Persarum,” cap. 29.)

424. The Amshaspends are six — if Ormazd, their chief and Logos, is excluded. But in the secret doctrine he is the seventh and highest, just as Phtah is the seventh Kabir among the Kabiri.

425. In the Purana it is identified with Vishnu’s or Brahma’s Sveta Dwipa of Mount Meru.

426. Ch. iv. of “Egypt,” p. 441.

427. Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne.

428. See also Memoires a l’Academie, etc., of de Mirville, Vol. III., for a mass of evidence.

429. In Vishnu-Purana, Book II., chap. 3, 4, et seq., may be found many corroborations of the same, if one reads carefully. The reigns of gods, lower gods, and men are all enumerated in the descriptions of the seven Islands, seven seas, seven mountains, etc., etc., ruled by Kings. Each king is said invariably to have seven sons, an allusion to the seven sub-races. One instance will do. The King of Kusa dwipa had seven sons (follow names) . . . “after whom the seven portions (Varsha) of the island were called. There reside mankind along with Daityas and Danavas, as well as with spirits of Heaven (Gandharvas, Yakshas, Kimpurushas, etc.) and gods.” (Chapter iv.) There is but one exception in the case of King Priyavrata, the son of the first Manu, Swayambhuva — who had ten sons. But of these, three — Medha, Agnibahu, and Putra — became ascetics, and refused their portions. Thus Priyavrata divided the earth again into seven continents.

430. As a general rule, now that the very nature of the inner man has become as blind as his physical nature, man is situated on this globe as the Amphioxus is in the Ocean. Surrounded by shoals and millions of various other fishes and creatures that see it, the Amphioxus species —having neither brain nor any of the senses possessed by the other classes — sees them not. Who knows whether, on the Darwinian theory, these “Branchiostoma” are not the direct ancestors of our Materialists.

431. The Occultists have been accused of worshipping gods or devils. We deny this. Among the numberless hosts of spirits — men that were, and those who will be men — there are those immeasurably superior to the human race, higher and holier than the highest Saint on Earth, and wiser than any mortal without exception. And there are those again who are no better than we are, as some are far worse and inferior to the lowest savage. It is the latter classes that command the readiest communication with our earth, who perceive and sense us, as the clairvoyants perceive and sense them. The close proximity of our respective abodes and planes of perception are in favour of such inter-communication unfortunately, as they are ever ready to interfere with our affairs for weal or woe. If we are asked how it is that none but sensitive hysterical natures, neuro- and psycho-pathic persons see and occasionally talk with “Spirits,” we answer the question by several other queries. We ask: “Do you know the nature of hallucination, and can you define its psychic process? How can you tell that all such visions are due merely to physical hallucinations? What makes you feel so sure that mental and nervous diseases, while drawing a veil over our normal senses (so-called) do not reveal at the same time vistas unknown to the healthy man, by throwing open doors usually closed against your scientific perceptions (?): or that a psycho-spiritual faculty does not forthwith replace the loss, or the temporary atrophy, of a purely physical sense? It is disease, or the exuberance of nervous fluid which produces mediumship and visions —hallucinations, as you call them. But what does Science know even of mediumship?” Truly were the modern Charcots to pay attention to the delirium of their patients from a more psychic standpoint, Science, and physiology especially, might be more benefited than they are now, and truth have a wider field of fact in its knowledge.

432. These were the early Aryans and the bulk of the Fourth Root Races — the former pious and meditative (yoga-contemplation), the latter — a fighting race of sorcerers, who were rapidly degenerating owing to their uncontrolled passions.

433. The Northern and Southern Divisions of Lemuria-Atlantis. The Hyperborean and the Equatorial lands of the two continents. (See Sections about Lemuria and Atlantis in History.)

434. This is Occult and refers to the property of iron which, attracted by magnetic elements, is repelled by others, which are made, by an occult process, as impervious to it as water to a blow.

435. The first continent, or island, if so preferred, “the cap of the North Pole,” has never perished; nor will it to the end of the Seven Races.

436. The Secret Doctrine explains and expounds that which Plato says, for it teaches that those “inventors” were gods and demi-gods (Devas and Rishis) who had become — some deliberately, some forced to by Karma — incarnated in man.

437. This is a direct reference to the esoteric division of man’s principles symbolised by the divine wheat. The legend which inscribes the third Registrar of the papyrus (Chap. cx. of the “Book of the Dead”) states: “This is the region of the Manes (disembodied men) seven cubits high” — to wit: those just translated and supposed to be still sevenfold with all their principles, even the body represented astrally in the Kama-loka or Hades, before their separation . . . . . “and, there is wheat three cubits high for mummies in a state of perfection” (i.e., those already separated, whose three higher principles are in Devachan “who are permitted to glean it.” This region (Devachan) is called “the land of the re-birth of gods,” and shown to be inhabited by Scheo, Tefnant, and Seb. The “region for the manes seven cubits high,” (for the yet imperfect mummies), and the region for those “in a state of perfection” who “glean wheat three cubits high,” is as clear as possible. The Egyptians had the same esoteric philosophy which is now taught by the cis-Himalayan adepts, who, when buried, have corn and wheat placed over them.

438. There are Egyptologists who have tried to identify Osiris with Menes, which is quite erroneous. Bunsen assigns to Menes an antiquity of 5867 years B.C., and is denounced for it by Christians. But “Isis-Osiris” reigned in Egypt before the Dendera Zodiac was painted on the ceiling of that temple, and that is over 75,000 years ago!

439. In the text, “corked up” or “screwed up.”

440. Genesis vi., v. 4.

441. Reflections critiques sur l’origine des anciens peuples.

442. See Sanchoniathon in “Eusebius,” Pr. Ev. 36; Genesis xiv.

443. “Society of Antiquaries of London,” vol. xxv. p. 220.

444. He is thus named and included in the list of the Danavas in Vayu Purana; the Commentator of Bhagavata Purana calls him a son of Danu, but the name means also “Spirit of Humanity.”

445. Kasyapa is called the Son of Brahma, and is the “Self-Born” to whom a great part of the work of creation is attributed. He is one of the seven Rishis; exoterically, the son of Marichi, the son of Brahma; while Atharva-veda says, “The Self-born Kasyapa sprang from Time”; and esoterically — Time and Space are forms of the One incognizable Deity. As an Aditya, Indra is son of Kasyapa, as also Vaivasvata Manu, our progenitor. In the instance given in the text, he is Kasyapa-Aditya, the Sun, and the Sun-god, from whom all the “Cosmic” Demons, Dragons (nagas), Serpent, or Snake-gods, and Danavas, the giants, are born. The meaning of the allegories given above is purely astronomical and cosmical, but will serve to prove the identity of all.

446. All such stories differ in the exoteric texts. In the Mahabharata, Karttikeya, “the six-faced Mars,” is the son of Rudra or Siva, Self-born without a mother from the seed of Siva cast into the fire. But Karttikeya is generally called Agnibhu, “fire born.”

447. Hiranyaksha is the ruler or king of the fifth region of Patala, a Snake-god.

448. The Elohim also feared the knowledge of Good and Evil for Adam, and therefore are shown as expelling him from Eden or killing him spiritually.

449. The story told is, that Taraka (called also Kalabhana), owing to his extraordinary Yoga-powers, had obtained all the divine knowledge of yoga-vidya and occult powers of the gods, who conspired against him. Here we see the “obedient” Host of Archangels or minor gods conspiring against the (future) Fallen angels, whom Enoch accuses of the great crime of disclosing to the world all “the secret things done in heaven.” It is Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Surgal and Uriel who denounced to the Lord God those of their Brethren who were said to have pryed into the divine mysteries and taught them to men: by this means they themselves escaped a like punishment. Michael was commissioned to fight the Dragon, and so was Karttikeya, and under the same circumstances. Both are “leaders of the Celestial Host,” both Virgins, both “leaders of Saints,” “Spear-holders” (Saktidhara), etc., etc. Karttikeya is the original of Michael and St. George, as surely as Indra is the prototype of Karttikeya.

450. The “life and the light” of the material physical world, the delight of the senses — not of the soul. Apollo is pre-eminently the human god, the god of emotional, pomp-loving and theatrical Church ritualism, with lights and music.

451. See chap. xii. in Revelation where we find Apollo’s mother persecuted by that Python, the Red Dragon, who is also Porphyrion, the scarlet or red Titan.

452. No “god” who curses his (supposed) own work, because he has made it imperfect, can be the one infinite absolute wisdom, whether called Bel or Jehovah.

453. In the Indian allegory of Tarakamaya, the war between the gods and the Asuras headed by Soma (the moon, the King of Plants), it is Viswa-Karma, the artificer of the gods, who forges, like Vulcan (Tubal-Kain), their weapons for them.

454. We have said elsewhere that the “woman with child” of Revelation (xii.) was Aime, the great mother, or Binah, the third Sephiroth, “whose name is Jehovah”; and the “Dragon,” who seeks to devour her coming child (the Universe), is the Dragon of absolute Wisdom — that Wisdom which, recognising the non-separateness of the Universe and everything in it from the Absolute All, sees in it no better than the great Illusion, Mahamaya, hence the cause of misery and suffering.

455. The “Seven Karshvares of the Earth” — the seven spheres of our planetary chain, the seven worlds — also mentioned in the Rig-Veda — are fully referred to elsewhere. There are six rajamsi (worlds) above prithivi — the earth, or “this” (idam), as opposed to that which is yonder (the six globes on the three other planes). (See Rig-Veda, I., 34; III., 56; VII., 10411, and V., 60, 6. See § on Chronology.)

456. Verse 62, chap. xvii., “Book of the Dead”: Anubis is Horus who melts in him who is eyeless.

457. These “evil Spirits” can by no means be identified with Satan or the Great Dragon. They are the Elementals generated or begotten by ignorance — Cosmic and human passions — or Chaos.

458. See Numbers xxi. 8-9. God orders Moses to build a brazen Serpent “Saraph”; to look upon which heals those bitten by the fiery serpents. The latter were the Seraphim, each one of which, as Isaiah shows (vi. 2), “had six wings”; they are the symbols of Jehovah, and of all the other Demiurgi who produce out of themselves six sons or likenesses — Seven with their Creator. Thus, the Brazen Serpent is Jehovah, the chief of the “fiery serpents.” And yet, in 2 Kings xviii., it is shown that King Hezekiah, who, like as David his father, “did that which was right in the sight of the Lord” — “brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made . . . and called it Nehushtan,” or piece of brass.

459. And Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel (Chron. xxi. 1.) “The anger of the Lord Jehovah was kindled against Israel,” and he moved David to say: “Go, number Israel” (2 Samuel, xxiv. 1). The two are then identical.

460. Dozens of the most erudite writers have sifted thoroughly the various meanings of the name J’hovah (with, and without the masoretic points), and shown their multifarious bearings. The best of such works is the “Source of Measures, the Hebrew Egyptian Mystery.”

461. In the above-mentioned work (p. 233 App.), verse 26 of the 4th chap. of Genesis is correctly translated “then men began to call themselves Jehovah,” but less correctly explained, perhaps, as the last word ought to be written Jah (male) Hovah (female), to show that from that time the race of distinctly separate man and woman began.

462. See for explanation the excellent pages of appendix vii. of the same work.

463. In Demonology, Satan is the leader of the opposition in Hell, the monarch of which was Beelzebub. He belongs to the fifth kind or class of demons (of which there are nine according to mediaeval demonology), and he is at the head of witches and sorcerers. But see in the text the true meaning of Baphomet, the goat-headed Satan, one with Azaziel, the scape goat of Israel. Nature is the god PAN.

464. Vide for further details upon the Satanic myth, Part II. on Symbolism, in this volume.

465. As he is also Vulcan or Vul-cain, the greatest god with the later Egyptians, and the greatest Kabir. The god of time was Chium in Egypt, or Saturn, or Seth, and Chium is the same as Cain.

466. See Strabo, comparing them to the Cyclopes — XIV. p. 653 et seq. (Callim in Del., 31 Stat. Silo. IV., 6, 47; etc., etc.)

467. Nothing could be more awkward and childish, we say, than this fruitless attempt to disconnect the genealogies of Cain and of Seth, or to conceal the identity of names under a different spelling. Thus, Cain has a Son Enoch, and Seth a Son Enoch also (Enos, Ch’anoch, Hanoch; — one may do what one likes with Hebrew unvowelled names). In the Cainite line Enoch begets Irad, Irad Mehujael, the latter Methusael, and Methusael, Lamech. In the Sethite line, Enoch begets Cainan, and this one Mahaleel (a variation on Mehujael), who gives birth to Jarad (or Irad); Jarad to Enoch (Number 3), who produces Methuselah (from Methusael), and finally Lamech closes the list. Now all these are symbols (Kabalistically) of solar and lunar years, of astronomical periods, and of physiological (phallic) functions, just as in any other pagan symbolical creed. This has been proven by a number of writers.

468. The AEolian name of Mars was [[Areus]], and the Greek Ares, [[Ares]], is a name over the etymological significance of which, philologists and Indianists, Greek and Sanskrit scholars have vainly worked to this day. Very strangely, Max Muller connects both the names Mars and Ares with the Sanskrit root mar, whence he traces their derivation, and from which, he says, the name of Maruts (the storm-gods) comes. Welcker, however, offers more correct etymologies. (See Griech. Gotterlehre, I., 415.) However it may be, etymologies of roots and words alone will never yield the esoteric meaning fully, though they may help to useful guesses.

469. As the same author shows: “The very name Vulcain appears in the reading; for in the first words (of chap. iv. Genesis, 5) is to be found V’elcain, or V’ulcain, agreeably to the deepened u sound of the letter vau. Out of its immediate context, it may be read as “and the god Cain,” or Vulcain. If, however, anything is wanting to confirm the Cain-Vulcain idea, Fuerst says: “, Cain, the iron point of a lance, a smith (blacksmith), inventor of sharp iron tools and smith work” (p. 278).

470. Some derive the word from Paras which produced Pars, Persia, Pars; but it may be equally derived from Pitar or Pitris, the Hindu progenitors of the Fifth Race — the Fathers of Wisdom or the Sons of “Will and Yoga” — who were called Pitar, as were the divine Pitars of the First Race.

471. See for these traditions the “Collection of Persian Legends,” in Russian, Georgian, Armenian, and Persian; Herbelot’s narrative Legendes Persanes, “Bibliotheque Orientale,” p. 298, 387, etc., and Danville’s Memoires. We give in a condensed narrative that which is scattered in hundreds of volumes in European and Asiatic languages, as well as in oral traditions.

472. The main continent perished in the Miocene times, as already stated.

473. From Bede downwards all the chronologists of the Church have differed among themselves, and contradicted each other. “The chronology of the Hebrew text has been grossly altered, especially in the interval next after the Deluge”: — says Whiston (Old Test., p. 20).

474. Thence King Solomon, whose traces are nowhere to be found outside of the Bible, and the description of whose magnificent palace and city dovetail with those of the Persian tales; though they were unknown to all pagan travellers, even to Herodotus.

475. Orient. Trad., p. 454. See also Bailly’s “Lettres sur l’Atlantide.”

476. Remember that the Rabbins teach that there are to be seven successive renewals of the globe; that each will last 7,000 years, the total duration being thus 49,000 years (See Rabbi Parcha’s “wheel”; also Kenealy’s “Book of God,” p. 176). This refers to 7 Rounds, 7 Root-races, and sub-races, the truly occult figures, though sorely confused.

477. Mergain, or Morgana, the fairy sister of King Arthur, is thus shown of Oriental descent.

478. Where we find her, indeed, in Great Britain, in the romance of the Knights of the Round Table. Whence the identity of name and fairy-hood, if both heroines did not symbolize the same historical event which had passed into a legend?

479. To this day the aborigines of Caucasus speak of their mountains as Kap-kaz, using the consonant p instead of the usual v (Kavkaz or Caucasus). But their bards say that it requires seven months for a swift horse to reach the “dry land” beyond Kaf, holding north without ever deviating from one’s way.

480. Bailly thought he saw in this horse a twelve-oared ship. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the early Third Race built boats and flotillas before it built houses. But the “horse,” though a much later animal, has, nevertheless, a more occult primitive meaning. The crocodile and the hippopotamus were held sacred and represented divine symbols, both with the ancient Egyptians and with the Mexicans. Poseidon is, in Homer, the God of the Horse, and assumes that form himself to please Ceres. Arion, their progeny, is one of the aspects of that “horse,” which is a cycle.

481. The severed parts must be Norway and other lands in the neighbourhood of the Arctic Circle.

482. The two poles are called the right and left ends of our globe — the right being the North Pole — or the head and feet of the earth. Every beneficent (astral and cosmic) action comes from the North; every lethal influence from the South Pole. They are much connected with and influence “right” and “left” hand magic.

483. The more one approaches the poles the less rotation is felt; at the poles proper, the diurnal revolution is quite neutralized. Thence the expression that the sphere is “motionless.”

484. It is averred in Occultism that the land or island, which crowns the North Pole like a skull-cap, is the only one which prevails during the whole Manvantara of our “Round.” All the central continents and lands will emerge from the sea bottom many times in turn, but this land will never change.

485. Bear in mind that the Vedic and Avestian name of Fohat is Apam-Napat. In the Avesta he stands between the fire-yazatas and the water-yazatas. The literal meaning is “Son of the Waters,” but these “waters” are not the liquid we know, but Ether — the fiery waters of space. Fohat is the “Son of Ether” in its highest aspect, Akasa, the Mother-Father of the primitive Seven, and of Sound or Logos. Fohat is the light of the latter. See Book I.

486. This “water” is the blood or fluid of life which animates the earth, compared here to a living body.

487. Occult teaching corroborates the popular tradition which asserts the existence of a fountain of life in the bowels of the earth and in the North Pole. It is the blood of the earth, the electro-magnetic current, which circulates through all the arteries; and which is said to be found stored in the “navel” of the earth.

488.  Occultism points to the Himalayan chain as that “belt,” and maintains that whether under the water or above, it encircles the globe. The navel is described as situated to the setting sun or to the west of the Himavat in which lie the roots of Meru, which mountain is north of the Himalaya. Meru is not “the fabulous mountain in the navel or centre of the earth,” but its roots and foundations are in that navel, though it is in the far north itself. This connects it with the “central” land “that never perishes”; the land in which “the day of the mortal lasts six months and his night another six months.” As the Vishnu Purana has it: “for the North of Meru there is, therefore, always night during day in other regions; for Meru is north of all the dwipas and varshas” (islands and countries). (Book II., chap. viii.) Meru is therefore neither on Atlas as Wilford suggests, nor, as Wilson tried to show, “absolutely in the centre of the globe,” only because “relatively with the inhabitants of the several portions, to all of whom the East is that quarter where the sun first appears.”

489. Even the Commentaries do not refrain from Oriental metaphor. The globe is likened to the body of a woman, “mother earth.” >From her neck downward, means from the inland sea now beyond the impassable barrier of ice. The Earth, as Parasara says: “is the mother and nurse, augmented with all creatures and their qualities, the comprehender of all the worlds.”

490. For the Stanzas call this locality by a term translated in the commentary as a place of no latitude (niraksha) the abode of the gods. As a scholiast says from the Surya-Sidhanta:

“Above this (the Siddha) goes the sun when situated at the equinoxes; they have neither equinoctial shadow nor elevation of the pole (akshonnati, v. 42). In both directions from these are two pole-stars (dhruvatara), fixed in the midst of the sky;  to those who are situated in places of no latitude (niraksha) both these have their place in the horizon. Hence there is (on that land) no elevation of the poles, the two pole-stars being situated in their horizon; but their degrees of colatitude (lumbaka) are 90; at Meru the degrees of latitude (aksha) are of the same number.” (43 and 44.)

491. Wilford makes many mistakes. He identifies, for instance, Sveta-dwipa (the white Island), the “island in the northern part of Toyambhudi,” with England, and then tries to identify it with Atala (a nether region) and Atlantis. Now the former is the abode of Vishnu, exoterically, and Atala is a hell. He also places it in the Euxine or Icshu (Black) Sea, and then seems to connect it, in another place, with Africa and Atlas.

492. Every name in the Puranas has to be examined at least under two aspects; geographically, and metaphysically, in its allegorical application; e.g., Nila, the (blue) mountain which is one of the boundaries to the north of Meru, is again to be sought geographically in a mountain range in Orissa, and again in a mountain quite different from the others (in Western Africa). Jambu-dwipa is Vishnu’s dominion — the world, limited in the Puranas to our globe, the region which contains Meru only, and again it is divided to contain Bharata-varsha (India), its best division, and the fairest, says Parasara. Likewise with Pushkara and all others.

493. Jambu, Plaksha, Salmali, Kusa, Krauncha, Saka, and Pushkara.

494. Such as Saka and Pushkara, for instance, which do not yet exist, but into which will enter such lands as some portions of America, of Africa, and Central Asia, with the Gobi region. Let us bear in mind that Upadwipas means “root” islands, or the dry land in general.

495. They were called demons, Asuras, giants, and monsters, because of their wickedness; and thus their country was likened to Atala — a hell, because of that.

496. Not on the river Nile, surely, but near the Nila mountains of the Atlas range.

497. Says Wilford of the division of Atlantis and Bharata or India, confusing the two accounts and Priyavrata with Medhatithi: — “The division was made by Priyavrata. . . . He had ten sons, and it was his intention to divide the whole world. In the same manner Neptune divided Atlantis between his ten sons. . . . One of them had . . . the extremity of the Atlantis” — which “is probably the old continent. . . . This Atlantis was overwhelmed by a flood. . . . and it seems that by Atlantis we should understand the Antediluvian Earth over which ten princes were born to rule according to the mythology of the West (and of the East, also) but seven only of them sat upon the throne.” (Vol. III. p. 286.) . . Some also are of opinion that of the seven dwipas six were destroyed by a flood (Vol. VIII. p. 367). Wilford takes it to be “Gades which included Spain,” but it was Plato’s island — rather.

498. America, the “new” world — is thus, though not much, older; still it is older than Europe, the “old world.”

499. If Div or Dev-Sefid’s (the Taradaitya’s) abode was on the seventh stage, it is because he came from Pushkara, the Patala (antipodes) of India, or from America. The latter touched the walls, so to say, of Atlantis, before the latter sank finally. The word Patala, meaning both the antipodal countries and infernal regions, thus became synonymous in ideas and attributes as well as in name.

500. Neither Atlantis, nor yet Sancha dwipa, was ever called “White Island.” When tradition says that “the White Island became black on account of the sins of people” it only means the denizens of the “White Island,” or Siddhapura, or Sveta dwipa, who descended to the Atlantis of the Third and Fourth races, to “inform the latter; and who, having incarnated, became black with sin” — a figure of speech. All the Avatars of Vishnu are said to come originally from the White Island. According to Tibetan tradition the White Island is the only locality which escapes the general fate of other dwipas and can be destroyed by neither fire nor water, for — it is the “eternal land.”

501. How wise and grand, how far-seeing and morally beneficent are the laws of Manu on connubial life, when compared with the licence tacitly allowed to man in civilized countries. That those laws have been neglected for the last two millenniums does not prevent us from admiring their forethought. The Brahmin was a grihasta, a family man, till a certain period of his life, when, after begetting a son, he broke with married life and became a chaste Yogi. His very connubial life was regulated by his Brahmin astrologer in accordance with his nature. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjab, for instance, where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later on of European, licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Aryan castes, one still finds the finest men — so far as stature and physical strength go — on the whole globe; whereas the mighty men of old have found themselves replaced in the Deccan, and especially in Bengal, by men whose generation becomes with every century (and almost with every year) dwarfed and weakened.

502. Diseases and over-population are facts that can never be denied.

503. In Mrs. Anna Swanwick’s volumes, “The Dramas of AEschylus,” it is said of “Prometheus Bound” (Vol. II., pp. 146, 147), that Prometheus truly appears in it “as the champion and benefactor of mankind, whose condition . . . . is depicted as weak and miserable in the extreme. . . . Zeus, it is said, proposed to annihilate these puny ephemerals, and to plant upon the earth a new race in their stead.” We see the Lords of Being doing likewise, and exterminating the first product of nature and the sea, in the Stanzas (V, et seq.). . . . Prometheus represents himself as having frustrated this design, and as being consequently subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most agonising pain, inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of Zeus. We have, thus, the Titan, the symbol of finite reason and free will (of intellectual humanity, or the higher aspect of Manas), depicted as the sublime philanthropist, while Zeus, the supreme deity of Hellas, is portrayed as the cruel and obdurate despot, a character peculiarly revolting to Athenian sentiment.” The reason for it is explained further on. The “Supreme Deity” bears, in every ancient Pantheon — including that of the Jews — a dual character, composed of light and shadow.

504. The animal world, having simple instinct to guide it, has its seasons of procreation, and the sexes become neutralized during the rest of the year. Therefore, the free animal knows sickness but once in its life — before it dies.

505. Introduction to “Prometheus Bound,” p. 152.

506. From [[pro metis]] pro metis, “forethought.” “Professor Kuhn,” we are told in the above-named volumes of “The Dramas of AEschylus,” “considers the name of the Titan to be derived from the Sanskrit word Pramantha, the instrument used for kindling fire. The root mand or manth, implies rotatory motion, and the word manthami (used to denote the process of fire kindling) acquired the secondary sense of snatching away; hence we find another word of the same stock, pramatha, signifying theft.” This is very ingenious, but perhaps not altogether correct; besides, there is a very prosaic element in it. No doubt in physical nature, the higher forms may develop from the lower ones, but it is hardly so in the world of thought. And as we are told that the word manthami passed into the Greek language and became the word manthano, to learn; that is to say, to appropriate knowledge; whence prometheia, fore-knowledge, fore-thought; we may find, in searching, a more poetical origin for the “fire-bringer” than that displayed in its Sanskrit origin. The Svastica, the sacred sign and the instrument for kindling sacred fire, may explain it better. “Prometheus, the fire-bringer, is the Pramantha personified,” goes on the author; “he finds his prototype in the Aryan Matarisvan, a divine . . . . . personage, closely associated with the fire god of the Veda, Agni. . . .” Mati, in Sanskrit, is “understanding,” and a synonym of mahat and manas, and must be of some account in the origin of the name: Promati is the son of Fohat, and has his story also.

507. Kronos is “time,” and thus the allegory becomes very suggestive. (See closing pages of this Sub-section.)

508. See, for explanation of this curse, the last page of the present sub-section.

509. It is complained by the author of the version on, and translator of, “Prometheus Bound” that in this tracing of Io’s wanderings, “no consistency with our known geography is attainable” (p. 191, Vol. II). There may be good reason for it. First of all it is the journey and wandering from place to place of the race from which the “tenth,” or Kalki Avatar, so called, is to issue. This he calls the “Kingly race born in Argos” (888). But Argos has no reference here to Argos in Greece. It comes from Arg or arca — the female generative power symbolised in the moon — the navi-formed Argha of the mysteries, meaning the Queen of Heaven. Eustathius shows that, in the dialect of the Arg-ians, Io signified the moon; while esotericism explains it as the divine Androgyne, or the mystic 10; in Hebrew 10 is the perfect number, or Jehovah. Arghya in Sanskrit is the libation cup, the navi-form or boat-shaped vessel in which flowers and fruit are offered to the deities. Arghyanath is a title of the Maha-Chohan, meaning “the Lord of Libations;” and Arghya Varsha — “the land of libations” — is the mystery name of that region which extends from Kailas mountain nearly to the Schamo Desert — from within which the Kalki Avatar is expected. The Airyana-Varsedya of the Zoroastrians, as a locality, is identical with it. It is now said to have been situated between the sea of Aral, Baltistan, and little Tibet; but in olden times its area was far larger, as it was the birth-place of physical humanity, of which Io is the mother and symbol.

510. Alexander, who was better acquainted with Attock than with India (where he never went) could not have failed to hear the Indus near its very sources called Nil and Nilah. Even if a mistake, it is thus easily accounted for.

511. That Io is identical allegorically with Isis and the moon is shown by her being “cow-horned.” The allegory undeniably reached Greece from India, where Vach — “the melodious cow” (Rig-Veda) “from whom mankind was produced” (Bhagavata Purana) is shown in the Aitareya Brahmana as pursued by her father Brahma, who was moved by an illicit passion, and changed her into a deer. Hence Io, refusing to yield to Jupiter’s passion, becomes “horned.” The cow was in every country the symbol of the passive generative power of nature, Isis, Vach, Venus — the mother of the prolific god of love, Cupid, but, at the same time, that of the Logos whose symbol became with the Egyptians and the Indians — the bull — as testified to by Apis and the Hindu bulls in the most ancient temples. In esoteric philosophy the cow is the symbol of creative nature, and the Bull (her calf) the spirit which vivifies her, or “the Holy Spirit,” as Mr. Kenealy shows. Hence the symbol of the horns. These were sacred also with the Jews, who placed near the altar horns of Shittim wood, by seizing which a criminal ensured his safety.

512. Herodotus and Pausanias supposed that the cause of the condemnation was that AEschylus, adopting the theogony of the Egyptians, made Diana, the daughter of Ceres, and not of Latona. (See AElian Var. Hist. I., v. c. xviii., tom. 1, p. 433 Edition Gronov.) But AEschylus was initiated.

513. Sabasia was a periodical festival with mysteries enacted in honour of some gods, a variant on the Mithraic Mysteries. The whole evolution of the races was performed in them.

514. Vide supra, a foot-note concerning the etymology of [[prometis]] or forethought. Prometheus confesses it in the drama when saying: — “Oh! holy Ether, swiftly-winged gales . . . .
Behold what I, a god, from gods endure
.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
And yet what say I? Clearly I foreknew
All that must happen . . . .
. . . . The Destined it behoves,
As best I may, to bear, for well I wot
How incontestable the strength of Fate . . . . (105)

“Fate” stands here for Karma, or Nemesis.

515. Mankind is obviously divided into god-informed men and lower human creatures. The intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so called. The “sacred spark” is missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily — owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction — fast dying out. Verily mankind is “of one blood,” but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent.

516. The philosophical view of Indian metaphysics places the Root of Evil in the differentiation of the Homogeneous into the Heterogeneous, of the unit into plurality.

517. Gautama Buddha, named Shakya Thub-pa, is the twenty-seventh of the last group, as most of these Buddhas belong to the divine dynasties which instructed mankind.

518. Of these “Buddhas,” or the “Enlightened,” the far distant predecessors of Gautama the Buddha, and who represent, we are taught, once living men, great adepts and Saints, in whom the “Sons of Wisdom” had incarnated, and who were, therefore, so to speak, minor Avatars of the Celestial Beings — eleven only belong to the Atlantean race, and 24 to the Fifth race, from its beginnings. They are identical with the Tirtankaras of the Jainas.

519. This may account for the similarity of the artificial mounds in the U. S. of America, and the tumuli in Norway. It is this identity that led some American archaeologists to suggest that Norwegian mariners had discovered America some one thousand years ago. (Vide Holmboe’s Traces de Bouddhisme en Norvege, p. 23). There is no doubt that America is that “far distant land into which pious men and heavy storms had transferred the sacred doctrine,” as a Chinese writer suggested by his description to Neumann. But neither Professor Holmboe, of Stockholm, nor the American archaeologists, have guessed the right age of the mounds, or the tumuli. The fact that Norwegians may have re-discovered the land that their long-forgotten forefathers believed to have perished in the general submersion, does not conflict with that other fact that the Secret Doctrine of the land which was the cradle of physical man, and of the Fifth Race, had found its way into the so-called New World ages and ages before the “Sacred Doctrine” of Buddhism.

520. Vide the first pages of Part III., Science and the Secret Doctrine Contrasted.

521. Wrote the late Brahmachari Bawa, a Yogi of great renown and holiness: “Extensive works on Ashtar Vidya and such other sciences were at different times compiled in the languages of the times. But the Sanskrit originals were lost at the time of the partial deluge of our country.” . . . (See Theosophist of June, 1880, “Some Things the Aryans Knew.”) For Agneyastra, see Wilson’s Specimens of the Hindu Theatre, I., p. 297.

522. Some wonderful, artificially-made beast, similar in some way to Frankenstein’s creation, which spoke and warned his master of every approaching danger. The master was a “black magician,” the mechanical animal was informed by a djin, an Elemental, according to the accounts. The blood of a pure man alone could destroy him. Vide Part II., xxvii., “Seven in Astronomy, Science, and Magic.”

523. The four Karmic gods, called the Four Maharajahs in the Stanzas.

524. “The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated” by a strangely intuitional symbologist and astronomer, a kind of a self-made adept of Norwich, who lived in the first quarter of this century.

525. The term “Atlantean” must not mislead the reader to regard these as one race only, or even a nation. It is as though one said “Asiatics.” Many, multityped, and various were the Atlanteans, who represented several humanities, and almost a countless number of races and nations, more varied indeed than would be the “Europeans” were this name to be given indiscriminately to the five existing parts of the world; which, at the rate colonization is proceeding, will be the case, perhaps, in less than two or three hundred years. There were brown, red, yellow, white and black Atlanteans; giants and dwarfs (as some African tribes comparatively are, even now).

526. Says a teacher in “Esoteric Buddhism,” on p. 64: “In the Eocene age, even in its very first part, the great cycle of the fourth race men the (Lemuro) Atlanteans had already reached its highest point (of civilization), and the great continent, the father of nearly all the present continents, showed the first symptoms of sinking. . . .” And on page 70, it is shown that Atlantis as a whole perished during the Miocene period. To show how the continents, races, nations and cycles overlap each other, one has but to think of Lemuria, the last of whose lands perished about 700,000 years before the beginning of the Tertiary period (see p. 65 of the same work), and the last of “Atlantis” only 11,000 years ago; thus both overlapping — one the Atlantean period, and the other the Aryan.

527. Ceylon.

528. The forefathers of the Aryan Brahmins had their Zodiacal calculations and Zodiac from those born by Kriyasakti power, the “Sons of Yoga”; the Egyptians from the Atlanteans of Ruta.

529. The former, therefore, may have registered time for seven or eight millions of years, but the Egyptians could not.

530. This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed and answered. See Five Years of Theosophy. (Art. “Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism,” pp. 325-46).

531. Volney says that, as Aries was in its 15th degree 1447 B.C., it follows that the first degree of “Libra” could not have coincided with the vernal equinox more lately than 15,194 years B.C., to which if you add 1790 since Christ, when Volney wrote this, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the (Greek or rather Hellenic) origin of the Zodiac.

532. The word “historical” is used, because, although historians have dwarfed almost absurdly the dates that separate certain events from our modern day, nevertheless, once that they are known and accepted, they belong to history. Thus the Trojan War is an historical event; and though even less than 1,000 years B.C. is the date assigned to it, yet in truth it is nearer 6,000 than 5,000 years B.C.

533. It is an historical fact that Sanchoniathon compiled and wrote in Phoenician characters — from annals and State documents in the archives of the older Phoenician cities — the full record of their religion in 1250 B.C.

534. Prof. Virchow, in Appendix 1 to Schliemann’s Ilios. Murray, 1880.

535. Gosse writes of the latter: “She is set down a thorough heretic, not at all to be believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an inventor of false facts in science.” (“Romance of Natural History,” p. 227.)

536. Dr. Cover writes: “That famous bird of Washington was a myth; either Audubon was mistaken, or else, as some do not hesitate to affirm, he lied about it.”

537. So far back as July, 1888, at a time when the MSS. of this work had not yet left my writing table, and the Secret Doctrine was utterly unknown to the world, it was already being denounced as a product of my brain and no more. These are the flattering terms in which the Evening Telegraph (of America) referred to this still unpublished work in its issue of June 30, 1888: “Among the fascinating books for July reading is Mme. Blavatsky’s new book on Theosophy . . . (!) the Secret Doctrine. . . . But because she can soar back into the Brahmin ignorance . . . (! ?) . . . is no proof that everything she says is true.” And once the prejudiced verdict given on the mistaken notion that my book was out, and that the reviewer had read it, neither of which was or could be the case, now that it is really out the critic will have to support his first statement, whether correct or otherwise, and thus get out of it, probably by a more slashing criticism than ever.

Go to Next Page